"When I was 16, I was kidnapped in the middle of the night ..."
Their parents sent them to boarding schools and wilderness therapy camps to "fix" their attitudes. Years later, these survivors of the "troubled teen industry" are speaking up about what they went through …
Their parents sent them to boarding schools and wilderness therapy camps to "fix" their attitudes. Years later, these survivors of the "troubled teen industry" are speaking up about what they went through …
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00:00So when I was 16, I was kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken from Connecticut to Utah.
00:06Spring Ridge markets themselves as healing teenage girls and mending broken families.
00:11I begged my parents not to leave me there.
00:13No one told me what was happening or where I was going until I was dumped in the middle of
00:32the desert. And it turns out I was brought to wilderness rehab.
00:34We had no TV. We weren't allowed to read certain books. Everything was controlled.
00:41They monitored our phone calls to our parents.
00:58Freedom Village USA provides a place of second chances.
01:02When I got admitted there, I really was, I was open to the idea.
01:08Their prescription was through Jesus Christ that we were going to fix ourselves.
01:13You have to do these chores. You have to do these devotional experiences constantly.
01:20And so it was like the Bible 24-7.
01:22I'm a gay man.
01:23They would attack your sexuality.
01:38In the U.S., minors don't have medical autonomy, which means that your parent or legal guardian
01:45can give consent for you. And since my mom had full custody, they literally only needed
01:50her signature to snatch me up in the middle of the night and fly me across the country.
01:54To control the kids, they would just have other kids policing each other,
01:59and then they'll write them up. And then from there, you're sentenced in some sense to this
02:02punishment where you're isolated, where you're secluded from the rest of the population.
02:08And then you have to do this activity where you pick up wood in upstate New York from
02:13one parking lot to the other, or it's a circle. And you do this for hours.
02:17You wake up at 4.30 a.m. to go do some kind of labor.
02:20Take care of the horses, chop some wood, make breakfast.
02:23You do this, and then it's immediately time to start cleaning your dorm.
02:25Everything has to be spotless.
02:37There was some staff members that it was very clear that there were red flags going up.
02:43I remember the director smacking a person in, excuse my language, but he smacked the
02:48shit out of him. And it was another time we saw he threw somebody in the air.
02:53Did we beat you?
02:54No.
02:55No. Don't kid yourself. I'd like to a couple times.
02:58Freedom Village is in the news with four, right now, cases of sexual assault.
03:05Kids get tackled and juiced up with this stuff that knocks you out for days.
03:12I had to move houses because I lived with the girl that I had a relationship with,
03:16so they moved me into another house called Cottonwood.
03:19And this is where I would be sexually, emotionally, and physically abused for the next year.
03:26People will come and check to make sure that you're sleeping in your room every 10 minutes.
03:30We found out after we graduated from this place and left that it was being regulated.
03:35The state of New York had no idea what they were providing these kids.
03:42I mean, the sadness of all this is that a lot of these programs are still open,
03:47and particularly with the religious programs that subscribe to a fundamentalist Christian
03:53perspective, they are notorious of really attacking kids with this sort of
04:00conversion therapy sort of like approach with things.
04:12We found thousands of allegations of death and abuse at these types of programs.
04:17The video shows the moments leading up to the death of the Detroit teenager
04:21who was restrained by staff in a Kalamazoo youth home.
04:24We also know from the survivor community that they are people who they could be in their 20s,
04:31their 30s, their 50s, and the trauma is so impacting that it still affects them today.
04:38I was strangled, slapped across the face, watched in the shower by male staff.
04:44As we saw the problem, we really saw that one of the main solutions is legislation.
04:50So, for example, there was no trainings for how do you report a victim to the police?
04:56How do you report a victim to the police?
04:58How do you report a victim to the police?
05:00How do you report a victim to the police?
05:02How do you report a victim to the police?
05:04There was no trainings for how do you report abuse, right?
05:08I was 13 years old when I went to Turnabout Ranch.
05:11I feel like it's very important for me to speak on this because I kept my mouth shut for so long.
05:16It's the survivor community that's really been trying to bring
05:20this into the conversation so that we can all look at this issue and really see
05:25how can we ensure the safety and that everyone is doing the right thing for their kids.
05:29This is not a business for money, but this is about really child welfare.