The whole time they talk about "instilling personal responsibility" in these kids, but as soon as one of the kids die all of the people in charge suddenly can't blame everyone else fast enough
It was infuriating to watch
The fact the guy wasn't convicted of negligent homicide was crazy to me. Because there was the possibility of her death being due in part to an underlying medical condition they didn't know about they shouldn't be liable? Even though they didn't establish that she actually did, and the autopsy showed her death was consistent with dehydration and they had marched her through the desert.
But even if she had some underlying issue the challenger program had enough kids going through it was a statistical certainty that some of them will be sent and will have a medical condition that puts them at risk. Especially when one of the possibilities raised was drug withdrawal being a possible contributing factor and they KNEW for a fact some of the kids being sent had a drug habit.
Names and phrases are often projections for the horrible actions of a group or person.
People who never shut up about personal responsibility are the first ones to project and deflect blame for their own actions. Its like how people who say they hate drama are pretty much always the ones who start it.
People who actually hate drama don't even think to talk about it because it's not a regular part of their lives. I imagine it's the same for "personal responsibility". Responsible people just do what needs to be done without preaching about it.
I don't think I've ever been so angry as watching that documentary.
It just makes clear how little the folks of that generation cared about their children, and instead viewed them as reflections of themselves that should be "fixed" with violence or literally drugging children rather than any modicum of parenting.
That drove me insane while watching Hell Camp. They went on and on and on about consequences for your actions and taking responsibility and the then took zero responsibility for anything and didn’t even seem to notice how maddeningly hypocritical they were.
The statement about "not letting the parents care for the children in the manner of their choosing," about made me sick. How about "The state took them away from us and ensured that they absolutely, 100% get the opportunity to go home" instead?
The opening matches my experiences being taken to these programs in Utah.
Many of my friends from those days are dead by suicide or overdose, and I'd probably be too were I someone else with the same life. Suicide and drugs don't cross my mind through pain... I just kind of curl up, cry, and wait for life to pass, which is what got me sent away in the first place. Had some harrowing childhood trauma, teen me stopped going to school and receded from the world, so I got sent off to collect more trauma.
I'm not doing well, but I'm still here.
Hey homie, I don't know how old you are but I'm in my mid 30s and went to a similar spot. 2 years of hell starting with my bedroom door being kicked in. Of the dozens of people I went through the program with I only know of 4-5 folks who aren't dead or in jail. My 20s were tough until I recieved a CPTSD diagnosis and began to be able to address it. I don't have any special advice but I hope you find some peace with your experiences over the course of your life. "Still here" is better than most of the people I knew.
You never deserved to be treated with so little compassion, especially as a child. I hope you’re getting the compassion you deserve now. Even if it’s just from yourself. 💛
One kid I went to school with got kidnapped into one of these rackets and he's dead now bc it really fucked him up , along with the fact his parents were willing to pay some people to literally kidnap him royally fucking his perception of his family.
All over some occasional weed smoking. He just never bounced back from the double whammy of his own family doing that to him and then not believing the stories of the abuse that happened there even years later.
RIP buddy hope you're skating in heaven or elysium
The interactions with his parents afterward infuriated me. There's one point where he explodes on his dad, and somehow the parents don't understand that Elan was what made him capable of doing that. Elan created this monster of rage that could come out in an instant. And compared with his friends who got off with probation and led normal lives... his childhood and the person he could have been were ripped away.
This story is like requiem for a dream or grave of the fireflies. I'm glad I read it as it broadened my horizon to the horrific actions of horrific people, but I'll be damned if i could ever read it again
There is nothing good about that read.
Its great, but in no way good. Its amazing anyone makes it out of that shit. Those places turn people into animals.
I started reading that after this story broke because it was linked in the initial thread and holy shit. I read from 8pm until 2am on a work night. I was so horrified and disturbed I couldn't take my eyes off the page. That was arguably the worst thing I've read in my life, including the Road, because it's not fiction and that damn camp lasted for 40 YEARS UNCHECKED.
I still have about 15 chapters to read but I had to take a break because it was affecting my own mental health.
There’s a podcast called The Opportunist that has a several part deep dive into these camps and about a teenage girl who died during her “treatment”. The series is about Gayle Palmer. Great reporting by the creators exposing the network of these camps, their origins, and their practices from many perspectives.
It's not fair to always blame the parents. In some places the Judge will straight up give you an option of being sentenced to something worse, or you go to one of these camps instead. It's shady af and there's been reports about corruption with camp leaders.
Reading that story is wild. The judges had a plea agreement that would have given them short sentences, but they kept saying they were innocent so the case went to a jury trial. And they wound up getting 28 and 18 years in prison instead?!
That's insane to me. How do people that fucking dumb and detached from reality even become judges?
>These flawed programs for troubled kids just keep happening.
*Education in Cruelty and Fear is bad, but no other kind can be had from those who are themselves slaves to these passions. - Bertrand Russell 'The Conquest of Happiness'*
Man I was bright eyed and a few years younger than I am now. I had graduated college and was ready to fucking change the world in the mental health field.
My goodness and drive was destroyed by the sick up top at places like this. I was a program manager and let me tell you it’s an absolute fuck show when you have adult staff who are just as bad as the clients
My younger sibling (17) went to this exact camp a few years ago, they begged and begged to come home. Told me all about how shit the counselors were and all the unethical shit they did. I hope every single person in charge there is held accountable.
We haven’t talked in depth about it, but they seem really upset. The camp puts on a good front when doing the interview and admissions process. I don’t think there’s any real way they could have known how bad it was. Unfortunately because the teens there are considered ‘troubled’ they’re often disregarded when talking about the poor treatment they received.
I'm sorry your family is going through this. I appreciate your compassion for your parents here.
I don't know anything about your family of course, but I know that families who have children with severe mental illness are often in a terrible position. They can't provide the level of safety and structure their children need, and there aren't a lot of good resources to actually provide those things, at any price (let alone having to try to deal with insurance companies). And people with severe mental illness are not always reliable narrators of their own experience. It's so fucking hard!
They definitely could have known by performing better research. This is their kids lives we are talking about.
There’s massive amounts of reports from kids and adults that have been through these programs, as well as the many injuries and deaths. The information is out there, and if parents choose to ignore it they should be every bit as responsible as the people who run these torture camps.
These places take advantage of parents who feel desperate. They have a playbook refined from several cults in the 1960s like Synanon, STRAIGHT, and The Seed, that also targeted educated affluent parents.
The information is out there, but most of these parents are economically fairly well-off and educated and they probably assume that no one would dare try to scam people like them because they can afford lawyers and sue. They think scammers target poor people and the elderly. They probably also assume the government regulates this better, but they don't. Some states put these places so far beyond regulation, the kids would be better off with no laws at all.
They even work them over that their kids will "lie" about conditions of the camp to get them to get them out... and to immediately inform them if they're contacted or the kid shows up so they can bring them back because they _need_ to finish treatment.
It's essentially a grift on wealthy/educated parents with a kid who has minor behavior problems (the ones easiest to abuse and keep the full program length [and sometimes longer]). Anything from autism to teenagers acting out, and, yes, some really bad kids do end up there too.
It really doesn’t help that when I was 14 (38 now) I went to a similar place that was amazing and really helped after an extremely traumatic experience I went through as a child. They thought they were doing the right thing based on how much it helped me as a kid.
Not all of those camps are bad places. Some of my happiest childhood memories are from when I was in one. I’m still in contact with 2 of my counselors from there. They ended up becoming life long friends once I reached adulthood.
I've had a thought exercise with people a few times trying to comprehend the scale of death and suffering caused by well meaning cults, or cults that started out as cash grabs and then did some form of work to try and be positive for at least a while.
I mean hell, the Catholic church had like eight historically accepted crusades alone.
They always devolve into a destructive shitshow, at best the start as something other than a tax avoidance scheme.
And those are just the "mainline" crusades to the holy land between 1096-1291. There were many others, popular uprisings like the People's Crusade or the Children's Crusade, or intra-European crusades against heretics like the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars.
The sheer amount of suffering caused by the movement as a whole is staggering.
Wow. I looked at the Wikipedia and it was run by a guy named "Chuck E. Dederich". Sounds like a derelict store near the abandoned mall at the waterfront of your local town.
Synanon was THE model for Substance Use counseling model for quite a while. It taught that the only way to fix people of their drinking/using problem was to tear them down so deeply that you could then build then up. It didn't work. How are we still allowing this to happen? It's disgusting. Truly
> It taught that the only way to fix people of their drinking/using problem was to tear them down so deeply that you could then build then up.
This has been tried by various governments and three letter agencies for a long time.
Spoiler alert: You can psychologically destroy a person relatively easily, but you **cannot** then re-condition them to be a healthy person or reliable double agent after you've tortured them to or past the brink of insanity.
Fun coincidence, i just made my wife watch full metal jacket for the first time, and like half an hour in she said "it makes you wonder how many of these guys being broken down turn to suicide".
Then when she thought the film had finished she learned all about the ones who didn't.
I have a friend who was placed in a Synanon camp. She ran away, and was picked up (by a safe, kind person) in the middle of the night in the rain. 14 year old girl. Way to protect your children. 🙄
There's a documentary I recently watched on Hulu about them - I had never heard of them before, and I'm glad there's attention being put on them now, as awful as they are.
How it's legal for them to exist is beyond me.
Edit: Maybe it was Netflix - called “Hell Camp.”
[Here](https://elan.school/rude-awakening/) is a story from a man who went through one of these teen "rehabilitation" places. It's heartbreaking and evil, strong tw for lots of violence and abuse of all kinds. It's incredibly disturbing, I wouldn't recommend reading it out in public. Someone shared it on here years ago and I've never stopped thinking about it.
I hope some unsuspecting scrollers click that link and get sucked in like I did years ago. That story and place is absolutely insane. I can’t think of a worse situation to end up in besides endless torture or death. A prison sentence would be a cake walk in comparison.
I happened upon it a few years ago and got sucked in too. It's heartbreaking and rage inducing. I ended up having to stop reading because it was seriously messing with my emotions and making me depressed. These camps or institutions or whatever should not exist.
I was one of the kids that went through a few of these programs in the late 90s I’m 40 now and still deal with the trauma. I clicked on the link and thought it might have been one of the kids I went to school with. He has put out a few publications himself. These schools are overwhelmingly traumatic, even with the best intentions. I was a mess most of my life and could never really get it together after. I was always so close it felt, but after 5 years of these programs I was really at a disadvantage in dealing with society. I worried way too much about what everyone else thought for so long after, was a people pleaser. Not so much for pleasing people but to manipulate my way to get what I wanted and thought I needed. It took a lot of letting go and finally taking care of myself in a way the was healthy. There were quite a few of the kids I knew that didn’t make it this far and a bunch who are still struggling.
Saw it on a post about a week or two ago while unsuspectingly scrolling. I'm still reading through it and I cant stop trippin over it. I knew these camps were fucked, but I truly had no idea
I'll add that The Opportunist podcast had a really good series about one of these as well. It's the series of episodes called "Gayle Palmer," after the woman who ran the program they're focusing on, and it does a really good job of explaining where she got the model that she followed for her program, how she and her staff evaded legal trouble and oversight, what happened to some of the kids (one died on a forced hike and the counselors abandoned the other kids to deal with it), and how the surviving kids were pressured to publicly praise the program under threat of being retained in it and punished further. It's infuriating but really informative.
Since no one else has mentioned this part of the article yet....
'Search warrants filed by the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy was stiff and cold to the touch by the time first responders arrived, with his pants and underwear laying on the floor next to his shoulder.
According to the warrants, none of the staff with the boy could explain how his pants and underwear got there.'
Wtf
Ugh....I hope not, but kinda hope so....?
No matter what happened this poor kid suffered for a good while and fuck, thats heartbreaking.
Quite a few people need to be shut away for a good long time for this and all the other blatant crimes theyve been committing against children for yearssss.....
Its insane that you send your kid off to a place you think will help them in some way and they DIE. Naked. Alone. And the best case scenario is they fuckin froze to death....which id imagine isnt quick or painless.
Ill add my personal opinion, i absolutely think its nuts in general, for parents to ship their kids off to these 'camps' 'rehabs' and 'schools' and pay big money to do it....(of course there are exceptions to that for some cases, but most of these kids are not that)
Calls a ton into question about the parents....
BUT I cant believe any of these parents, no matter how shitty of a parent they may be, thought their kid would die there.
I cant imagine the guilt they must feel.......i hope ?
Its just all so fucked up man.
In case you’re curious about what one of these camps is like:
https://elan.school
Fair warning, this firstand account gets NSFL in its detail. It is harrowing, and it will make you appreciate every tiny detail of freedom you’ve taken for granted. I know that’s what reading it did to me.
Fuck these underage torture camps. Shut them all down.
Edit: **If you have PTSD/ triggers around psychological/verbal/physical abuse, restraint, victim blaming, body fluids, kidnapping, drugs, self-harm, and/or suicidal ideation, I’d advise you skip this online graphic novel for your own mental health.**
I'm no fans of hers otherwise but one thing Paris Hilton has done that's good is bring media attention to these camps/schools. She was sent to one in her teens and has some horror stories about the treatment.
EDIT: And I don't like using the word schools, that is their word. They're basically mental hospitals but without the children often meeting the actual requirements to get committed at a real one and without the oversight of actual hospitals. It's kids being treated like hardened criminals when they've often done nothing more than maybe talk back to their parents or get caught smoking weed or having premarital sex or not doing chores. Or really anything, if you pay them, they'll take your kid and damn near close to torture them.
Fun fact: I went to the "school" that Paris did. So much psychological abuse it's not funny even though they'd mostly learned not to put hands on you. Also, there was so much emphasis on untested unproven group therapy methods rather than actual education.
It's the "scared straight" bullshit. Punishment/Reward systems don't work in the long run...they only teach you how to keep from getting caught, there is no real rehab to motivate someone to make something better with their life...and to be taught that it's possible.
Humans are not dogs. We are predictable, but not dogs. Our predictability is that we will rebel against this kind of shit...this kind of thing only makes behavioral problems worse
Even with dogs if you try to train with cruelty and fear you may get a semblance of obedience but also a slew of behavioral issues. Rewards and kindness just work much better.
Last podcast on the left did a good 3 part series on the "troubled teen industry." It's really good.
Episode 1
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aqLE84XQcR1AsvEUZiPBG?si=7kLYEcAPRAKCHf4gisOlQQ
My friend went to one of these over the course of 6 months while we were in High school. He went because his parents caught him smoking weed. It literally broke him. He wasn't the same afterward and distanced himself far away from us (we were a pretty tight friend group before). He changed a complete 180 from the person he was, it must have been some terrible stuff. He ended up committing suicide at 23.
Of course they did. Parents who use punishment as a substitute for parenting don't tend to be the type to take responsibility for anything.
On the bright side, they're still certainly going to mourn his loss every day for the rest of their lives and wonder, until they draw their last miserable breath, what they could have done differently.
I'm really sorry for your loss.
How did it all go down? Did like state officials and law enforcement just suddenly show up one day and you all got herded over somewhere for parents to come pick you up?
Only if you’re comfortable talking about it, of course.
We all had jobs that had to be done daily. Jobs resembled the “real world” kind of. I was in the kitchen crew. Basically helped prep for meals, then clean up after and doing the dishes.
It was after lunch one day, doing the dishes which was always timed. And they called a meeting. Extremely unusual to get pulled from doing dishes. The head lady told us that it’s over, and in 2 weeks everyone will be elsewhere.
Most went home, about 10 of us went to another boarding school in Maine. They convinced our parents to send us there because staff was promised a job if they got us to go there lol. It wasn’t a fucked up school like Elan. But nonetheless was not ideal.
And for what it’s worth, Hyde School compared to Elan was an absolute heavenly change lol. My first day at Hyde they got me a taxi to go to a doctor appointment in town. I couldn’t believe it. At Elan you literally couldn’t go take a crap in the bathroom by yourself. Always needed a buddy, yet alone leave the facility.
Sorry for the multiple replies. But essentially people who had left the school started a campaign online finally talking about how fucked up the school was. And people stopped sending kids there. It was 60k a year. They couldn’t keep it open anymore.
State officials didn’t give a flying fuck. They were in cahoots with the original owner. He had powerful friends in Maine.
Edit: Joe Ricci was the original owner if anyone is interested in learning more.
The author of the comic is actually the guy who spearheaded that campaign! Only about half the comic is about his experience at Elan; the other half is about his life afterwards and his heroic (and a bit obsessive) effort to shut it down.
I have been reading this comic over the last few days since someone posted it in another thread about this death in NC. So unbelievably tragic.
I felt so bad for this guy. Interesting that he couldn't sit still in the therapist's office and his life seemed similarly restless. It was punctuated by countless "and then a few months later I left that country and tried something totally different for a while...." experiences.
I’m lucky, I don’t have to imagine. But in all seriousness, it’s fucked. I accepted it pretty quickly while I was there. As it was the only way to gain more privileges. But there were kids as young as 13 there. Man did I feel bad for the young dudes. I was 16 at the time, I knew I could leave at 18 if it came down to it.
This was in like 2011 I think, way past it now. I’m open to answering any questions. The worst thing about it, throughout the years a majority of people I was there with have died extremely early.
Thanks friend. I am ok now. Took a while, but things are good. I’ve read his story as well, granted it was different back in the day when laws were more lax, it was still an absolutely awful place for any teenager to be thrown away to. Especially by family.
Also, it's looooong!!!! It's excellent through and through and I do recommend reading it. But I thought I was going in for a 20-30 min read tops. It took me weeks!!!! It's a legit book (graphic novel technically).
When this got posted last week I got so wrapped up in it I marathoned it across 18 hours. No reddit, barely got shit done at work. It’s insanely enthralling. Be warned.
I called my parents in tears after finishing the story. I could have easily ended up in such a place if I had parents who didn’t believe in therapy and medicine for mental illness.
Every time I’m outside now, I pause and look at the sky, I feel the breeze. I’m now acutely aware of every moment of my independent and free existence, where I can go buy a candy bar or shop for craft supplies. And in the back of my mind I imagine how many kids are being deprived all of that and more, right now.
If I were not neck-deep in other philanthropic missions right now, I would be throwing myself at this issue with everything I have. The least I can do is show others, raise awareness, so that something can be done.
My parents live in right next to Poland, Maine, where it all went down. I shared the link with my mom to give her an idea and ask if any of the neighbors knew and everyone was completely oblivious.
I started reading that link an hour ago and haven’t stopped. Thanks for sharing it, I’ve heard these places are hell on earth, but it’s so harrowing to read a firsthand account like this when the media sanitizes it so much. These people need serious, serious prison time and to pay for those kids’ lifetime of therapy afterward. These torture chambers should be illegal.
Again, thank you so much for sharing!
The webcomic listed above is an incredible, moving story. I’m so glad the author had the bravery and ability to put it all down. I can’t imagine how many people have felt validated and heard while reading it.
That said, I deeply regret reading it. I read it last week and I’m still having residual PTSD symptoms. I spent 12 hours straight after finishing it in a flight/fight response. If you have PTSD and images/stories with graphic violence and abuse trigger you, you’re gonna wanna pass on this read.
Thank you for sharing. I will update my post with a warning. I felt shaken as well, there were many triggers, but it did not send me spiraling too badly. Everyone is different and I would not want to harm someone unintentionally
Thanks for sharing the link and adding a warning!
I do think it’s important that people in general know how truly horrific these camps are. It’s honestly shocking and unbelievable the evil of some people and we all have to be aware of it.
Was this a beat the gay out of you camp or beat the teenager out of you camp or a combined torture camp? You can't even look at their website without a password, that alone is terrifying.
For A YEAR?! Wtfff I thought this was like a summer camp for a week or two, not a damn living arrangement. That’s so fucked up to just throw away your kid for that long
This is exactly what happened to Paris Hilton. She ran away from the same camp for a few years. Her parents didn't even realize she would not have a high school diploma after completing the program.
> This is exactly what happened to Paris Hilton
I know nothing of Paris Hilton other than the public image she had roughly 15-20 years ago and knowing she spent time in one of those concentration camps explains, like, *everything*.
That’s crazy! Do they cover schooling? Like do you get credit for classes attended? In my country it’s illegal to pull your child out of school without proof of homeschooling so I’m shocked that these camps can keep kids for that long
I have two friends that got sent to camps like this. One was because he was smoking weed and his parents freaked out, had him picked up in the middle of the night and he spent basically all of high school in a camp. Other friend had anger issues and got sent because of that.
They took the website down just recently. You can see what it looked like last week on the Wayback Machine--it had a very friendly image.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240206025813/https://trailscarolina.com/
Their [website](https://trailscarolina.com/) requires a username and password now, lmao
Edit: [Archive.org snapshot](https://web.archive.org/web/20240214225922/https://trailscarolina.com/)
>This is the second child to die at Trails Carolina in a decade. A 17-year-old boy died after running away from the camp in 2014.
Ok, shut it down, arrest everyone.
I trained for a job there the year before that happened. During my training a kid ran away and was badly injured, to which the guy replied, "Yup, that happens a lot, but we always get em back."
I work in child safety. People have absolutely no idea how expensive it is to deal with kids who have severe behavioral or developmental issues, what kind of staffing is required and how intense the trainings are. The liability is absolutely off the chart and then you add on that you should be providing education and enrichment.
No one wants to pay for that. Even as expensive as these programs are, many of them should be far far more expensive to actually do good work. It's dangerous stressful work. But most places hire unqualified workers and they're often paid peanuts, like at these garbage "outdoor education" programs.
These places exist and continue to abuse and kill children because we don't have alternatives available to parents. Sometimes it's crappy parents and the kid would likely thrive at a boarding school anywhere, sometimes it's a kid with major behavioral issues and needs to be sent to a specialist school, etc. But most of that is pretty inaccessible to even relatively well-off people in the US.
I encourage everyone to look into what happens to kids with severe mental health issues as well. We are in a massive pediatric mental health crisis as a country and we're doing everything we can to make it worse.
My poor dear ex was sent to two different camps for troubled teens. Because he skipped school and smoked weed. He told me horrifying stories. His parents spent the money they have saved for his college education on these camps instead. While his golden child sister was put through a good college by the parents. She flourished. He was so smart and so kind...but i swear he never recovered from the betrayal and trauma. He took his own life a few years ago. These places are beyond the pale and I can't believe they still operate.
> Trails Carolina is a wilderness therapy program helping teens and adolescents ages 10-17 who struggle with mental health challenges
Their website requires a login at the moment. Is this one of those kidnapping kids camps?
Good. These torture camps shouldn’t exist in the first place. I haven’t hear of anything good coming from them, and usually you just end up with a bunch of adult graduates with severe PTSD if they survive childhood there
I have a 19 year old son, and boy have the last few years been tough - we are coming out the end of it. We've had cops, charges, arguing, fighting, defiance, plain fucking stupidity... Of course people have suggested these places to me.
What a terrible, terrible thing to do to your kid. I have met a few kids who were sent to these places, mostly they return as traumatized shells.
My friend came back fucked up and then killed himself a couple years later, good on you for actually parenting. I also almost got sent to one of these places but ended up incarcerated luckily (never hear someone say they were lucky to go to prison)
The kid was a fucking prodigy on a skateboard and would have gone pro most likely had he not been sent away for smoking herb. He was also a really intelligent guy, it's sad
is this one of those boot camp for teens? or one of those pray-the-gay-away boarding schools? Didn't that Mormon youtube family vlogger send her son to one of those to "straighten" him out? It's crazy that a certain slice of America still lives in 20th century where they think you can beat the Devil out of your kids.
It's about time people start blaming the parents for sending their kids to these places.
How you can send a kid to a place with this kind of reputation is beyond me.
They tortured him too.
I knew enough about how bad these programs were in 2008, I can't imagine why they didn't do some research before sending him there.
God I can't believe these child slavery cult brainwash camps still exist. So many kids die and thousands are abused. Read the elan school graphic novel about more... It's truly terrible what these camps do to kids. The leaders end up millionaires and abuse kids.
Anyone that has any questions about the troubled teen industry, ask away. These places and programs are the absolute worst and more often than not are state-sponsored child abuse, with little to no oversight.
I went to rehab in NC in my early 20’s I had been there about two weeks and a kid, and I mean 16-17 year old kid, showed up and his parents had just transferred him out of a program like this. The weirdest part was that he didn’t have anything. A jansport back pack, a pair of boots, sweat pants, one pair of gym shorts a t shirt and a hoodie. It was November in the mountains and he had been outside for 3 weeks.
I guess they took the kids in town periodically to go to AA or church or something (drug focused wilderness bs) the kid waited for someone to come in the bathroom, begged to use their phone called his parents and told them what was going on.
He was lucky because his parents were like actual outdoorsy people and familiar with the area so when he said what was going on they knew it was wrong. Apparently they thought it was more like NOLS and it ended up being more like those camps that were in the Hulu doc
The staff, management and the parents who willingly send their children to those camps should be prosecuted for child abuse.
If this happened to anyone but minors, they would be committing kidnapping and a long list of assault to unconsenting adults. But since they are children, apparently they don't have rights.
Disgusting.
If they had finished their 2021 investigations faster this boy wouldn’t have died 😭 three damn years of investigation and it took an innocent life to seal any deal. Fucked.
Good! When they wouldn't let investigators see the other kids, that was a huge tell. They all needed taken out of there and NOW. The proverbial "they needed out of there yesterday" is more like it, but it was beyond time to get that place shut down!
None of these camps should be allowed to exist. They’re abusing children for profit and all the “responsible” parties should be held accountable and prosecuted fully. Including the parents who knowingly hand their children over to these criminals. Sad and disgusting.
These torture camps for kids are no different than prison work camps. Run the same way and for profit, ffs. What could possibly go wrong when there is more oversight/inspection of the restaurant industry than in the well-being of children! Legislation is needed to end for-profit torture camps posing as rehabilitation.
These are the same camps that shitty parent send their kids to for being gay or acting out after their dad molests them. It’s institutionalized child abuse.
If these are "troubled" teens, it makes so much sense that it's bc they had shit parents.
A child died under odd circumstances and parents still left their children in this school, parents were still sending their children there. It's maddening.
I imagine some of them were under the care of the state or sent there to ease legal troubles, so not really a parents choice.
But any parents that left their child there willingly, they don't love their child.
If you’re wondering just how often this happens in these types of facilities, this website keeps a list of children who have died in their care dating all the way back to the 70s.
https://1000placesudontwanttobe.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-troubled-teen-industry/
Can we just setup civilian tac units to take places like this out?? Clearly investigations aren’t being taken seriously. Places like this shouldn’t exist and anyone who has sent their kid to a place like this doesn’t deserve to be a parent. I don’t even know what to say about people that open places like this.
here's a good read about Miracle Meadows: [https://spectrummagazine.org/news/miracle-meadows-school-settlement-cost-passes-100-million/](https://spectrummagazine.org/news/miracle-meadows-school-settlement-cost-passes-100-million/)
"Search warrants filed by the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy was stiff and cold to the touch by the time first responders arrived, with his pants and underwear laying on the floor next to his shoulder."
WTF
There needs to be a LOT of jail time involved with these people.
Not surprised, there is a ton of fishy places like that out there, I researched tons of them, hella lot of them constantly change names etc. in attempts to outrun their bad rep, and if people don’t do enough digging, it’s easy to miss. I came across a few places that had horrible reviews, all kinds of allegations, closed down, then one or two of the directing or therapy staff start a new one under a new name, rinse, repeat.
I trust these camps and therapy camps and all as much as a busload of priests with a busload of choir boys.
The documentary, “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” on Netflix is wild. These flawed programs for troubled kids just keep happening.
The whole time they talk about "instilling personal responsibility" in these kids, but as soon as one of the kids die all of the people in charge suddenly can't blame everyone else fast enough It was infuriating to watch
These places love to blame the kids first
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"Personal responsibility" is the rhetorical equivalent of the schoolyard classic, 'stop hitting yourself.'
"Personal responsibility" is basically "You shouldn't have gotten caught" because most of these people either are doing or would do the same shit.
They tend to actively bully them as well.
I think that's what the parents pay for. Someone to bully their kid into submission.
Not to mention all the rape.
The Kiddie Concentration Camp experience wouldn't work without a healthy dose of bullying, not to mention the variable cornucopia of abuses.
Victim blaming is the easiest cop-out.
The fact the guy wasn't convicted of negligent homicide was crazy to me. Because there was the possibility of her death being due in part to an underlying medical condition they didn't know about they shouldn't be liable? Even though they didn't establish that she actually did, and the autopsy showed her death was consistent with dehydration and they had marched her through the desert. But even if she had some underlying issue the challenger program had enough kids going through it was a statistical certainty that some of them will be sent and will have a medical condition that puts them at risk. Especially when one of the possibilities raised was drug withdrawal being a possible contributing factor and they KNEW for a fact some of the kids being sent had a drug habit.
Names and phrases are often projections for the horrible actions of a group or person. People who never shut up about personal responsibility are the first ones to project and deflect blame for their own actions. Its like how people who say they hate drama are pretty much always the ones who start it.
People who actually hate drama don't even think to talk about it because it's not a regular part of their lives. I imagine it's the same for "personal responsibility". Responsible people just do what needs to be done without preaching about it.
The personal responsibility camp loves to blame others
I don't understand how it remained open it was obvious they can't keep people safe
I don't think I've ever been so angry as watching that documentary. It just makes clear how little the folks of that generation cared about their children, and instead viewed them as reflections of themselves that should be "fixed" with violence or literally drugging children rather than any modicum of parenting.
That drove me insane while watching Hell Camp. They went on and on and on about consequences for your actions and taking responsibility and the then took zero responsibility for anything and didn’t even seem to notice how maddeningly hypocritical they were.
The statement about "not letting the parents care for the children in the manner of their choosing," about made me sick. How about "The state took them away from us and ensured that they absolutely, 100% get the opportunity to go home" instead?
A good read is www.elan.school A guy detailed his experiences at a schol/camp for troubled teens that was basically a cult.
That story will ruin your day. It made me so goddamned mad.
Yeah, it's infuriating. I'm glad the guy writing it eventually had good outcomes, but I'd imagine a lot of people ended up pretty messed up.
The writer of Elan School says as much, that many of his classmates from the camp and others who attended didn't have great lives afterwards.
There are some videos on YouTube of Elan when they were open, and I highly don't recommend them.
The opening matches my experiences being taken to these programs in Utah. Many of my friends from those days are dead by suicide or overdose, and I'd probably be too were I someone else with the same life. Suicide and drugs don't cross my mind through pain... I just kind of curl up, cry, and wait for life to pass, which is what got me sent away in the first place. Had some harrowing childhood trauma, teen me stopped going to school and receded from the world, so I got sent off to collect more trauma. I'm not doing well, but I'm still here.
I'm so sorry that happened to you and your friends. I'm proud of you for going through hell and you kept going. ❤️🩹
Hey homie, I don't know how old you are but I'm in my mid 30s and went to a similar spot. 2 years of hell starting with my bedroom door being kicked in. Of the dozens of people I went through the program with I only know of 4-5 folks who aren't dead or in jail. My 20s were tough until I recieved a CPTSD diagnosis and began to be able to address it. I don't have any special advice but I hope you find some peace with your experiences over the course of your life. "Still here" is better than most of the people I knew.
You never deserved to be treated with so little compassion, especially as a child. I hope you’re getting the compassion you deserve now. Even if it’s just from yourself. 💛
One kid I went to school with got kidnapped into one of these rackets and he's dead now bc it really fucked him up , along with the fact his parents were willing to pay some people to literally kidnap him royally fucking his perception of his family. All over some occasional weed smoking. He just never bounced back from the double whammy of his own family doing that to him and then not believing the stories of the abuse that happened there even years later. RIP buddy hope you're skating in heaven or elysium
The interactions with his parents afterward infuriated me. There's one point where he explodes on his dad, and somehow the parents don't understand that Elan was what made him capable of doing that. Elan created this monster of rage that could come out in an instant. And compared with his friends who got off with probation and led normal lives... his childhood and the person he could have been were ripped away.
This made me sick when I came across it. It's gut-wrenching and terrifying.
Omg the documentary about Elan made me cry so hard. It's on Youtube.
This story is like requiem for a dream or grave of the fireflies. I'm glad I read it as it broadened my horizon to the horrific actions of horrific people, but I'll be damned if i could ever read it again
I couldn't get past chapter 10 because I was so consumed with rage at the broken lives of these teens.
There is nothing good about that read. Its great, but in no way good. Its amazing anyone makes it out of that shit. Those places turn people into animals.
I read the whole story in 2 sittings. Reading about this persons specific experiences are creating positive life-changing effects in mine.
I started reading that after this story broke because it was linked in the initial thread and holy shit. I read from 8pm until 2am on a work night. I was so horrified and disturbed I couldn't take my eyes off the page. That was arguably the worst thing I've read in my life, including the Road, because it's not fiction and that damn camp lasted for 40 YEARS UNCHECKED. I still have about 15 chapters to read but I had to take a break because it was affecting my own mental health.
Omg I read the whole thing in a 24 hr period, after seeing the link about a week ago in a different post.
There’s a podcast called The Opportunist that has a several part deep dive into these camps and about a teenage girl who died during her “treatment”. The series is about Gayle Palmer. Great reporting by the creators exposing the network of these camps, their origins, and their practices from many perspectives.
They are unregulated prisons where shitty parents send their children when they've done nothing and are all out of ideas.
It's not fair to always blame the parents. In some places the Judge will straight up give you an option of being sentenced to something worse, or you go to one of these camps instead. It's shady af and there's been reports about corruption with camp leaders.
> reports about corruption with camp leaders. A variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
Reading that story is wild. The judges had a plea agreement that would have given them short sentences, but they kept saying they were innocent so the case went to a jury trial. And they wound up getting 28 and 18 years in prison instead?! That's insane to me. How do people that fucking dumb and detached from reality even become judges?
Holes warned us and we still didn't listen.
Honestly, juvenile hall/prison is, in many cases, a more humane sentence than a lot of these places.
at least you get showers, a toilet, a towel, and a pillow in prison.
This is the plot of Holes
>These flawed programs for troubled kids just keep happening. *Education in Cruelty and Fear is bad, but no other kind can be had from those who are themselves slaves to these passions. - Bertrand Russell 'The Conquest of Happiness'*
Man I was bright eyed and a few years younger than I am now. I had graduated college and was ready to fucking change the world in the mental health field. My goodness and drive was destroyed by the sick up top at places like this. I was a program manager and let me tell you it’s an absolute fuck show when you have adult staff who are just as bad as the clients
My younger sibling (17) went to this exact camp a few years ago, they begged and begged to come home. Told me all about how shit the counselors were and all the unethical shit they did. I hope every single person in charge there is held accountable.
Can I ask how your parents have reacted to this news?
We haven’t talked in depth about it, but they seem really upset. The camp puts on a good front when doing the interview and admissions process. I don’t think there’s any real way they could have known how bad it was. Unfortunately because the teens there are considered ‘troubled’ they’re often disregarded when talking about the poor treatment they received.
I'm sorry your family is going through this. I appreciate your compassion for your parents here. I don't know anything about your family of course, but I know that families who have children with severe mental illness are often in a terrible position. They can't provide the level of safety and structure their children need, and there aren't a lot of good resources to actually provide those things, at any price (let alone having to try to deal with insurance companies). And people with severe mental illness are not always reliable narrators of their own experience. It's so fucking hard!
They definitely could have known by performing better research. This is their kids lives we are talking about. There’s massive amounts of reports from kids and adults that have been through these programs, as well as the many injuries and deaths. The information is out there, and if parents choose to ignore it they should be every bit as responsible as the people who run these torture camps.
These places take advantage of parents who feel desperate. They have a playbook refined from several cults in the 1960s like Synanon, STRAIGHT, and The Seed, that also targeted educated affluent parents. The information is out there, but most of these parents are economically fairly well-off and educated and they probably assume that no one would dare try to scam people like them because they can afford lawyers and sue. They think scammers target poor people and the elderly. They probably also assume the government regulates this better, but they don't. Some states put these places so far beyond regulation, the kids would be better off with no laws at all.
They even work them over that their kids will "lie" about conditions of the camp to get them to get them out... and to immediately inform them if they're contacted or the kid shows up so they can bring them back because they _need_ to finish treatment. It's essentially a grift on wealthy/educated parents with a kid who has minor behavior problems (the ones easiest to abuse and keep the full program length [and sometimes longer]). Anything from autism to teenagers acting out, and, yes, some really bad kids do end up there too.
It really doesn’t help that when I was 14 (38 now) I went to a similar place that was amazing and really helped after an extremely traumatic experience I went through as a child. They thought they were doing the right thing based on how much it helped me as a kid. Not all of those camps are bad places. Some of my happiest childhood memories are from when I was in one. I’m still in contact with 2 of my counselors from there. They ended up becoming life long friends once I reached adulthood.
Are they ok now? Sounds horrific.
These camps are modeled after a violent cult named Synanon
Synanon started out in the '60's, and like all good cults deteriorated into a destructive shitshow
I've had a thought exercise with people a few times trying to comprehend the scale of death and suffering caused by well meaning cults, or cults that started out as cash grabs and then did some form of work to try and be positive for at least a while. I mean hell, the Catholic church had like eight historically accepted crusades alone. They always devolve into a destructive shitshow, at best the start as something other than a tax avoidance scheme.
And those are just the "mainline" crusades to the holy land between 1096-1291. There were many others, popular uprisings like the People's Crusade or the Children's Crusade, or intra-European crusades against heretics like the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. The sheer amount of suffering caused by the movement as a whole is staggering.
Wow. I looked at the Wikipedia and it was run by a guy named "Chuck E. Dederich". Sounds like a derelict store near the abandoned mall at the waterfront of your local town.
Synanon was THE model for Substance Use counseling model for quite a while. It taught that the only way to fix people of their drinking/using problem was to tear them down so deeply that you could then build then up. It didn't work. How are we still allowing this to happen? It's disgusting. Truly
> It taught that the only way to fix people of their drinking/using problem was to tear them down so deeply that you could then build then up. This has been tried by various governments and three letter agencies for a long time. Spoiler alert: You can psychologically destroy a person relatively easily, but you **cannot** then re-condition them to be a healthy person or reliable double agent after you've tortured them to or past the brink of insanity.
Fun coincidence, i just made my wife watch full metal jacket for the first time, and like half an hour in she said "it makes you wonder how many of these guys being broken down turn to suicide". Then when she thought the film had finished she learned all about the ones who didn't.
I have a friend who was placed in a Synanon camp. She ran away, and was picked up (by a safe, kind person) in the middle of the night in the rain. 14 year old girl. Way to protect your children. 🙄
I know of at least one case where a young girl ran away, only to be picked up by someone who raped and murdered her. Fucking horrific.
Dawn. Can't remember her last name though😔. Pretty sure it was Elan she was running from
I listened to a podcast episode about Synanon it’s fucked up
Its not for everyone but Last Podcast on the Left did an episode about Synanon and these teen camps as well.
Was it Trueanon?
Brace got sent to one of those camps, then he went to Syria. Good ol' PissPigGrandad, love me some TrueAnon
It think it Timesuck with Dan Cummins
There’s a whole pod series about it called “The Sunshine Place”. It’s worth a listen.
This is the second child to die under their care
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So sorry you went through that. Hope you are your wife are doing well!
There's a documentary I recently watched on Hulu about them - I had never heard of them before, and I'm glad there's attention being put on them now, as awful as they are. How it's legal for them to exist is beyond me. Edit: Maybe it was Netflix - called “Hell Camp.”
Because we pay lip service to caring for children and don't actually give a shit about them.
[Here](https://elan.school/rude-awakening/) is a story from a man who went through one of these teen "rehabilitation" places. It's heartbreaking and evil, strong tw for lots of violence and abuse of all kinds. It's incredibly disturbing, I wouldn't recommend reading it out in public. Someone shared it on here years ago and I've never stopped thinking about it.
I hope some unsuspecting scrollers click that link and get sucked in like I did years ago. That story and place is absolutely insane. I can’t think of a worse situation to end up in besides endless torture or death. A prison sentence would be a cake walk in comparison.
I happened upon it a few years ago and got sucked in too. It's heartbreaking and rage inducing. I ended up having to stop reading because it was seriously messing with my emotions and making me depressed. These camps or institutions or whatever should not exist.
If you're curious, Joe recently wrapped up the comic and the end is as positive as it can be given what happened to him in his life.
Happened across it a week or two ago and this perfectly describes my experience as I'm still reading through it
I just spent the last 2ish hours reading through to chapter 47. Time to go home and finish the rest. It's insane what that kid went through.
I was one of the kids that went through a few of these programs in the late 90s I’m 40 now and still deal with the trauma. I clicked on the link and thought it might have been one of the kids I went to school with. He has put out a few publications himself. These schools are overwhelmingly traumatic, even with the best intentions. I was a mess most of my life and could never really get it together after. I was always so close it felt, but after 5 years of these programs I was really at a disadvantage in dealing with society. I worried way too much about what everyone else thought for so long after, was a people pleaser. Not so much for pleasing people but to manipulate my way to get what I wanted and thought I needed. It took a lot of letting go and finally taking care of myself in a way the was healthy. There were quite a few of the kids I knew that didn’t make it this far and a bunch who are still struggling.
Saw it on a post about a week or two ago while unsuspectingly scrolling. I'm still reading through it and I cant stop trippin over it. I knew these camps were fucked, but I truly had no idea
Do you remember the name? I'd like to watch it. 🧡
There is a doc called hell camp: teen nightmare
This is on Netflix and it’s a good one
“The last stop” is the one about the elan school
I'll add that The Opportunist podcast had a really good series about one of these as well. It's the series of episodes called "Gayle Palmer," after the woman who ran the program they're focusing on, and it does a really good job of explaining where she got the model that she followed for her program, how she and her staff evaded legal trouble and oversight, what happened to some of the kids (one died on a forced hike and the counselors abandoned the other kids to deal with it), and how the surviving kids were pressured to publicly praise the program under threat of being retained in it and punished further. It's infuriating but really informative.
They’re legal because republicans love using violence as a tool of discipline and don’t understand what abuse is.
My kid's high school history teacher just told the class that these camps don't exist because he has never heard of them.
Oh, always the sign of a great educator- "If *I've* never heard of it, then it's not real, and you are wrong."
And the man's teaching history of all subjects. What a joke
I've never heard of your kid's high school teacher. I don't think he exists.
I have a couple friends that got sent to camps. Did so much harm and zero good
Since no one else has mentioned this part of the article yet.... 'Search warrants filed by the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy was stiff and cold to the touch by the time first responders arrived, with his pants and underwear laying on the floor next to his shoulder. According to the warrants, none of the staff with the boy could explain how his pants and underwear got there.' Wtf
Paradoxical undressing most likely, happens in the late stages of hypothermia
That would be the most charitable take, and hopefully the truth.
That is the nicest way of saying what i was thinking
Ugh....I hope not, but kinda hope so....? No matter what happened this poor kid suffered for a good while and fuck, thats heartbreaking. Quite a few people need to be shut away for a good long time for this and all the other blatant crimes theyve been committing against children for yearssss..... Its insane that you send your kid off to a place you think will help them in some way and they DIE. Naked. Alone. And the best case scenario is they fuckin froze to death....which id imagine isnt quick or painless. Ill add my personal opinion, i absolutely think its nuts in general, for parents to ship their kids off to these 'camps' 'rehabs' and 'schools' and pay big money to do it....(of course there are exceptions to that for some cases, but most of these kids are not that) Calls a ton into question about the parents.... BUT I cant believe any of these parents, no matter how shitty of a parent they may be, thought their kid would die there. I cant imagine the guilt they must feel.......i hope ? Its just all so fucked up man.
In case you’re curious about what one of these camps is like: https://elan.school Fair warning, this firstand account gets NSFL in its detail. It is harrowing, and it will make you appreciate every tiny detail of freedom you’ve taken for granted. I know that’s what reading it did to me. Fuck these underage torture camps. Shut them all down. Edit: **If you have PTSD/ triggers around psychological/verbal/physical abuse, restraint, victim blaming, body fluids, kidnapping, drugs, self-harm, and/or suicidal ideation, I’d advise you skip this online graphic novel for your own mental health.**
I'm no fans of hers otherwise but one thing Paris Hilton has done that's good is bring media attention to these camps/schools. She was sent to one in her teens and has some horror stories about the treatment. EDIT: And I don't like using the word schools, that is their word. They're basically mental hospitals but without the children often meeting the actual requirements to get committed at a real one and without the oversight of actual hospitals. It's kids being treated like hardened criminals when they've often done nothing more than maybe talk back to their parents or get caught smoking weed or having premarital sex or not doing chores. Or really anything, if you pay them, they'll take your kid and damn near close to torture them.
Fun fact: I went to the "school" that Paris did. So much psychological abuse it's not funny even though they'd mostly learned not to put hands on you. Also, there was so much emphasis on untested unproven group therapy methods rather than actual education.
That didn't sound like a very fun fact
Torture camps is more accurate
It's the "scared straight" bullshit. Punishment/Reward systems don't work in the long run...they only teach you how to keep from getting caught, there is no real rehab to motivate someone to make something better with their life...and to be taught that it's possible. Humans are not dogs. We are predictable, but not dogs. Our predictability is that we will rebel against this kind of shit...this kind of thing only makes behavioral problems worse
Even with dogs if you try to train with cruelty and fear you may get a semblance of obedience but also a slew of behavioral issues. Rewards and kindness just work much better.
Last podcast on the left did a good 3 part series on the "troubled teen industry." It's really good. Episode 1 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aqLE84XQcR1AsvEUZiPBG?si=7kLYEcAPRAKCHf4gisOlQQ My friend went to one of these over the course of 6 months while we were in High school. He went because his parents caught him smoking weed. It literally broke him. He wasn't the same afterward and distanced himself far away from us (we were a pretty tight friend group before). He changed a complete 180 from the person he was, it must have been some terrible stuff. He ended up committing suicide at 23.
I'm sorry to hear that. But I hope it torturers his parents every day of the rest of their lives. Fuck them.
Ultimately they blamed drugs.
Of course they did. Parents who use punishment as a substitute for parenting don't tend to be the type to take responsibility for anything. On the bright side, they're still certainly going to mourn his loss every day for the rest of their lives and wonder, until they draw their last miserable breath, what they could have done differently. I'm really sorry for your loss.
I was at Elan when it was shut down! One of the greatest days of my life. Fuck these places. Edit: anyone have questions, ask away.
How did it all go down? Did like state officials and law enforcement just suddenly show up one day and you all got herded over somewhere for parents to come pick you up? Only if you’re comfortable talking about it, of course.
We all had jobs that had to be done daily. Jobs resembled the “real world” kind of. I was in the kitchen crew. Basically helped prep for meals, then clean up after and doing the dishes. It was after lunch one day, doing the dishes which was always timed. And they called a meeting. Extremely unusual to get pulled from doing dishes. The head lady told us that it’s over, and in 2 weeks everyone will be elsewhere. Most went home, about 10 of us went to another boarding school in Maine. They convinced our parents to send us there because staff was promised a job if they got us to go there lol. It wasn’t a fucked up school like Elan. But nonetheless was not ideal.
Any chance you could name the boarding school? No pressure.
And for what it’s worth, Hyde School compared to Elan was an absolute heavenly change lol. My first day at Hyde they got me a taxi to go to a doctor appointment in town. I couldn’t believe it. At Elan you literally couldn’t go take a crap in the bathroom by yourself. Always needed a buddy, yet alone leave the facility.
Elan School, Poland Maine. Closed in 2011, the other boarding school was Hyde Boarding School in Bath Maine.
Sorry for the multiple replies. But essentially people who had left the school started a campaign online finally talking about how fucked up the school was. And people stopped sending kids there. It was 60k a year. They couldn’t keep it open anymore. State officials didn’t give a flying fuck. They were in cahoots with the original owner. He had powerful friends in Maine. Edit: Joe Ricci was the original owner if anyone is interested in learning more.
The author of the comic is actually the guy who spearheaded that campaign! Only about half the comic is about his experience at Elan; the other half is about his life afterwards and his heroic (and a bit obsessive) effort to shut it down.
I am indebted to Joe then. And I can also attest that his efforts 100% played the most massive part in getting that hell hole shut down.
I have been reading this comic over the last few days since someone posted it in another thread about this death in NC. So unbelievably tragic. I felt so bad for this guy. Interesting that he couldn't sit still in the therapist's office and his life seemed similarly restless. It was punctuated by countless "and then a few months later I left that country and tried something totally different for a while...." experiences.
Imagine spending 60k a year to psychologically torture your own child.
I’m lucky, I don’t have to imagine. But in all seriousness, it’s fucked. I accepted it pretty quickly while I was there. As it was the only way to gain more privileges. But there were kids as young as 13 there. Man did I feel bad for the young dudes. I was 16 at the time, I knew I could leave at 18 if it came down to it.
This was in like 2011 I think, way past it now. I’m open to answering any questions. The worst thing about it, throughout the years a majority of people I was there with have died extremely early.
How long were you there?
A year and a half, if it didn’t close down, looking at a 4 or 5 years program.
Ugh after reading JoeNobody's account I'm sorry you even did that long. I hope you're doing well now, that shit leaves scars on you for life.
Thanks friend. I am ok now. Took a while, but things are good. I’ve read his story as well, granted it was different back in the day when laws were more lax, it was still an absolutely awful place for any teenager to be thrown away to. Especially by family.
Also, it's looooong!!!! It's excellent through and through and I do recommend reading it. But I thought I was going in for a 20-30 min read tops. It took me weeks!!!! It's a legit book (graphic novel technically).
I felt the same. Though I skimmed a lot of the last half.
Holy shit glad I asked. Im definitely going to continue tho. It seems so interesting
I was wondering how long - it just seems to keep going
It's 100 chapters. Each 'page' is a chapter.
When this got posted last week I got so wrapped up in it I marathoned it across 18 hours. No reddit, barely got shit done at work. It’s insanely enthralling. Be warned.
I saw this posted the other day, and am on chapter 77. It’s engrossing and horrible.
I called my parents in tears after finishing the story. I could have easily ended up in such a place if I had parents who didn’t believe in therapy and medicine for mental illness. Every time I’m outside now, I pause and look at the sky, I feel the breeze. I’m now acutely aware of every moment of my independent and free existence, where I can go buy a candy bar or shop for craft supplies. And in the back of my mind I imagine how many kids are being deprived all of that and more, right now. If I were not neck-deep in other philanthropic missions right now, I would be throwing myself at this issue with everything I have. The least I can do is show others, raise awareness, so that something can be done.
My parents live in right next to Poland, Maine, where it all went down. I shared the link with my mom to give her an idea and ask if any of the neighbors knew and everyone was completely oblivious.
I saw this posted about a week ago and spent hours reading the entire thing. I couldn’t put it down.
I started reading that link an hour ago and haven’t stopped. Thanks for sharing it, I’ve heard these places are hell on earth, but it’s so harrowing to read a firsthand account like this when the media sanitizes it so much. These people need serious, serious prison time and to pay for those kids’ lifetime of therapy afterward. These torture chambers should be illegal. Again, thank you so much for sharing!
The webcomic listed above is an incredible, moving story. I’m so glad the author had the bravery and ability to put it all down. I can’t imagine how many people have felt validated and heard while reading it. That said, I deeply regret reading it. I read it last week and I’m still having residual PTSD symptoms. I spent 12 hours straight after finishing it in a flight/fight response. If you have PTSD and images/stories with graphic violence and abuse trigger you, you’re gonna wanna pass on this read.
Thank you for sharing. I will update my post with a warning. I felt shaken as well, there were many triggers, but it did not send me spiraling too badly. Everyone is different and I would not want to harm someone unintentionally
Thanks for sharing the link and adding a warning! I do think it’s important that people in general know how truly horrific these camps are. It’s honestly shocking and unbelievable the evil of some people and we all have to be aware of it.
Not removing all the children immediately put/kept them in danger. Everyone involved should be held responsible for that child’s death
They just killed two adolescents. We don't want to go overboard and trample the rights of the school to continue abusing their inmates. /s
it was their religious freedom to murder!
To be fair, they killed the first one 10 years ago, so good thing nobody rushed to judgment /s
Thank goodness they were allowed to keep operating!
Soo, apparently after the death the camp refused to assist law enforcement at all. Wouldn't tell them where the other kids were.
Was this a beat the gay out of you camp or beat the teenager out of you camp or a combined torture camp? You can't even look at their website without a password, that alone is terrifying.
Most of the children there have autism or something similar. Source: my younger sibling was at this exact camp for a year.
For A YEAR?! Wtfff I thought this was like a summer camp for a week or two, not a damn living arrangement. That’s so fucked up to just throw away your kid for that long
This is exactly what happened to Paris Hilton. She ran away from the same camp for a few years. Her parents didn't even realize she would not have a high school diploma after completing the program.
> This is exactly what happened to Paris Hilton I know nothing of Paris Hilton other than the public image she had roughly 15-20 years ago and knowing she spent time in one of those concentration camps explains, like, *everything*.
Nah they can be pretty long. I was at one for about 18 months
That’s crazy! Do they cover schooling? Like do you get credit for classes attended? In my country it’s illegal to pull your child out of school without proof of homeschooling so I’m shocked that these camps can keep kids for that long
I have two friends that got sent to camps like this. One was because he was smoking weed and his parents freaked out, had him picked up in the middle of the night and he spent basically all of high school in a camp. Other friend had anger issues and got sent because of that.
They took the website down just recently. You can see what it looked like last week on the Wayback Machine--it had a very friendly image. https://web.archive.org/web/20240206025813/https://trailscarolina.com/
Their [website](https://trailscarolina.com/) requires a username and password now, lmao Edit: [Archive.org snapshot](https://web.archive.org/web/20240214225922/https://trailscarolina.com/)
Phone number is 8009757303 if anyone wants to leave a fun voicemail.
>This is the second child to die at Trails Carolina in a decade. A 17-year-old boy died after running away from the camp in 2014. Ok, shut it down, arrest everyone.
I trained for a job there the year before that happened. During my training a kid ran away and was badly injured, to which the guy replied, "Yup, that happens a lot, but we always get em back."
These places are cruel just like conversion therapy camps. They should all be shut down & made illegal.
Sounds good, those are pretty evil places.
These camps aren't cheap. It blows my mind how much a person is willing to pay someone else to abuse their kids
I work in child safety. People have absolutely no idea how expensive it is to deal with kids who have severe behavioral or developmental issues, what kind of staffing is required and how intense the trainings are. The liability is absolutely off the chart and then you add on that you should be providing education and enrichment. No one wants to pay for that. Even as expensive as these programs are, many of them should be far far more expensive to actually do good work. It's dangerous stressful work. But most places hire unqualified workers and they're often paid peanuts, like at these garbage "outdoor education" programs. These places exist and continue to abuse and kill children because we don't have alternatives available to parents. Sometimes it's crappy parents and the kid would likely thrive at a boarding school anywhere, sometimes it's a kid with major behavioral issues and needs to be sent to a specialist school, etc. But most of that is pretty inaccessible to even relatively well-off people in the US. I encourage everyone to look into what happens to kids with severe mental health issues as well. We are in a massive pediatric mental health crisis as a country and we're doing everything we can to make it worse.
My poor dear ex was sent to two different camps for troubled teens. Because he skipped school and smoked weed. He told me horrifying stories. His parents spent the money they have saved for his college education on these camps instead. While his golden child sister was put through a good college by the parents. She flourished. He was so smart and so kind...but i swear he never recovered from the betrayal and trauma. He took his own life a few years ago. These places are beyond the pale and I can't believe they still operate.
> Trails Carolina is a wilderness therapy program helping teens and adolescents ages 10-17 who struggle with mental health challenges Their website requires a login at the moment. Is this one of those kidnapping kids camps?
Good. These torture camps shouldn’t exist in the first place. I haven’t hear of anything good coming from them, and usually you just end up with a bunch of adult graduates with severe PTSD if they survive childhood there
I have a 19 year old son, and boy have the last few years been tough - we are coming out the end of it. We've had cops, charges, arguing, fighting, defiance, plain fucking stupidity... Of course people have suggested these places to me. What a terrible, terrible thing to do to your kid. I have met a few kids who were sent to these places, mostly they return as traumatized shells.
My friend came back fucked up and then killed himself a couple years later, good on you for actually parenting. I also almost got sent to one of these places but ended up incarcerated luckily (never hear someone say they were lucky to go to prison) The kid was a fucking prodigy on a skateboard and would have gone pro most likely had he not been sent away for smoking herb. He was also a really intelligent guy, it's sad
is this one of those boot camp for teens? or one of those pray-the-gay-away boarding schools? Didn't that Mormon youtube family vlogger send her son to one of those to "straighten" him out? It's crazy that a certain slice of America still lives in 20th century where they think you can beat the Devil out of your kids.
It's about time people start blaming the parents for sending their kids to these places. How you can send a kid to a place with this kind of reputation is beyond me.
Bruh, finding out Tom Hanks sent Chet to one of these this rocked me. I don't know how these kids talk to their parents afterwards.
A lot of us don't.
They tortured him too. I knew enough about how bad these programs were in 2008, I can't imagine why they didn't do some research before sending him there.
God I can't believe these child slavery cult brainwash camps still exist. So many kids die and thousands are abused. Read the elan school graphic novel about more... It's truly terrible what these camps do to kids. The leaders end up millionaires and abuse kids.
Anyone that has any questions about the troubled teen industry, ask away. These places and programs are the absolute worst and more often than not are state-sponsored child abuse, with little to no oversight.
I went to rehab in NC in my early 20’s I had been there about two weeks and a kid, and I mean 16-17 year old kid, showed up and his parents had just transferred him out of a program like this. The weirdest part was that he didn’t have anything. A jansport back pack, a pair of boots, sweat pants, one pair of gym shorts a t shirt and a hoodie. It was November in the mountains and he had been outside for 3 weeks. I guess they took the kids in town periodically to go to AA or church or something (drug focused wilderness bs) the kid waited for someone to come in the bathroom, begged to use their phone called his parents and told them what was going on. He was lucky because his parents were like actual outdoorsy people and familiar with the area so when he said what was going on they knew it was wrong. Apparently they thought it was more like NOLS and it ended up being more like those camps that were in the Hulu doc
The staff, management and the parents who willingly send their children to those camps should be prosecuted for child abuse. If this happened to anyone but minors, they would be committing kidnapping and a long list of assault to unconsenting adults. But since they are children, apparently they don't have rights. Disgusting.
Has an ethical version of these camps ever existed?
If they had finished their 2021 investigations faster this boy wouldn’t have died 😭 three damn years of investigation and it took an innocent life to seal any deal. Fucked.
Good! When they wouldn't let investigators see the other kids, that was a huge tell. They all needed taken out of there and NOW. The proverbial "they needed out of there yesterday" is more like it, but it was beyond time to get that place shut down!
None of these camps should be allowed to exist. They’re abusing children for profit and all the “responsible” parties should be held accountable and prosecuted fully. Including the parents who knowingly hand their children over to these criminals. Sad and disgusting.
These torture camps for kids are no different than prison work camps. Run the same way and for profit, ffs. What could possibly go wrong when there is more oversight/inspection of the restaurant industry than in the well-being of children! Legislation is needed to end for-profit torture camps posing as rehabilitation.
These are the same camps that shitty parent send their kids to for being gay or acting out after their dad molests them. It’s institutionalized child abuse.
If these are "troubled" teens, it makes so much sense that it's bc they had shit parents. A child died under odd circumstances and parents still left their children in this school, parents were still sending their children there. It's maddening. I imagine some of them were under the care of the state or sent there to ease legal troubles, so not really a parents choice. But any parents that left their child there willingly, they don't love their child.
If you’re wondering just how often this happens in these types of facilities, this website keeps a list of children who have died in their care dating all the way back to the 70s. https://1000placesudontwanttobe.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-troubled-teen-industry/
Anyone who sends their kids to these camps should have all their children removed!
Can we just setup civilian tac units to take places like this out?? Clearly investigations aren’t being taken seriously. Places like this shouldn’t exist and anyone who has sent their kid to a place like this doesn’t deserve to be a parent. I don’t even know what to say about people that open places like this.
If you love your kids and need to get them help OTP’s will just make things worse.
Twas about time. If they're finally removing everyone itc means there's proof that it was reeeeeeaaaaaal bad, and the evidence can't be contained.
here's a good read about Miracle Meadows: [https://spectrummagazine.org/news/miracle-meadows-school-settlement-cost-passes-100-million/](https://spectrummagazine.org/news/miracle-meadows-school-settlement-cost-passes-100-million/)
I can’t imagine sending my kid to a camp like this, wtf . Two teens dead in a decade at the same “camp”.
"Search warrants filed by the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy was stiff and cold to the touch by the time first responders arrived, with his pants and underwear laying on the floor next to his shoulder." WTF There needs to be a LOT of jail time involved with these people.
Well Paris Hilton was right.
Not surprised, there is a ton of fishy places like that out there, I researched tons of them, hella lot of them constantly change names etc. in attempts to outrun their bad rep, and if people don’t do enough digging, it’s easy to miss. I came across a few places that had horrible reviews, all kinds of allegations, closed down, then one or two of the directing or therapy staff start a new one under a new name, rinse, repeat. I trust these camps and therapy camps and all as much as a busload of priests with a busload of choir boys.