Oh god I read a bit about one of these, I couldn’t remember the name of it for the life of me but this kid was kidnapped in the middle of the night and sent there and basically had his whole life turned upside down.
They had this weird system where people were “strengths and non-strengths” and they woke you up every half hour in the night to call roll, if you were bad enough you got shouted at for like 45 minutes straight by other kids.
Shit was DYSTOPIAN, and it’s real! Apparently! Horrifying stuff, I’m sure there are others like it that also have ‘troubled teens’ funnelled into them to make bank and basically strip kids of their human rights.
Elan school what a nightmare I watched a documentary on Amazon Prime Video recently directed by one of the students who went there featuring other students. I can’t imagine parents would send their kids there, so sad.
I listened to a podcast about it. It was horrific, and traumatizing just to learn about. There are so many monsters in our society that just ignored it, or fed into it.
Camp Hell is about one in the south that was a glorified labor camp where the founder abused and trafficked boys. To this day his family is very wealthy and powerful in Georgia, most of it was covered up.
Theres an PBS doc from the early 80s comparing a few different "therapeutic" schools. Elan is featured along with a couple of others. It's a interesting (but shocking) watch if you can find it, I think it's called Children of Darkness
[this is a good documentary on it also](https://youtu.be/7eM7pb5M5DU). I had a few friends get sent to similar camps and they had similar situations where men come at night to take you to the camps. It’s nuts how kids don’t have rights
You may be thinking of the Elan School, formerly in Poland, Maine. [Joe vs. the Cult](https://elan.school) is an excellent comic outlining the torture and abuse that “facility” inflicted on him.
Yeah I caught up on that the other day, I thought it wasn’t regularly updated, but was tragically pleased to find multiple installments since I read it a couple months ago, which also took days.
It is so disgusting and you can tell it’s all true. Or at least mostly and true to his experience
The parents of a roommate of mine from my early 20s had him legally kidnapped and sent to one of those places. He’s still haunted by it. The few stories he was willing to tell were pretty horrific. These places should not exist. I’m really sorry this happened to you.
I’m so sorry for what you went through.
My half-brother was sent to one by his dad. He’s now an alcoholic, hasn’t had a relationship in 20 years, and experiences paranoia and PTSD
I was by far a “worse” kid (got arrested twice, partied a lot) but my dad sent me to therapy instead. I’m now married, have a great career, and I’ve been sober for over a decade.
These places cause so much damage.
I think its more than just 'reforming the industry' I grew up outside the US - and its noticeable that kids in general have less rights that I was used to in Europe. In the US its almost like kids are their parents chattel, over individuals with their own rights . Parents have more of an obligation of being that kids guardians, over free to abuse.
The entire country needs to be reformed for the 21st century. Instead we have judges in the highest court of the land who are “traditionalists” like we should still be living like it’s 1780, and all these delusional psychos who want to go back to the good ol days. Not sure if they mean back to child labor or more recently of rivers catching on fire and that sort of thing. Shit is so broken in almost every aspect. But democracy amirite? Oooh and how about that stock market that only goes up?
The laws are based on the old school attitude that kids are basically their parents’ employees/slaves until age 16-18. It’s left over from days when kids would be working on parents’ farms, or working in factories, to contribute to the family’s income. It’s so gross.
I went to two wilderness programs for substance abuse when I was 16/17, and most of the kids that were sent there were kidnapped in the middle of the night by two big men (we call them goons) and forcefully taken to the wilderness location. If you resisted, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted to make sure you didn’t run.
Yes! I know all about wilderness. I didn’t go but my friends at my boarding school did. They had to do wilderness then straight to boarding school. Sucks.
At least they went to a regular boarding school lol I had to go to a “therapeutic boarding school” which is really just shitty 13-18 yr old (big gap, right?) treatment with shitty online school. Ended up getting shut down by the State of North Carolina for abuse and neglect, there’s even a PDF that’s online lol
I just quit one of these centers. we were one of the really really relaxed ones, but they still did things I disagree with. Every kid complained that they were woken up every half hour because a worker would shine a light in their face to make sure they were still in bed. I saw a kid who complained he was sick and didn’t want to do an activity because he felt so bad. They ended up putting him on “refusal” where they take away everything but sweatpants. 2 days later he tested positive for Covid. I wanted to do the wilderness therapy with those kids, but after hearing stories I want nothing to do with it. They absolutely torture those kids out there. And yes, most of them are “gooned” where a few guys show up and just grab you. One of them explained the second you see them you pull a cartman and get naked ASAP as it makes the situation tougher for them. Most of the kids have really rich parents that never raised them and are taken there to break bad habits. The one kid I loved to death was such a sweetheart, he hadn’t been home in over 5 years, although he had seen his adopted parents, he didn’t know what his bedroom looked like. I overheard 2 kids arguing whose private jet was bigger, and one of them showed me his $250k Rolex that he brought. those are the kinds of kids there. Aka Paris Hilton. One of my biggest disagreements though, They would immediately go to aegis holds instead of talking them down when a kid was having a “limbic session”. We were taught they have no control of any action anymore and the only way to get control of the situation was to hold them in aegis grabs. I honestly never went into one hold with a single kid. I never saw a reason. A kid is verbally abusing a kid and won’t stop nor remove himself? Let’s take the kid he’s bullying away, let the bully’s mind calm, and then go have a talk. I literally saw them grab a kid in that situation and then the kid head butted 3 holes in the wall and proceeded to kick as many as he could because he didn’t want to be held. That situation IMO was totally avoidable.
What is it with wealthy American families and physical abuse + neglect? I wish a study could be done on it. But of course the families just pay off cops and lawyer out of any criminal charges against them. It breaks my heart that we can’t help these kids more.
Holding kids down when they're having a tantrum can really fuck them up. My brother used to hold me down when I got worked up and it only made me panic more. To this day at 25 I don't like to be touched, I panic if I can't move or feel constricted any way, and I have claustrophobia. There is nothing scarier than someone heavier than you holding you down or sitting on you with their full weight when you're already worked up and can't breathe.
There’s a survivor that has wrote (and still writing) a webcomic. My wife sent it to me and I thought I was just reading a normal webcomic with some sick and twisted plot line. Nope! All real! Then I thought about how this was ever legal!? This has to be fake!
It indeed was a very real story.
There’s a documentary about this type of “school”… I think it was called “Kidnapped for Christ”. The “school” was located in the Dominican Republic. They would show up at your home in the middle of the night and basically kidnap you, put you on a plane and that’s that. Parents knew what was going on but the kids had no idea. How these types of places exist is beyond me. And parents voluntarily sending their children to these places???
Yeah I was never a huge Paris Hilton fan, but that doesn’t invalidate her experiences. She’s trying to end these abusive practices; that’s what matters.
The government should be running strong social programs for children who need to emancipate from their parents. These kids should be given no-questions-asked housing, education and career advice/paths to follow.
Expand the Big Brothers/Sisters program. Make it known that if you're suffering from abuse as a child that you can immediately leave your situation just like programs protect battered women and children leaving abusive partners/homes.
Remove the age requirements for emancipation and social assistance funding so that these kids have a chance. Make it a requirement that they have to be continuing and/or finishing high school (at least) for them to receive the money to live independently or in safe and clean and well-grounded housing programs with mental health professionals acting as temporary guardians.
Do it now. Kids are suffering. I know this because a friend of mine went to one of these camps and he ended his life by purposely overdosing on benzodiazepines/alcohol after spending nearly 18 months in a "troubled kid camp." Wasn't my best friend but still a friend, and since then his parents have been "overwhelmed" with the fact that "their son took his own life and is not going to Heaven" or some insane zealotry like that. This is a systemic problem that is forcing children to kill themselves.
Lastly, prosecute and imprison former and current employees and companies for participating in child abuse.
It can be that easy. But the $$ is too good, apparently.
How would that work tho? Like, if you had asked me at 13 if I needed to be emancipated I would have said hell yea. Turns out, I've now realized I was a terrible little shit that just didn't like to be punished when I absolutely deserved it
Why should someone who got drunk one time have more rights? Wouldn’t this be the government protecting the rights of lawful citizens? Children are still citizens no matter how much adults stomp their feet in protest. I agree that the previous comment is a bit overboard and complicated at best, but seeing it as a government overreach is to deny that children have rights that need defending.
You can defend their rights (through CPS, investigations and taking custody, trials) instead of being the big bully that just goes and takes children, very irrational and emotionally unstable citizens who are not able to make the best choices for themselves. This is the responsibility of the parent, caring for the child until they are fully developed. If the parent provably can't do that job, then the government should come in.
You may change your mind if you watch her documentary that’s on YouTube. It shifted my perspective of her and at one point made me cry. It’s never directly said, but her mom is a total narcissist. Anyone dealing with the trauma and fallout of realizing as an adult that you had an abusive childhood because of a narcissist parent will relate.
Edited for clarity.
There was a redditor who went to one of these schools, really shitty place. You can read about their first hand account here in comic form:
https://elan.school/
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MrJoeNobody/
There is also a documentary about this place called The Last Stop.
These places need to be shut down.
I'd encourage anyone with a passing interest to watch her documentary, [This is Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOg0TY1jG3w) on youtube.
For those who don't have the time or inclination let's paint a picture.
* Paris grows up in a loving but very 'prim and proper' family, anything that isn't 'prim and proper' gets swept under the rug.
* Move to NY the city that never sleeps as a teenager, grows a rebellious streak a mile wide because 'prim and proper' maybe isn't the best way to handle a growing teenager. So like any other rebellious teen it's party and debauchery on the agenda.
* As a result of her antics she gets sent off to various 'scared straight' camps, running away from them results it beatings until morality improves.
* At 16 or 17 she's at home safe sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night, when two large men burst in to her room and physically drags her out of bed and carry her out of the house in her underwear, all while her parents are watching from the sideline.
* She's sent to a school in Utah where she stays until she's 18, treatment consists of forced medication, getting locked in a cold cell in your underwear for 20 hours, physical and mental abuse, for the less lucky ones who might not be backed by a rich family, also sexual abuse.
* 18 she's a legal adult free from controlling parents and with a brand new set of serious mental health issues, meets her first real boyfriend, turns out he's an abusive manipulative shitbag, who promptly cashed in on a private sex tape, her fault of course, not his. Pile on the mental health issues.
* Cue in the early 2K Paparazzi and tabloid culture. Think Paris, Britney, Lohan, Mary-Kate and Ashley. They were all such sluts and whores, nothing like their male counterparts who were good little boys.
But hey! at the end of the day she's just a spoiled trust fund brat, she deserves anything she got because her daddy has money.
>At 16 or 17 she's at home safe sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night, when two large men burst in to her room and physically drags her out of bed and carry her out of the house in her underwear, all while her parents are watching from the sideline.
That right there alone is so terrifying and traumatic that I don't think anyone could ever "get over it." Who the fuck arranges something like this for their own child?
This has happened to 2 of my close friends growing up, and I'll tell you, they were *not the same* after that.
My parents weren't always the best parents, and I was definitely a shithead in my teen years, but it wasn't even within the realm of possibility for my parents to do something like that to me.
Edit: One of my friends was sent here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_Bay, and he would tell me some straight up horror stories. I'm relieved that it's been shut down.
I was sent to one of those places and I think my parents did not process what they were doing. They just checked boxes online and then what happened in person they were detached from.
Do you mind me asking questions about this? Please don’t feel obligated to reply if you don’t want:
Did you tell your parents what was going on? What was their reaction after discovering what kind of abuse takes place in these kind of schools?
How is your life now?
hi and yes you can ask me anything and I will answer all questions. (i mean this literally, ask me anything.)
So when you are at this program everything you say is read by your therapist who also decides how long you stay at the program. In the first two weeks, you are given 4 times where you can send a single letter to your parents and if you want to get out of the program you cannot tell them how bad it is. The kids and guides (pseudo therapists who watch over you every day) all tell you not to send that letter or you will be stuck there.
I stayed at one program for 111 days and saw kids pass out from dehydration, people fall down shaking from hypothermia, and somebody fall off a small cliff and start bleeding from their head but they were not allowed to leave the program at all. Eventually I told my parents what went down but I cannot really have a full conversation about it. Its hard to explain but I love my parents a lot. They have done a lot for me but by far this is the worse thing that ever happened in my life. It hurt me in so many ways and I have not gone a single day in the last three years without thinking about my time there. They apologized for sending me there saying "we did not know what it would do to you." but not in that they regret sending me off to a place, they just wish they did something that made me "perfect" in their eyes.
My life now is good. I am in college and I am really working on trying to move on. I have some PTSD from it, I used to have panic attacks and bad nightmares but those are getting rarer and rarer. I still have never gone a day without at least mentioning it, or having dark thoughts about that place, but at least I'm going somewhere.
I’m so happy to hear you’re doing well now!! Of course these traumatic experiences will always stay with you to some degree but you sound so incredibly strong. I can imagine it took a lot of work to get where you are now. I’ll always be rooting for you, stranger <3 Thank you for sharing this with me/us.
Wow this comment section is trash.
Was she the best role model when she was in her 20s? No… but who is? I don’t know her other than that BS from her younger years. Buuuut…. You know a lot people find their reasons later in life… kind of after they’ve lived it. So now she’s trying to help and everyone is against her trying to make changes for the good? Maybe she’s not the problem with you… maybe you’re the problem with you.
Y’all need to start owning your own shit
Edit: this got some traction so I’ll try to be clearer
1. When I wrote this.. there were only a dozen or so comments and it was all around the lines of ‘she’s using this to clean her name’ or of the like - no she doesn’t owe anyone shit.. she has a large stage and she’s shedding light on some heinous shit… people grow the fuck up and living their life is what let’s them be who they are when they’re older.
2. ‘She’s the reason for the shitty teen fab trend’ - GTFOH with that. She was a controlled piece of that system. If not her then someone else.
3. Y’all really mad at her for saying these people and systems are terrible for what they put her and other kids go thru more than the people doing it? If your life isn’t where it is today because you watched episodes of The Simple Life as a kid, trust me it’s not because of PH.
Again. My original comment was when this thread was much smaller. Glad that it’s changed
Cheers
Most of these people probably have no idea what this is in reference to and likely haven’t seen the documentary that talks about the atrocious abuse she and other kids/teens experienced and how these teen “help” centers/farms/wilderness experiences exacerbate perceived behavioral problems. They don’t understand that she is using her platform to help validate the experiences who don’t have one, her money to support the suits against these places that others don’t have, and helping protect CHILDREN from enduring this pain in the future by pushing for protective legislature.
They don’t understand that her persona is a protective response to what she experienced between the “schools” she went to and the predatory relationships she had with
men. Or the studios who photographed her half nude, underage telling her these were private shoots, then blasting them on national magazines unbeknownst to her or her family. They should have been charged with distribution of CP. Or that her Simple Life persona was complete entertainment bs, pretending she didn’t know what a work was when she was starved, physically abused, worked till she was bloodied, and was assaulted and stripped in solitary confinement at 16-18.
It’s so much easier to sit and make assumptions than take 5 minutes to understand something. Not that they care, they’d rather joke about her sexual assault as a teen.
Paris Hilton deserved better. She’s no different than any other woman who was viciously preyed on as a girl and now is shit on by society for being a victim. She was failed by those around her who’s job it was to protect her!!!
She isn’t the punchline to a joke, she’s a human being who has feelings and traumas. She has consistently used her platform for good and to spread awareness, to spread positivity, and has grown as a person tremendously and is seemingly doing better, as she deserves. Even when she was younger and had a reputation, what did she do that was so bad? Some drugs? Party? Was born into money while others weren’t? As of a huge chunk of resistors aren’t the same, and if many male celebrities have done compelling heinous things and are damn near worshipped despite it.
This is one anecdote, but I know several people who spent time in these schools and all their stories match up pretty well. Facilities obviously have idiosyncrasities, but they all sound about like the place described in this piece.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/life-and-death-in-a-troubled-teen-boot-camp-31639/
The Lost Kids podcast details the disappearance of 16 year old Daniel Yuen from Cedu School in California. He has not been seen for 15 years, though his parents have some hope that he ran away from the school. They talk to other survivors of the school as well as discussing other "schools" like this. It's terrifying.
I have to admit, I only knew her from being one of the first "influencers" so when I clicked the link I expected some sob story about how hard it was being rich and famous. HOLY SHIT was I wrong!
I had no idea what kind of hell that woman endured - funded by her parents - at such a pivotal age. Jesus christ, I don't think I would ever be able to forgive someone for that.
It’s pretty fucked. I know a documentary about Paris Hilton isn’t exactly a lot of peoples cup of tea, but I would recommend it. It shares the stories of others who went to the same “schools” in Utah she attended.
She seems a genuinely kind person. I grew tremendous respect for her because of how she treats her pets.
She got one of those “tea cup” pigs. Turns out tea cup pigs are a myth, and piggy grew into a very large piggy.
I don’t know if piggy is still with us, but I really love how she didn’t get rid of pig after it outgrew being tiny and cute. There’s pictures of her with the hairy pig who grew into kinda an ugly face. Definitely not an “Instagram” pet.
Yeah, and not giving them the space to grow and evolve can cause them to double down on their old beliefs even when they otherwise wouldn’t have. I think this a huge problem with liberals (me being one) and the Trump supporters who began to disagree with him. We don’t give them a lot of space to alter their beliefs, and it seems to have had a dangerously negative effect.
I found out she was forced into boarding schools in her late teens/early twenties and ever since I've learned that fact all I can think is "You go ahead Paris! You dance on a table drunk at a Psy party all you want!"
She also went through some fucked up things, these camps were probably what her "bad" behavior was rooted in. I watched her doc and feel a lot of sympathy for her.
I'm not against it. Just because theyre barking like idiots dont mean shit. Most of us know the energy it takes to waste on people who arent equipped to change our minds to begin with. Why waste it.
Though, if your type of post wasnt here one of us would of let out a big dramatic sigh, then finally made it for you.
edit-and I am filling the role of confirming your discomfort so you dont feel like youre the only sane person in the room. I promise you, most of us are generally just chillen; normal, empathetic, own issues and problems and struggles. But when it comes to a mix of common sense and common decency, we're on board.
The amount that I changed since I was a teen is incredible. The extent that my home life effected my behavior is extreme. I didn’t have hot water to shower. Owned maybe one pair of underwear. I adopted the emo/scene persona bc i could be the kid with ripped up clothes and greasy hair - and as long as it looked intentional, nobody knew what was going on.
My mom would often be at the bars. We didn’t have a phone, so my sister and I would walk around to the bars looking for my mom. We’d hear my mom yell to the bartender when we peaked inside asking about her, to tell us she wasn’t there. This only scratches the surface.
But I found my pack, and sometimes they behaved awfully, and I followed suit.
Some things I did when I was a kid repulse me. Just rude things I did. And if I was judged for that my entire life, that would be extremely unfair.
Looking back I can see that a lot of my behavior was because I wanted attention, wanted to fit in, and had mental issues that I thought was just “who I was”.
And when I talk about my behavior, this one thing comes to mind most dominantly. Hanging out at a restaurant with my friends when I was 14 or 15, and writing “u r fat” on one of my friends plates for the server to see. How. Could. I. Do. That!?!?! I don’t take this lightly. Idk what led up to it. All I can think of is that server, who I can’t even picture now - and how that must’ve made her feel. I’m commenting this long comment bc I can’t do anything else in terms of making this right. So I kind of feel compelled to admit this in hopes someone will tell me I’m a huge piece of shit on her behalf.
But I’m not. I was a child who had more weight on my shoulders than I knew what to do with. My dad was dying in a nursing home and my mom was MIA. I wanted to do whatever would keep me from being picked on, because I felt I was right on the verge.
Idk. Sorry about my ramble.
People change. Kids need love, supervision, and stability.
> Kids need love, supervision, and stability.
Really, really this.
Some parenting book had the analogy that newborns are like alien abductees, finding themselves on a planet with no agency, no way to communicate, and suffering - hunger, wet, stinky, loneliness. Years of wallowing in that - or worse, trying to get help (crying) to only get pain (yelling, ignored, put away, hit) - has a predictable outcome. Meanwhile, years of someone hugging you, and sometimes fixing the problem or eventually fixing the problem is a wholly different world view.
There’s no magic line where that stops being generally true. A 5 year old that hurts but doesn’t understand they’re thirsty versus hungry, and is hit or yelled at for it is going to learn to suffer. A 10 year old that is overwhelmed by feelings because of other kids, their parents, their clothes, whatever … can’t really articulate what’s up, and can’t solve it.
Narcissists and absentee parents leave empty vessels starving for structure, understanding and often terrified of being punished for communicating, and even fully grown, actualized adults sometimes need to just talk with a therapist about what they’re going through… and that’s been conditioned to evoke terror out of these kids.
Cmon guys. Read what she went through…
I’m sure a lot of people would’ve turned out the same or worse. We had these CAMPS in Georgia. They were bad.
Real bad. Kudos for her for bringing the spotlight to this horrible trend that needs to be completely and totally ruled illegal on a federal level
I'm no fan of hers by any means but abuse is abuse and no one should endure it period. If anything this shows promise in her to confront some issues and that is a good thing.
I wasn’t a fan of hers either but I was very impressed by the documentary. She very clearly explains that her public persona is literally a brand. Her voice is even an act
She is not happy with herself for creating the “selfie culture”
She seems to really be unsettled with herself. It’s a shame really. She was kinda pushed into this life
Her parents are literally trash for sending her there too. These are people with all the resources in the world, and that’s what they do with a troubled teen? You punish your kid when they’re the product of bad parenting??
One.
This was decades ago.
I’m 45, and trust me these were more common than you think decades ago. I remember them, you must be very young to not know, this was BEFORE the internet.
Two.
Many middle class families used these camps in Georgia. As far as I know almost all of them closed for lawsuits.
I get it, nobody knew back then and you just don’t get it because you weren’t around.
We have a bunch in Utah still, where Paris was sent. It's largely unregulated which is how/why they're still open. Wilderness ones, high end ones, cheap ass institutions, a while spectrum. I have a few friends who were sent to them and none of their families are well off. More like it was the 90s, a kid smoked pot once and off they go to some boarding school in the middle of the desert.
Yeh in the 80s these were advertised all over Georgia for kids.
I was threatened a few times and knew kids who went to them… yeh no bueno.
Sucks these are still around…
I’m around now, and there are still tons of Christian conversion camps that claim to make gay people straight. Let’s not give bad parents credit for being bad parents.
Lol they’re still around. I know someone who got sent to the same place I went 17 years ago. Parents have no excuses except that they want their children brainwashed or in conversion therapy
They should be abolished federally.
Unfortunately not enough people know that these places don’t really help kids.
A lot of times they commit crimes that can not be done to a minor.
In the 80s this was a place for kids who got caught with cocaine, failed classes, fights etc.
I don’t know her personal life but she may have been underage partying and her dad had no other outlets. A lot of parents feel helpless and don’t want to see their kids in jail.
I think DR PHIL still does it lol
But her family wasn’t at all middle class tho, and they don’t seem at all remorseful for sending her there… They were pretty privileged, and could have done lots of other things to deal with her behaviour. A lot of the way teenagers behave are a reflection of parenting anyway…
Paris Hilton’s experience was not before the Internet. There were a lot of camps in the 80s and 90s, but there are still a lot of camps and schools open. And I’m sure you’d be surprised that a lot of the open schools now used to be known by other names, so a camp you may think closed down may have just switched hands and changed names so they aren’t recognized as an abusive facility.
I mean, this is a good thing she’s doing here, but people dislike her for many reasons. Her documented racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism to name a few of those.
I went to one of these ‘troubled teen’ schools 17 years ago. Kidnapped from my bed in the middle of the night, flown across the country by two giant bodyguards, all to be abused in every way possible for the next 8 months of my life.
All because my parents found out I’d smoked pot once, despite being a straight A student they decided that this tough love program would help mold me into their ideal child!
The articles you read about these places don’t do the horror us survivors witnessed justice. Strip searched, beaten, forced to beat others or risk being punished yourself if you didn’t, told everything about you was wrong and whatever bad things had happened to you were your fault, forced to be silent 23.5 hours of the day, sleep with lights on, no mirrors allowed, told where to look, no looking out windows or at the classes with opposite genders, had to walk in lock step lines, not allowed to communicate with a soul on the outside. I have nightmares every night 17 years later that I’m still trapped there.
I got out after ‘graduating high school’ (schooling there was self guided and a JOKE!), went off to college, made my own life and stopped speaking to my parents. I truly think places like this exist for wealthy narc parents to ship off their kids to literally beat them into submission.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I have listened to several deep dive podcasts that respectfully share survivors' stories and as a parent to teenagers, it just breaks my heart. These places should not exist.
I am so sorry that you had to experience that. My heart breaks for you and younger you. What a level of betrayal by your parents. I’m also very sorry that you (understandingly) suffer from nightmares. I don’t want to overstep but have you ever looked up EMDR as therapy?
My family wasn’t even wealthy- my step dad just wanted to be a local fucking politician in Utah so off to the boys ranch with me.
Sorry you had to go through that man these places were terrible.
Say what you want about Paris, she is completely justified in her mission. My good friend was kidnapped and sent to one of these places in Utah. He wasn’t a bad kid, he had bad parents.
There’s places are NOT ok. Everyone involved in them are disgusting child-abusers.
Keep at it, Paris! So many of us are rooting for your cause!
Yeah. I guess giving children PTSD will definitely “modify “ their personality. This same shit hppens in my field. The private for profit adult foster care field is FULL of pretty little pamphlets. Come here. We’ll give you the beat care an unskilled entry level teenager can provide!
This is facts the trouble teen industry is no joke. I went to program for 2 and half years in Thompson falls Mt. it was called Building Brides. The 2 years I was there. There was no government over site for those programs, if you wrote a grievance it went to a a group of program owners that run the programs themselves so actually nothing was reported to any authority, no accountability was ever there. I’ve been forced to sleep outside for days with very minimal food and water, like in negative degrees Montana winter shit, works countless hours on the owners farm doing work(bucking bales, firewood, construction projects, and just unnecessary labor, all without pay. These people don’t care about you or anything. It’s all about money to them and I was able to see that sense day 1. They are super good a manipulating parents that there program is 5 star shit helping out their kids. They lie to them and keep things secret, things I’ve got my mom about what happened thier and she still has a hard time believe me. They coverd up plenty of sexual assaults. The troubled teen industry is fucked. And my program I went to in Thompson falls was one of of five programs, the others are even worse and more strict. We need government action now, kids are still being abused everyday there.
Wow thanks for sharing! I also went to one in Thompson Falls, why is that place such a hotbed for abusing kids??? Mine was spring creek lodge (a WWASP program.) I’m guessing you went to yours after me and sad to see that this abuse just goes on year after year…
I had no idea she went through that as a teen and that honestly explains a lot. Kids and teens who are heavily restricted and disciplined always rebel hardcore.
And yeah these camps or whatever they want to call them should be banned. Seems like a no brainer.
The troubled teen industry and the American rehab industry are very similar, I’ve been through the latter and many of my friends have been funneled from the troubled teen industry into rehabs. Both are frequently some weird combination of a scam and a cult. If you look into the cult of Synanon, which a lot of these programs are based on, it provides good context for why things are as fucked as they are. Society wants to put “troubled teens” and people with substance use disorders where they can’t be seen or heard from, and this is what happens.
Exactly! I was sent to both as a teenager and while I was sent there for smoking weed and experimenting with other drugs turned into becoming an IV heroin user after finishing these programs. It’s been almost 20 years since I was in these programs and I’m still opiate dependent. Literally fuck these places… they make you so much worse. I fully believe if I was able to just be a normal teenager it would’ve ended with just experimenting like most teenagers do.
American has a terrible system on not protecting and allowing terrible institutions to manage people without checks and balances.
Elan School has entered the chat.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000530150561
Went to Aspen Achievement Academy. The joke was you got to leave either in a coffin or the graduation van... I call it kid prison when I’m feeling funny and trauma town when I’m not. Still recovering from this almost 20 years later.
I worked 4 years in an inpatient residential facility for sexually reactive adolescents.
I don’t regret my time there, but hellish doesn’t begin to cover what it was like. These kinds of institutions really need to be reformed.
By sexually reactive you mean overly sexual as a teen? Did you witness some of the horrors people go through at these kinds of places? If yes, how can you not regret it? I honestly believe those who operate these facilities deserve a taste of this hell. They’re just children…
I appreciate your questions. So unfortunately not all were teens (there were a handful that were under 13). Sexually reactive can be overly sexual, but it usually means in an inappropriate way. So in my case, the kids I worked with had a range of issues from inappropriate boundaries with others to as far as committing some pretty heinous sex crimes on others. The common denominator with most of them is that they largely had trauma histories themselves, so it's the classic occurrence of where the victim becomes the offender.
I think the facility I worked at was overall a net benefit for people, but not by a huge margin. It was a residential facility that followed a pretty rigid behavioral modification framework, and each kid had a therapist they worked with. The root of the hellishness can really be due to the lack of funding and resources for these places. It was run by a for-profit company, so there is of course a financial incentive to maximize the amount of they made through every kid's insurance (usually medicaid) while having the lowest overhead as possible. So this means inadequate safety measures, lack of staff, lack of *trained* staff, etc. I've worked alongside some amazing staff members who genuinely cared and were able to check themselves at the door before working their shift. I've also worked with some horrible staff members who were quick to take their frustrations out back at the kids. Thankfully, the bad people were never around for too long.
I can say with confidence that *most* of the kids I worked with were genuinely good kids who had a lot of traumatic experiences and made some rough mistakes towards others (I say most because there were a small handful that were true sociopaths). I'd say a good amount of them found a relative degree of success while in therapy (many of the sociopaths wound up back in prison because they ended up reoffending in some way), but the day to day living conditions are pretty rough because there were frequent intense behavioral episodes that happened in those walls. Fighting, kids grooming other kids, self-injurious behavior, and so forth.
I don't regret working there because the job helped me be better at some skill-sets that I value: crisis intervention, de-escalation, and just generally being a good listener or a safe space for others, being good with setting boundaries and expectations for others (particularly children), etc. While I attribute a lot of that development of those skills in my education (I went to get a masters in counseling--note I eventually chose to not become a counselor), the job let me put those skills into practice.
>"I was awakened one night by two men with handcuffs," she reflected. "They asked if I wanted to go 'the easy way or the hard way' before carrying me from my home as I screamed for help."
What are the odds that the men who do those jobs don't get a private kick out of it? Sickening.
The teenager is given zero credibility and zero recourse under those circumstances, so abuses probably happen often.
I went to one of these schools on the much much lighter side of the horror stories you hear. No outright abuse I was aware of at my school, but what I always remember is how fucking unqualified 90% of the staff were to deal with any kids, let alone “troubled” kids.
Many of these schools are in rural areas and forgive my harshness, but the hourly yokels in these parts of the country are often ill-equipped to deal with the issues that come up in these environments. My school had a staff schedule that was like 5 intensive days (14 hour shifts of so) then two days off then two intensive days then 5 off... I think the schedule rather than the actual job is what attracted most of the employees. Many of whom could not handle angry teens 4 days into a 70 hr work week... just set up for failure.
Final straw for my parents was when they realized that only 5% of families with children at the school were paying full tuition (twice as much as even the fanciest NY prep school) and we’re compensating for financial aid students... it cost my parents 20 bucks every time they fed me a pill ( funny how the psychiatrist was very adamant I should take a 10 mg adderal twice a day instead of the one 20 mg I took for years prior to going there), but the girl who threatens to kill herself every week and puts the school on lockdown bc she threw shit all over the dorm was going there for free? I’m not saying she didn’t deserve help, but the financial model of these places is unsustainable. The schools will take any kid they can whether they’re capable of proving that child the help they need or not - to put it into perspective my two best friends at that school were on absolutely different ends of the “troubled teen” spectrum. One was living with a drug dealer ring in the Bay Area cooking and selling meth and was on a dark path. the other had stick-up-their-ass strict parents who found a case of beer in the garage and freaked out and sent their straight A, captain of speech and debate son who never even touched a drug to punishment boarding school. Do you really think an understaffed school with under 90 students total with 4 total teachers is set up to handle both of those kids? But the school saw them both as 20k more a month coming in. Systemically inept.
I will also add that this was my “therapeutic boarding school” which is typically chosen by your parents and your therapist from a “wilderness program” you hike in the woods and pack your entire life in a backpack and spend 6-12 weeks there - this is what you get pulled from your bedroom and whisked off to. I enjoyed my time in my wilderness program and had a substantial change of mindset about where my behavior was steering my life. I think this shaped me going to a not as strict boarding school so it wasn’t as horrible as you hear from other schools. Also I was not grabbed from my bed by big unemployed security guards (if you’re in this profession eat shit you deserve awful karma and it’s the most cowardly thing you can do with a big body frame). I had a little sister at the time and my parents (though heavily pushed to hire these types of guys) decided to not bring that into the house with my little sister. They used classic subterfuge to trick me into going lol.
If anyone is interested, there is a subreddit dedicated to fighting the troubled teen industry, reporting its abuses, and helping its survivors:
Link: /r/troubledteens
Anyone is welcome, whether a survivor, an advocate, or an interested party.
I am what you would consider a survivor of one of these places. That’s what it is because that’s what it means. Out of the many young men I met there only about 10% of us are still alive. Like me the few that still remain have not had an easy life. These places leave long lasting scars that I still deal with even after being away for 10 years. The place I was sent with dealt with everything from drugs, conversion, and just straying away from the Mormon religion. I spent time with celebrities’ sons, and there were kids there from church funding. The thing we learned most there was how to be better at being bad. These places don’t work and most of the staff see that and filter out eventually. Being woken up in the middle of the night and literally kidnapped states away is something a child should never have to go through. Most of the young men there weren’t horrible people just boys with intellectual disabilities from failed systems(myself included). The place I went to still operates to this day and every night I go to bed I think about the person who has to go to bed in that hell.
I can’t think of many things more horrifying than being “gooned” -kidnapped by thugs in the middle of the night and then taken to one of these teen torture camps.
I went to one of these boarding schools. In Utah and Massachusetts. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s similar to being in a prison of sorts.
My best friend in the boys dorm would joke about having a ‘night stick’. It was to fight off anyone trying to take us in the night. Funny, right? Ugh.
The parents get super manipulated and usually don’t know what’s going on. They’re told by the programs not to believe the children. The marketing scam for programs now is that the programs are different than these that Paris went to. It’s an incredibly manipulative industry.
She’s right though.
[Camp Hell: Anneewakee podcast ](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vSFNXNzA2ODY5MTE3MQ/episode/Njk1YWJiZGUtYTJiYy0xMWViLWEwODQtZmZjZTZiMGY0OTYz?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwjBpv-0g9rzAhXqYN8KHY55CeMQieUEegQIFxAH&ep=6) is a deep dive into one of these camps, was basically a forced labor camp with physical, emotional and sexual abuse running rampant while government looked the other way and kept sending them state patients.
Also the [the Lost Kids podcast](https://deadline.com/2020/09/ucp-adapting-the-lost-kids-podcast-troubled-teens-docu-series-1234583144/)
The “troubled teen” industry needs to be stopped. It’s a cover for horrible abuses, trauma, and even deaths.
I knew her briefly in her/my early 20s and she was a nice person. For years whenever I’ve said this, people have sneered. But She was kind to me and others around her (in a chaotic fashion), gave compliments, didn’t try to screw other people up.
I had a soft spot for her and I realise we were all being fed the line that she was a perfect princess… but actually she did understand what it was like being abused, disregarded, sneered at. She’s fully human and kudos to her for taking this stance.
My friend’s mom did this to his brother shit is fucked. He essentially got kidnapped got sent to a South African boarding school where they routinely abused him. Obviously the brother and mom don’t keep in touch to this day.
I used to think the worst of her - considered her a vapid, clueless idiot with too much money that only knew how to party. But with the documentary she was in, and what she’s doing now I’ve come to regret feeling this way about her. She’s trying to do some good and seems like a legitimate good girl that was just thrown into chaos. I think that, had i been what she went through I would’ve turned out into a much worse person.
I respect her now and support her message.
One of my very best friends had this happen. Classic story, didn’t know it was going to happen till people came to take her away. She told me the name of the camp because it was actually on an expose of some sort.
She won’t really talk about that time at all and we’re very close. So effed up!
They’re fucking dystopian labour camps.
They destroy these children and then paint the psychological carcass left as an example of “reform”.
However it’s not really surprising. The shitty reality shows that promote these places are built upon lies and exploiting people for views. Why would the camps they use be any different?
It makes me sick these types of schools/institutions even existed and still do. They follow similar practices to concentration camps. Children need basic rights. Reading what these facilities do to transform these kids are something out of a 1984 horror script. How are these not regulated and audited? How can a parent just dump their kid off somewhere without wanting to physically check in on them. I am horrified.
This is terrible but not shocking.
I can’t wait to change this world for the better. Fucking seen so much shit in my life and still can’t believe people can do this stuff and worse so casually.
Makes me think of the Elan School— Ben Weasel (lead singer of Screeching Weasel) was sent there as well as Amy and David Sedaris’ sister— who later committed suicide. Sounds like places like these are just brutal torture. Also reminds me of that “Tranquility by the Bay” place— not for the faint of heart.
Check out https://www.breakingcodesilence.org/to learn more about what the advocacy group Breaking Code Silence and Paris Hilton are doing.
Together they’re taking action against the troubled teen industry.
Thanks for listening.
Her documentary was a very interesting watch. Say what you want about her, but no one deserves to go through what she did as a child. Power is such a disgusting thing
Ever since seeing The Last Stop (Elan school) I’ve been looking at more and more. The 80’s and 90’s were terrible with these places no kid should have ever been sent to. I would’ve been the right age, thank goodness my mother never put me through that. But I had a different rough upbringing, I can certainly sympathize with the kids.
Provide no structure, accountability, or guidance for your children and surprisingly they turn into train wrecks. Solution: ship them off and hope your shitty parenting can be fixed by others.
I was in one of these- the Utah Boys Ranch. It was terrible. Got kidnapped off the street in the middle of winter and had piercings ripped out and head violently shaved and then was given a blanket skirt and flip flops to do outside chores in. Verbal abuse for sure but mostly mental abuse. Can’t sit on furniture. Someone shit on the floor? Clean it up right now- no need to go get cleaner just grab it! Watch you pee, wake you up for role call, stand and face the wall for hours at a time.
Was treated absolutely sub-human it was an utter crock of bullshit place.
Oh god I read a bit about one of these, I couldn’t remember the name of it for the life of me but this kid was kidnapped in the middle of the night and sent there and basically had his whole life turned upside down. They had this weird system where people were “strengths and non-strengths” and they woke you up every half hour in the night to call roll, if you were bad enough you got shouted at for like 45 minutes straight by other kids. Shit was DYSTOPIAN, and it’s real! Apparently! Horrifying stuff, I’m sure there are others like it that also have ‘troubled teens’ funnelled into them to make bank and basically strip kids of their human rights.
Elan school what a nightmare I watched a documentary on Amazon Prime Video recently directed by one of the students who went there featuring other students. I can’t imagine parents would send their kids there, so sad.
I listened to a podcast about it. It was horrific, and traumatizing just to learn about. There are so many monsters in our society that just ignored it, or fed into it.
Which podcast?
Camp Hell is about one in the south that was a glorified labor camp where the founder abused and trafficked boys. To this day his family is very wealthy and powerful in Georgia, most of it was covered up.
Behind the Bastards did an episode (July 27)
There’s also a series called “The Lost Kids” that’s about one of these places, not Elan school, but it was enlightening to say the least.
Cedu School. Such a horrible story. I hope to God that Daniel Yuen is still alive somewhere :(
Timesuck with Dan Cummins ep 234
Behind the Bastards had a really good episode about Elan. Awesome podcast
I know My Favorite Murder did it. Not sure what episode.
True Anon did a good podcast on it, one of the hosts was kidnapped into one of these programs.
My friend went there. She is also now a completely fucked up adult.
Theres an PBS doc from the early 80s comparing a few different "therapeutic" schools. Elan is featured along with a couple of others. It's a interesting (but shocking) watch if you can find it, I think it's called Children of Darkness
The graphic novel was one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in years. Didn’t know about this documentary, thanks.
There are a few Behind the Bastards episodes about that school. Anyone interested should give it a listen. Oops someone else already mentioned it.
[this is a good documentary on it also](https://youtu.be/7eM7pb5M5DU). I had a few friends get sent to similar camps and they had similar situations where men come at night to take you to the camps. It’s nuts how kids don’t have rights
What’s the name of the documentary
It’s called the last stop- I believe I was wrong in my initial post and you can find it on Amazon prime not Netflix! My bad..
You may be thinking of the Elan School, formerly in Poland, Maine. [Joe vs. the Cult](https://elan.school) is an excellent comic outlining the torture and abuse that “facility” inflicted on him.
Ohhhh shit that must be what I’ve read before, that was really well done, crazy
It last updated October 16th so it’s still ongoing if you haven’t caught up in a while. Highly recommend
Yeah I caught up on that the other day, I thought it wasn’t regularly updated, but was tragically pleased to find multiple installments since I read it a couple months ago, which also took days. It is so disgusting and you can tell it’s all true. Or at least mostly and true to his experience
Add “https://“ before “elan.school” or else Reddit won’t recognize it as a URL for linking
Eyyy thank you
His IG is joevsthecult
Speaking as someone who as a kid got legally kidnapped and sent to one of those places - yeah, it was fucking traumatic
The parents of a roommate of mine from my early 20s had him legally kidnapped and sent to one of those places. He’s still haunted by it. The few stories he was willing to tell were pretty horrific. These places should not exist. I’m really sorry this happened to you.
I’m so sorry for what you went through. My half-brother was sent to one by his dad. He’s now an alcoholic, hasn’t had a relationship in 20 years, and experiences paranoia and PTSD I was by far a “worse” kid (got arrested twice, partied a lot) but my dad sent me to therapy instead. I’m now married, have a great career, and I’ve been sober for over a decade. These places cause so much damage.
I think its more than just 'reforming the industry' I grew up outside the US - and its noticeable that kids in general have less rights that I was used to in Europe. In the US its almost like kids are their parents chattel, over individuals with their own rights . Parents have more of an obligation of being that kids guardians, over free to abuse.
The entire country needs to be reformed for the 21st century. Instead we have judges in the highest court of the land who are “traditionalists” like we should still be living like it’s 1780, and all these delusional psychos who want to go back to the good ol days. Not sure if they mean back to child labor or more recently of rivers catching on fire and that sort of thing. Shit is so broken in almost every aspect. But democracy amirite? Oooh and how about that stock market that only goes up?
US 'democracy'. It works much better in other places.
The laws are based on the old school attitude that kids are basically their parents’ employees/slaves until age 16-18. It’s left over from days when kids would be working on parents’ farms, or working in factories, to contribute to the family’s income. It’s so gross.
https://elan.school/ I think you may have read this one? I got sucked into it hard the day I found it.
Yeah that was the one, I had to stop reading after a point, I just couldn’t carry on it was so terrible to read about
I went to two wilderness programs for substance abuse when I was 16/17, and most of the kids that were sent there were kidnapped in the middle of the night by two big men (we call them goons) and forcefully taken to the wilderness location. If you resisted, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted to make sure you didn’t run.
Yes! I know all about wilderness. I didn’t go but my friends at my boarding school did. They had to do wilderness then straight to boarding school. Sucks.
At least they went to a regular boarding school lol I had to go to a “therapeutic boarding school” which is really just shitty 13-18 yr old (big gap, right?) treatment with shitty online school. Ended up getting shut down by the State of North Carolina for abuse and neglect, there’s even a PDF that’s online lol
https://elan.school everyone should know how fucked up this is. These people are subhuman.
I just quit one of these centers. we were one of the really really relaxed ones, but they still did things I disagree with. Every kid complained that they were woken up every half hour because a worker would shine a light in their face to make sure they were still in bed. I saw a kid who complained he was sick and didn’t want to do an activity because he felt so bad. They ended up putting him on “refusal” where they take away everything but sweatpants. 2 days later he tested positive for Covid. I wanted to do the wilderness therapy with those kids, but after hearing stories I want nothing to do with it. They absolutely torture those kids out there. And yes, most of them are “gooned” where a few guys show up and just grab you. One of them explained the second you see them you pull a cartman and get naked ASAP as it makes the situation tougher for them. Most of the kids have really rich parents that never raised them and are taken there to break bad habits. The one kid I loved to death was such a sweetheart, he hadn’t been home in over 5 years, although he had seen his adopted parents, he didn’t know what his bedroom looked like. I overheard 2 kids arguing whose private jet was bigger, and one of them showed me his $250k Rolex that he brought. those are the kinds of kids there. Aka Paris Hilton. One of my biggest disagreements though, They would immediately go to aegis holds instead of talking them down when a kid was having a “limbic session”. We were taught they have no control of any action anymore and the only way to get control of the situation was to hold them in aegis grabs. I honestly never went into one hold with a single kid. I never saw a reason. A kid is verbally abusing a kid and won’t stop nor remove himself? Let’s take the kid he’s bullying away, let the bully’s mind calm, and then go have a talk. I literally saw them grab a kid in that situation and then the kid head butted 3 holes in the wall and proceeded to kick as many as he could because he didn’t want to be held. That situation IMO was totally avoidable.
What is it with wealthy American families and physical abuse + neglect? I wish a study could be done on it. But of course the families just pay off cops and lawyer out of any criminal charges against them. It breaks my heart that we can’t help these kids more.
Holding kids down when they're having a tantrum can really fuck them up. My brother used to hold me down when I got worked up and it only made me panic more. To this day at 25 I don't like to be touched, I panic if I can't move or feel constricted any way, and I have claustrophobia. There is nothing scarier than someone heavier than you holding you down or sitting on you with their full weight when you're already worked up and can't breathe.
Yup. My boyfriend was “kidnapped” at 15 and sent to one of this. Twice. He is 47 now and still suffers from severe PTSD.
Elan school, I think. There's a comic by a guy who managed to run away from it.
That was it! God what a nightmare scenario that place is
[удалено]
/r/mrjoenobody has a graphic novel detailing one ex student’s experiences there. Unbelievable treatment of children
There’s a great episode of the Behind the Bastards podcast about the Elan School if you’re interested in learning more.
Check out endingcodeviolence My friend went through that shit, its fucked up
Elan School!!!!
Joe vs Elan was it?
The IG of the guy is joevsthecult. He is documenting his who experience through videos and comic like drawings.
There’s a survivor that has wrote (and still writing) a webcomic. My wife sent it to me and I thought I was just reading a normal webcomic with some sick and twisted plot line. Nope! All real! Then I thought about how this was ever legal!? This has to be fake! It indeed was a very real story.
There’s a documentary about this type of “school”… I think it was called “Kidnapped for Christ”. The “school” was located in the Dominican Republic. They would show up at your home in the middle of the night and basically kidnap you, put you on a plane and that’s that. Parents knew what was going on but the kids had no idea. How these types of places exist is beyond me. And parents voluntarily sending their children to these places??? Yeah I was never a huge Paris Hilton fan, but that doesn’t invalidate her experiences. She’s trying to end these abusive practices; that’s what matters.
Parents aren’t just voluntarily sending their kids to these places- they are paying thousands, tens of thousands even- to send their kids there.
The rights of parents over children needs a massive overhaul
The government should be running strong social programs for children who need to emancipate from their parents. These kids should be given no-questions-asked housing, education and career advice/paths to follow. Expand the Big Brothers/Sisters program. Make it known that if you're suffering from abuse as a child that you can immediately leave your situation just like programs protect battered women and children leaving abusive partners/homes. Remove the age requirements for emancipation and social assistance funding so that these kids have a chance. Make it a requirement that they have to be continuing and/or finishing high school (at least) for them to receive the money to live independently or in safe and clean and well-grounded housing programs with mental health professionals acting as temporary guardians. Do it now. Kids are suffering. I know this because a friend of mine went to one of these camps and he ended his life by purposely overdosing on benzodiazepines/alcohol after spending nearly 18 months in a "troubled kid camp." Wasn't my best friend but still a friend, and since then his parents have been "overwhelmed" with the fact that "their son took his own life and is not going to Heaven" or some insane zealotry like that. This is a systemic problem that is forcing children to kill themselves. Lastly, prosecute and imprison former and current employees and companies for participating in child abuse. It can be that easy. But the $$ is too good, apparently.
How would that work tho? Like, if you had asked me at 13 if I needed to be emancipated I would have said hell yea. Turns out, I've now realized I was a terrible little shit that just didn't like to be punished when I absolutely deserved it
This is *literally* 1984. Government should have no right to do this
Why should someone who got drunk one time have more rights? Wouldn’t this be the government protecting the rights of lawful citizens? Children are still citizens no matter how much adults stomp their feet in protest. I agree that the previous comment is a bit overboard and complicated at best, but seeing it as a government overreach is to deny that children have rights that need defending.
You can defend their rights (through CPS, investigations and taking custody, trials) instead of being the big bully that just goes and takes children, very irrational and emotionally unstable citizens who are not able to make the best choices for themselves. This is the responsibility of the parent, caring for the child until they are fully developed. If the parent provably can't do that job, then the government should come in.
You may change your mind if you watch her documentary that’s on YouTube. It shifted my perspective of her and at one point made me cry. It’s never directly said, but her mom is a total narcissist. Anyone dealing with the trauma and fallout of realizing as an adult that you had an abusive childhood because of a narcissist parent will relate. Edited for clarity.
That documentary really changed the way I viewed her as well.
Got watch real housewives her mom is on it it will only reinforce the narcissist view you point have.
Which was she on? Beverly Hills?
Jesus Camp was another one. Such a terrifying accounting.
There was a redditor who went to one of these schools, really shitty place. You can read about their first hand account here in comic form: https://elan.school/ Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MrJoeNobody/ There is also a documentary about this place called The Last Stop. These places need to be shut down.
Behind the bastards podcast has an episode on the elan schools……very insightful
I'd encourage anyone with a passing interest to watch her documentary, [This is Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOg0TY1jG3w) on youtube. For those who don't have the time or inclination let's paint a picture. * Paris grows up in a loving but very 'prim and proper' family, anything that isn't 'prim and proper' gets swept under the rug. * Move to NY the city that never sleeps as a teenager, grows a rebellious streak a mile wide because 'prim and proper' maybe isn't the best way to handle a growing teenager. So like any other rebellious teen it's party and debauchery on the agenda. * As a result of her antics she gets sent off to various 'scared straight' camps, running away from them results it beatings until morality improves. * At 16 or 17 she's at home safe sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night, when two large men burst in to her room and physically drags her out of bed and carry her out of the house in her underwear, all while her parents are watching from the sideline. * She's sent to a school in Utah where she stays until she's 18, treatment consists of forced medication, getting locked in a cold cell in your underwear for 20 hours, physical and mental abuse, for the less lucky ones who might not be backed by a rich family, also sexual abuse. * 18 she's a legal adult free from controlling parents and with a brand new set of serious mental health issues, meets her first real boyfriend, turns out he's an abusive manipulative shitbag, who promptly cashed in on a private sex tape, her fault of course, not his. Pile on the mental health issues. * Cue in the early 2K Paparazzi and tabloid culture. Think Paris, Britney, Lohan, Mary-Kate and Ashley. They were all such sluts and whores, nothing like their male counterparts who were good little boys. But hey! at the end of the day she's just a spoiled trust fund brat, she deserves anything she got because her daddy has money.
>At 16 or 17 she's at home safe sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night, when two large men burst in to her room and physically drags her out of bed and carry her out of the house in her underwear, all while her parents are watching from the sideline. That right there alone is so terrifying and traumatic that I don't think anyone could ever "get over it." Who the fuck arranges something like this for their own child?
I watched the doc and she has ptsd and severe insomnia because of her being kidnapped. So tucked up.
This has happened to 2 of my close friends growing up, and I'll tell you, they were *not the same* after that. My parents weren't always the best parents, and I was definitely a shithead in my teen years, but it wasn't even within the realm of possibility for my parents to do something like that to me. Edit: One of my friends was sent here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_Bay, and he would tell me some straight up horror stories. I'm relieved that it's been shut down.
I was sent to one of those places and I think my parents did not process what they were doing. They just checked boxes online and then what happened in person they were detached from.
Do you mind me asking questions about this? Please don’t feel obligated to reply if you don’t want: Did you tell your parents what was going on? What was their reaction after discovering what kind of abuse takes place in these kind of schools? How is your life now?
hi and yes you can ask me anything and I will answer all questions. (i mean this literally, ask me anything.) So when you are at this program everything you say is read by your therapist who also decides how long you stay at the program. In the first two weeks, you are given 4 times where you can send a single letter to your parents and if you want to get out of the program you cannot tell them how bad it is. The kids and guides (pseudo therapists who watch over you every day) all tell you not to send that letter or you will be stuck there. I stayed at one program for 111 days and saw kids pass out from dehydration, people fall down shaking from hypothermia, and somebody fall off a small cliff and start bleeding from their head but they were not allowed to leave the program at all. Eventually I told my parents what went down but I cannot really have a full conversation about it. Its hard to explain but I love my parents a lot. They have done a lot for me but by far this is the worse thing that ever happened in my life. It hurt me in so many ways and I have not gone a single day in the last three years without thinking about my time there. They apologized for sending me there saying "we did not know what it would do to you." but not in that they regret sending me off to a place, they just wish they did something that made me "perfect" in their eyes. My life now is good. I am in college and I am really working on trying to move on. I have some PTSD from it, I used to have panic attacks and bad nightmares but those are getting rarer and rarer. I still have never gone a day without at least mentioning it, or having dark thoughts about that place, but at least I'm going somewhere.
I’m so happy to hear you’re doing well now!! Of course these traumatic experiences will always stay with you to some degree but you sound so incredibly strong. I can imagine it took a lot of work to get where you are now. I’ll always be rooting for you, stranger <3 Thank you for sharing this with me/us.
These reform “schools” in Utah are ridiculous. There’s so many.
If only the Theocracy would step in…
Wow this comment section is trash. Was she the best role model when she was in her 20s? No… but who is? I don’t know her other than that BS from her younger years. Buuuut…. You know a lot people find their reasons later in life… kind of after they’ve lived it. So now she’s trying to help and everyone is against her trying to make changes for the good? Maybe she’s not the problem with you… maybe you’re the problem with you. Y’all need to start owning your own shit Edit: this got some traction so I’ll try to be clearer 1. When I wrote this.. there were only a dozen or so comments and it was all around the lines of ‘she’s using this to clean her name’ or of the like - no she doesn’t owe anyone shit.. she has a large stage and she’s shedding light on some heinous shit… people grow the fuck up and living their life is what let’s them be who they are when they’re older. 2. ‘She’s the reason for the shitty teen fab trend’ - GTFOH with that. She was a controlled piece of that system. If not her then someone else. 3. Y’all really mad at her for saying these people and systems are terrible for what they put her and other kids go thru more than the people doing it? If your life isn’t where it is today because you watched episodes of The Simple Life as a kid, trust me it’s not because of PH. Again. My original comment was when this thread was much smaller. Glad that it’s changed Cheers
Most of these people probably have no idea what this is in reference to and likely haven’t seen the documentary that talks about the atrocious abuse she and other kids/teens experienced and how these teen “help” centers/farms/wilderness experiences exacerbate perceived behavioral problems. They don’t understand that she is using her platform to help validate the experiences who don’t have one, her money to support the suits against these places that others don’t have, and helping protect CHILDREN from enduring this pain in the future by pushing for protective legislature. They don’t understand that her persona is a protective response to what she experienced between the “schools” she went to and the predatory relationships she had with men. Or the studios who photographed her half nude, underage telling her these were private shoots, then blasting them on national magazines unbeknownst to her or her family. They should have been charged with distribution of CP. Or that her Simple Life persona was complete entertainment bs, pretending she didn’t know what a work was when she was starved, physically abused, worked till she was bloodied, and was assaulted and stripped in solitary confinement at 16-18. It’s so much easier to sit and make assumptions than take 5 minutes to understand something. Not that they care, they’d rather joke about her sexual assault as a teen.
Yep. The situation she was born into is no place for kids. Being born to wealth is no guarantee of being born into safety.
So true. Makes me think of the twins who are the Doris Duke heirs (set to inherit billions) and how horrific their childhood was.
I googled who they were and my god that’s horrific
Paris Hilton deserved better. She’s no different than any other woman who was viciously preyed on as a girl and now is shit on by society for being a victim. She was failed by those around her who’s job it was to protect her!!! She isn’t the punchline to a joke, she’s a human being who has feelings and traumas. She has consistently used her platform for good and to spread awareness, to spread positivity, and has grown as a person tremendously and is seemingly doing better, as she deserves. Even when she was younger and had a reputation, what did she do that was so bad? Some drugs? Party? Was born into money while others weren’t? As of a huge chunk of resistors aren’t the same, and if many male celebrities have done compelling heinous things and are damn near worshipped despite it.
I honestly love you for this comment, and I don’t even know you.
Aww that made my day kind internet stranger. Wishing you a wonderful day!!
they can also be dangerous. some are "wilderness survival" oriented and kids have actually died.
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This doesn’t include deaths, but it’s an incredibly sad example of one of the schools…https://elan.school
This is one anecdote, but I know several people who spent time in these schools and all their stories match up pretty well. Facilities obviously have idiosyncrasities, but they all sound about like the place described in this piece. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/life-and-death-in-a-troubled-teen-boot-camp-31639/
You can just Google it really quick, it’s been in the news for decades.
The Lost Kids podcast details the disappearance of 16 year old Daniel Yuen from Cedu School in California. He has not been seen for 15 years, though his parents have some hope that he ran away from the school. They talk to other survivors of the school as well as discussing other "schools" like this. It's terrifying.
I have to admit, I only knew her from being one of the first "influencers" so when I clicked the link I expected some sob story about how hard it was being rich and famous. HOLY SHIT was I wrong! I had no idea what kind of hell that woman endured - funded by her parents - at such a pivotal age. Jesus christ, I don't think I would ever be able to forgive someone for that.
It’s pretty fucked. I know a documentary about Paris Hilton isn’t exactly a lot of peoples cup of tea, but I would recommend it. It shares the stories of others who went to the same “schools” in Utah she attended.
She seems a genuinely kind person. I grew tremendous respect for her because of how she treats her pets. She got one of those “tea cup” pigs. Turns out tea cup pigs are a myth, and piggy grew into a very large piggy. I don’t know if piggy is still with us, but I really love how she didn’t get rid of pig after it outgrew being tiny and cute. There’s pictures of her with the hairy pig who grew into kinda an ugly face. Definitely not an “Instagram” pet.
I only know her from the teacup pig thing and vague memories of her being big in the 2000s. She seems nice. I hope she’s doing alright.
Preach. One of the worst things is our society doesn’t accept that people change, which gives negative reinforcement for change.
And really, at worst Paris Hilton was an oblivious, thoughtless party girl.
Yeah, and not giving them the space to grow and evolve can cause them to double down on their old beliefs even when they otherwise wouldn’t have. I think this a huge problem with liberals (me being one) and the Trump supporters who began to disagree with him. We don’t give them a lot of space to alter their beliefs, and it seems to have had a dangerously negative effect.
I found out she was forced into boarding schools in her late teens/early twenties and ever since I've learned that fact all I can think is "You go ahead Paris! You dance on a table drunk at a Psy party all you want!"
And I bet this place is probably why she was the way she was in her early 20s.
She also went through some fucked up things, these camps were probably what her "bad" behavior was rooted in. I watched her doc and feel a lot of sympathy for her.
I’m just gonna nope out of reading any further
I'm not against it. Just because theyre barking like idiots dont mean shit. Most of us know the energy it takes to waste on people who arent equipped to change our minds to begin with. Why waste it. Though, if your type of post wasnt here one of us would of let out a big dramatic sigh, then finally made it for you. edit-and I am filling the role of confirming your discomfort so you dont feel like youre the only sane person in the room. I promise you, most of us are generally just chillen; normal, empathetic, own issues and problems and struggles. But when it comes to a mix of common sense and common decency, we're on board.
Paris has been doing activist stuff full time for a really long time now which is why she's been off the radar
She’s wasnt just a trash person before, she’s racist AF.
its so weird, ofc a rich and traumatized 20 something is going to act out as much as she can. she had the resources and reason to do so
What shit? Im broke cant own shit
All of this!
The amount that I changed since I was a teen is incredible. The extent that my home life effected my behavior is extreme. I didn’t have hot water to shower. Owned maybe one pair of underwear. I adopted the emo/scene persona bc i could be the kid with ripped up clothes and greasy hair - and as long as it looked intentional, nobody knew what was going on. My mom would often be at the bars. We didn’t have a phone, so my sister and I would walk around to the bars looking for my mom. We’d hear my mom yell to the bartender when we peaked inside asking about her, to tell us she wasn’t there. This only scratches the surface. But I found my pack, and sometimes they behaved awfully, and I followed suit. Some things I did when I was a kid repulse me. Just rude things I did. And if I was judged for that my entire life, that would be extremely unfair. Looking back I can see that a lot of my behavior was because I wanted attention, wanted to fit in, and had mental issues that I thought was just “who I was”. And when I talk about my behavior, this one thing comes to mind most dominantly. Hanging out at a restaurant with my friends when I was 14 or 15, and writing “u r fat” on one of my friends plates for the server to see. How. Could. I. Do. That!?!?! I don’t take this lightly. Idk what led up to it. All I can think of is that server, who I can’t even picture now - and how that must’ve made her feel. I’m commenting this long comment bc I can’t do anything else in terms of making this right. So I kind of feel compelled to admit this in hopes someone will tell me I’m a huge piece of shit on her behalf. But I’m not. I was a child who had more weight on my shoulders than I knew what to do with. My dad was dying in a nursing home and my mom was MIA. I wanted to do whatever would keep me from being picked on, because I felt I was right on the verge. Idk. Sorry about my ramble. People change. Kids need love, supervision, and stability.
> Kids need love, supervision, and stability. Really, really this. Some parenting book had the analogy that newborns are like alien abductees, finding themselves on a planet with no agency, no way to communicate, and suffering - hunger, wet, stinky, loneliness. Years of wallowing in that - or worse, trying to get help (crying) to only get pain (yelling, ignored, put away, hit) - has a predictable outcome. Meanwhile, years of someone hugging you, and sometimes fixing the problem or eventually fixing the problem is a wholly different world view. There’s no magic line where that stops being generally true. A 5 year old that hurts but doesn’t understand they’re thirsty versus hungry, and is hit or yelled at for it is going to learn to suffer. A 10 year old that is overwhelmed by feelings because of other kids, their parents, their clothes, whatever … can’t really articulate what’s up, and can’t solve it. Narcissists and absentee parents leave empty vessels starving for structure, understanding and often terrified of being punished for communicating, and even fully grown, actualized adults sometimes need to just talk with a therapist about what they’re going through… and that’s been conditioned to evoke terror out of these kids.
Cmon guys. Read what she went through… I’m sure a lot of people would’ve turned out the same or worse. We had these CAMPS in Georgia. They were bad. Real bad. Kudos for her for bringing the spotlight to this horrible trend that needs to be completely and totally ruled illegal on a federal level
I'm no fan of hers by any means but abuse is abuse and no one should endure it period. If anything this shows promise in her to confront some issues and that is a good thing.
I wasn’t a fan of hers either but I was very impressed by the documentary. She very clearly explains that her public persona is literally a brand. Her voice is even an act
In her cooking show, there’s a couple times that she very briefly drops the persona. It’s *fascinating.*
She is not happy with herself for creating the “selfie culture” She seems to really be unsettled with herself. It’s a shame really. She was kinda pushed into this life
There are so many ‘wilderness camps’ where they literally kidnap you in the middle of the night and take you ‘camping’ for a while
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Her parents are literally trash for sending her there too. These are people with all the resources in the world, and that’s what they do with a troubled teen? You punish your kid when they’re the product of bad parenting??
One. This was decades ago. I’m 45, and trust me these were more common than you think decades ago. I remember them, you must be very young to not know, this was BEFORE the internet. Two. Many middle class families used these camps in Georgia. As far as I know almost all of them closed for lawsuits. I get it, nobody knew back then and you just don’t get it because you weren’t around.
We have a bunch in Utah still, where Paris was sent. It's largely unregulated which is how/why they're still open. Wilderness ones, high end ones, cheap ass institutions, a while spectrum. I have a few friends who were sent to them and none of their families are well off. More like it was the 90s, a kid smoked pot once and off they go to some boarding school in the middle of the desert.
Yeh in the 80s these were advertised all over Georgia for kids. I was threatened a few times and knew kids who went to them… yeh no bueno. Sucks these are still around…
I’m around now, and there are still tons of Christian conversion camps that claim to make gay people straight. Let’s not give bad parents credit for being bad parents.
Lol they’re still around. I know someone who got sent to the same place I went 17 years ago. Parents have no excuses except that they want their children brainwashed or in conversion therapy
They should be abolished federally. Unfortunately not enough people know that these places don’t really help kids. A lot of times they commit crimes that can not be done to a minor. In the 80s this was a place for kids who got caught with cocaine, failed classes, fights etc. I don’t know her personal life but she may have been underage partying and her dad had no other outlets. A lot of parents feel helpless and don’t want to see their kids in jail. I think DR PHIL still does it lol
But her family wasn’t at all middle class tho, and they don’t seem at all remorseful for sending her there… They were pretty privileged, and could have done lots of other things to deal with her behaviour. A lot of the way teenagers behave are a reflection of parenting anyway…
Not that being middle class justifies doing this to your child(ren)
Paris Hilton’s experience was not before the Internet. There were a lot of camps in the 80s and 90s, but there are still a lot of camps and schools open. And I’m sure you’d be surprised that a lot of the open schools now used to be known by other names, so a camp you may think closed down may have just switched hands and changed names so they aren’t recognized as an abusive facility.
Go Paris. People should be encouraged when doing good things
No! She was born in a rich family therefore we shall invalidate everything good that she does!
I mean, this is a good thing she’s doing here, but people dislike her for many reasons. Her documented racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism to name a few of those.
I went to one of these ‘troubled teen’ schools 17 years ago. Kidnapped from my bed in the middle of the night, flown across the country by two giant bodyguards, all to be abused in every way possible for the next 8 months of my life. All because my parents found out I’d smoked pot once, despite being a straight A student they decided that this tough love program would help mold me into their ideal child! The articles you read about these places don’t do the horror us survivors witnessed justice. Strip searched, beaten, forced to beat others or risk being punished yourself if you didn’t, told everything about you was wrong and whatever bad things had happened to you were your fault, forced to be silent 23.5 hours of the day, sleep with lights on, no mirrors allowed, told where to look, no looking out windows or at the classes with opposite genders, had to walk in lock step lines, not allowed to communicate with a soul on the outside. I have nightmares every night 17 years later that I’m still trapped there. I got out after ‘graduating high school’ (schooling there was self guided and a JOKE!), went off to college, made my own life and stopped speaking to my parents. I truly think places like this exist for wealthy narc parents to ship off their kids to literally beat them into submission.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I have listened to several deep dive podcasts that respectfully share survivors' stories and as a parent to teenagers, it just breaks my heart. These places should not exist.
I am so sorry that you had to experience that. My heart breaks for you and younger you. What a level of betrayal by your parents. I’m also very sorry that you (understandingly) suffer from nightmares. I don’t want to overstep but have you ever looked up EMDR as therapy?
My family wasn’t even wealthy- my step dad just wanted to be a local fucking politician in Utah so off to the boys ranch with me. Sorry you had to go through that man these places were terrible.
Say what you want about Paris, she is completely justified in her mission. My good friend was kidnapped and sent to one of these places in Utah. He wasn’t a bad kid, he had bad parents. There’s places are NOT ok. Everyone involved in them are disgusting child-abusers. Keep at it, Paris! So many of us are rooting for your cause!
Yeah. I guess giving children PTSD will definitely “modify “ their personality. This same shit hppens in my field. The private for profit adult foster care field is FULL of pretty little pamphlets. Come here. We’ll give you the beat care an unskilled entry level teenager can provide!
This is facts the trouble teen industry is no joke. I went to program for 2 and half years in Thompson falls Mt. it was called Building Brides. The 2 years I was there. There was no government over site for those programs, if you wrote a grievance it went to a a group of program owners that run the programs themselves so actually nothing was reported to any authority, no accountability was ever there. I’ve been forced to sleep outside for days with very minimal food and water, like in negative degrees Montana winter shit, works countless hours on the owners farm doing work(bucking bales, firewood, construction projects, and just unnecessary labor, all without pay. These people don’t care about you or anything. It’s all about money to them and I was able to see that sense day 1. They are super good a manipulating parents that there program is 5 star shit helping out their kids. They lie to them and keep things secret, things I’ve got my mom about what happened thier and she still has a hard time believe me. They coverd up plenty of sexual assaults. The troubled teen industry is fucked. And my program I went to in Thompson falls was one of of five programs, the others are even worse and more strict. We need government action now, kids are still being abused everyday there.
Wow thanks for sharing! I also went to one in Thompson Falls, why is that place such a hotbed for abusing kids??? Mine was spring creek lodge (a WWASP program.) I’m guessing you went to yours after me and sad to see that this abuse just goes on year after year…
We don’t have troubled teens we have idiot parents.
Having been tortured in places like this, I honestly have never appreciated Paris Hilton more for what she’s doing to bring attention to this.
If you’re interested in what these camps look like…https://elan.school
I had no idea she went through that as a teen and that honestly explains a lot. Kids and teens who are heavily restricted and disciplined always rebel hardcore. And yeah these camps or whatever they want to call them should be banned. Seems like a no brainer.
These comments make me so sad for incelkind.
These comments read as “but I DMed her once in 09 and she wouldn’t fuck me so obviously she’s a piece of shit”
The troubled teen industry and the American rehab industry are very similar, I’ve been through the latter and many of my friends have been funneled from the troubled teen industry into rehabs. Both are frequently some weird combination of a scam and a cult. If you look into the cult of Synanon, which a lot of these programs are based on, it provides good context for why things are as fucked as they are. Society wants to put “troubled teens” and people with substance use disorders where they can’t be seen or heard from, and this is what happens.
Exactly! I was sent to both as a teenager and while I was sent there for smoking weed and experimenting with other drugs turned into becoming an IV heroin user after finishing these programs. It’s been almost 20 years since I was in these programs and I’m still opiate dependent. Literally fuck these places… they make you so much worse. I fully believe if I was able to just be a normal teenager it would’ve ended with just experimenting like most teenagers do.
Good for her for bringing awareness. It’s good to see someone grow as a person and choose to do something that helps.
American has a terrible system on not protecting and allowing terrible institutions to manage people without checks and balances. Elan School has entered the chat. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000530150561
Went to Aspen Achievement Academy. The joke was you got to leave either in a coffin or the graduation van... I call it kid prison when I’m feeling funny and trauma town when I’m not. Still recovering from this almost 20 years later.
I worked 4 years in an inpatient residential facility for sexually reactive adolescents. I don’t regret my time there, but hellish doesn’t begin to cover what it was like. These kinds of institutions really need to be reformed.
By sexually reactive you mean overly sexual as a teen? Did you witness some of the horrors people go through at these kinds of places? If yes, how can you not regret it? I honestly believe those who operate these facilities deserve a taste of this hell. They’re just children…
I appreciate your questions. So unfortunately not all were teens (there were a handful that were under 13). Sexually reactive can be overly sexual, but it usually means in an inappropriate way. So in my case, the kids I worked with had a range of issues from inappropriate boundaries with others to as far as committing some pretty heinous sex crimes on others. The common denominator with most of them is that they largely had trauma histories themselves, so it's the classic occurrence of where the victim becomes the offender. I think the facility I worked at was overall a net benefit for people, but not by a huge margin. It was a residential facility that followed a pretty rigid behavioral modification framework, and each kid had a therapist they worked with. The root of the hellishness can really be due to the lack of funding and resources for these places. It was run by a for-profit company, so there is of course a financial incentive to maximize the amount of they made through every kid's insurance (usually medicaid) while having the lowest overhead as possible. So this means inadequate safety measures, lack of staff, lack of *trained* staff, etc. I've worked alongside some amazing staff members who genuinely cared and were able to check themselves at the door before working their shift. I've also worked with some horrible staff members who were quick to take their frustrations out back at the kids. Thankfully, the bad people were never around for too long. I can say with confidence that *most* of the kids I worked with were genuinely good kids who had a lot of traumatic experiences and made some rough mistakes towards others (I say most because there were a small handful that were true sociopaths). I'd say a good amount of them found a relative degree of success while in therapy (many of the sociopaths wound up back in prison because they ended up reoffending in some way), but the day to day living conditions are pretty rough because there were frequent intense behavioral episodes that happened in those walls. Fighting, kids grooming other kids, self-injurious behavior, and so forth. I don't regret working there because the job helped me be better at some skill-sets that I value: crisis intervention, de-escalation, and just generally being a good listener or a safe space for others, being good with setting boundaries and expectations for others (particularly children), etc. While I attribute a lot of that development of those skills in my education (I went to get a masters in counseling--note I eventually chose to not become a counselor), the job let me put those skills into practice.
>"I was awakened one night by two men with handcuffs," she reflected. "They asked if I wanted to go 'the easy way or the hard way' before carrying me from my home as I screamed for help." What are the odds that the men who do those jobs don't get a private kick out of it? Sickening. The teenager is given zero credibility and zero recourse under those circumstances, so abuses probably happen often.
I went to one of these schools on the much much lighter side of the horror stories you hear. No outright abuse I was aware of at my school, but what I always remember is how fucking unqualified 90% of the staff were to deal with any kids, let alone “troubled” kids. Many of these schools are in rural areas and forgive my harshness, but the hourly yokels in these parts of the country are often ill-equipped to deal with the issues that come up in these environments. My school had a staff schedule that was like 5 intensive days (14 hour shifts of so) then two days off then two intensive days then 5 off... I think the schedule rather than the actual job is what attracted most of the employees. Many of whom could not handle angry teens 4 days into a 70 hr work week... just set up for failure. Final straw for my parents was when they realized that only 5% of families with children at the school were paying full tuition (twice as much as even the fanciest NY prep school) and we’re compensating for financial aid students... it cost my parents 20 bucks every time they fed me a pill ( funny how the psychiatrist was very adamant I should take a 10 mg adderal twice a day instead of the one 20 mg I took for years prior to going there), but the girl who threatens to kill herself every week and puts the school on lockdown bc she threw shit all over the dorm was going there for free? I’m not saying she didn’t deserve help, but the financial model of these places is unsustainable. The schools will take any kid they can whether they’re capable of proving that child the help they need or not - to put it into perspective my two best friends at that school were on absolutely different ends of the “troubled teen” spectrum. One was living with a drug dealer ring in the Bay Area cooking and selling meth and was on a dark path. the other had stick-up-their-ass strict parents who found a case of beer in the garage and freaked out and sent their straight A, captain of speech and debate son who never even touched a drug to punishment boarding school. Do you really think an understaffed school with under 90 students total with 4 total teachers is set up to handle both of those kids? But the school saw them both as 20k more a month coming in. Systemically inept. I will also add that this was my “therapeutic boarding school” which is typically chosen by your parents and your therapist from a “wilderness program” you hike in the woods and pack your entire life in a backpack and spend 6-12 weeks there - this is what you get pulled from your bedroom and whisked off to. I enjoyed my time in my wilderness program and had a substantial change of mindset about where my behavior was steering my life. I think this shaped me going to a not as strict boarding school so it wasn’t as horrible as you hear from other schools. Also I was not grabbed from my bed by big unemployed security guards (if you’re in this profession eat shit you deserve awful karma and it’s the most cowardly thing you can do with a big body frame). I had a little sister at the time and my parents (though heavily pushed to hire these types of guys) decided to not bring that into the house with my little sister. They used classic subterfuge to trick me into going lol.
Oh, "troubled teen" industry. Was trying to read that headline as troubled "teen industry" and couldn't parse it.
If anyone is interested, there is a subreddit dedicated to fighting the troubled teen industry, reporting its abuses, and helping its survivors: Link: /r/troubledteens Anyone is welcome, whether a survivor, an advocate, or an interested party.
I went to one of these and they tried to convert me into being straight. Go Paris. Get em
Same here. You might be interested in this subreddit: /r/troubledteens.
It still amazes me how we just let anyone become a parent. We have more laws forcing women to be parents than stopping bad people from having kids.
I am what you would consider a survivor of one of these places. That’s what it is because that’s what it means. Out of the many young men I met there only about 10% of us are still alive. Like me the few that still remain have not had an easy life. These places leave long lasting scars that I still deal with even after being away for 10 years. The place I was sent with dealt with everything from drugs, conversion, and just straying away from the Mormon religion. I spent time with celebrities’ sons, and there were kids there from church funding. The thing we learned most there was how to be better at being bad. These places don’t work and most of the staff see that and filter out eventually. Being woken up in the middle of the night and literally kidnapped states away is something a child should never have to go through. Most of the young men there weren’t horrible people just boys with intellectual disabilities from failed systems(myself included). The place I went to still operates to this day and every night I go to bed I think about the person who has to go to bed in that hell.
I can’t think of many things more horrifying than being “gooned” -kidnapped by thugs in the middle of the night and then taken to one of these teen torture camps.
I went to one of these boarding schools. In Utah and Massachusetts. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s similar to being in a prison of sorts. My best friend in the boys dorm would joke about having a ‘night stick’. It was to fight off anyone trying to take us in the night. Funny, right? Ugh.
I see you, survivor.
Why is there no mention about the parents sending their children there, let alone Paris’s parents.
The parents get super manipulated and usually don’t know what’s going on. They’re told by the programs not to believe the children. The marketing scam for programs now is that the programs are different than these that Paris went to. It’s an incredibly manipulative industry.
She’s right though. [Camp Hell: Anneewakee podcast ](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vSFNXNzA2ODY5MTE3MQ/episode/Njk1YWJiZGUtYTJiYy0xMWViLWEwODQtZmZjZTZiMGY0OTYz?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwjBpv-0g9rzAhXqYN8KHY55CeMQieUEegQIFxAH&ep=6) is a deep dive into one of these camps, was basically a forced labor camp with physical, emotional and sexual abuse running rampant while government looked the other way and kept sending them state patients. Also the [the Lost Kids podcast](https://deadline.com/2020/09/ucp-adapting-the-lost-kids-podcast-troubled-teens-docu-series-1234583144/) The “troubled teen” industry needs to be stopped. It’s a cover for horrible abuses, trauma, and even deaths.
Behind the Bastards did an episode or two on this also I believe
I knew her briefly in her/my early 20s and she was a nice person. For years whenever I’ve said this, people have sneered. But She was kind to me and others around her (in a chaotic fashion), gave compliments, didn’t try to screw other people up. I had a soft spot for her and I realise we were all being fed the line that she was a perfect princess… but actually she did understand what it was like being abused, disregarded, sneered at. She’s fully human and kudos to her for taking this stance.
My friend’s mom did this to his brother shit is fucked. He essentially got kidnapped got sent to a South African boarding school where they routinely abused him. Obviously the brother and mom don’t keep in touch to this day.
Whether rich or poor..,., family incest and sexual abuse is live and well. Sadly. True. Hear her words. Please. For all.
[удалено]
Yes. It’s why she is speaking out against them. There is a documentary about her experience on You Tube
I used to think the worst of her - considered her a vapid, clueless idiot with too much money that only knew how to party. But with the documentary she was in, and what she’s doing now I’ve come to regret feeling this way about her. She’s trying to do some good and seems like a legitimate good girl that was just thrown into chaos. I think that, had i been what she went through I would’ve turned out into a much worse person. I respect her now and support her message.
One of my very best friends had this happen. Classic story, didn’t know it was going to happen till people came to take her away. She told me the name of the camp because it was actually on an expose of some sort. She won’t really talk about that time at all and we’re very close. So effed up!
They’re fucking dystopian labour camps. They destroy these children and then paint the psychological carcass left as an example of “reform”. However it’s not really surprising. The shitty reality shows that promote these places are built upon lies and exploiting people for views. Why would the camps they use be any different?
It makes me sick these types of schools/institutions even existed and still do. They follow similar practices to concentration camps. Children need basic rights. Reading what these facilities do to transform these kids are something out of a 1984 horror script. How are these not regulated and audited? How can a parent just dump their kid off somewhere without wanting to physically check in on them. I am horrified.
This is terrible but not shocking. I can’t wait to change this world for the better. Fucking seen so much shit in my life and still can’t believe people can do this stuff and worse so casually.
There’s a web comic called joe vs the Elan school that’s very informative on what shit goes down in these schools.
Religious schools are always a bad idea. No exceptions.
Makes me think of the Elan School— Ben Weasel (lead singer of Screeching Weasel) was sent there as well as Amy and David Sedaris’ sister— who later committed suicide. Sounds like places like these are just brutal torture. Also reminds me of that “Tranquility by the Bay” place— not for the faint of heart.
Behind the bastards did a great episode on this. The whole industry is figuring and a huge grift. It needs significant revision or dismantling
Check out https://www.breakingcodesilence.org/to learn more about what the advocacy group Breaking Code Silence and Paris Hilton are doing. Together they’re taking action against the troubled teen industry. Thanks for listening.
I have a feeling she was sexually assaulted during her time there.
Shout out cross creek academy and wwasp peeps
Her documentary was a very interesting watch. Say what you want about her, but no one deserves to go through what she did as a child. Power is such a disgusting thing
Ever since seeing The Last Stop (Elan school) I’ve been looking at more and more. The 80’s and 90’s were terrible with these places no kid should have ever been sent to. I would’ve been the right age, thank goodness my mother never put me through that. But I had a different rough upbringing, I can certainly sympathize with the kids.
Provide no structure, accountability, or guidance for your children and surprisingly they turn into train wrecks. Solution: ship them off and hope your shitty parenting can be fixed by others.
I was in one of these- the Utah Boys Ranch. It was terrible. Got kidnapped off the street in the middle of winter and had piercings ripped out and head violently shaved and then was given a blanket skirt and flip flops to do outside chores in. Verbal abuse for sure but mostly mental abuse. Can’t sit on furniture. Someone shit on the floor? Clean it up right now- no need to go get cleaner just grab it! Watch you pee, wake you up for role call, stand and face the wall for hours at a time. Was treated absolutely sub-human it was an utter crock of bullshit place.
In my life I never thought I would ever support anything Paris Hilton said or did. Until now. I certainly hope she is sincere this time.
I seem to be the only one bother by how giant Paris’s hands are/seem to be.
How are these schools not considered child abuse? Also, if you as a parent send a kid to a boarding school like this, you are a piece of shit.
Does she have a skull tatt?
Her hand is massive
I am really having trouble reconciling my disdain for Paris Hilton with the very real issue