March 31, 2022 • 51 mins
Trigger Warning: please be advised there is detailed discussion about assault and abuse of minors.
What does a parent do when they feel like their child is in danger and is looking for help? They jump on the internet and start clicking. What they might find is a bunch of info about places all over the country they can send their kid to for rehabilitation and family unification. Sounds great, right? What they might not know, though, is that these places are unlicensed, unregulated, off the oversight grid and very often abusive.
In fact, influencer Paris Hilton went before the Utah state congress last year to share her traumatic experience at The Provo Canyon School. She and other survivors, including our guest, have continued the campaign for reform of “The Troubled Teen Industry” at the federal level.
Ali’s guest Caroline Cole is the host of Trapped in Treatment, executive produced by Paris Hilton, and shares her own experience at one of these facilities as well as where the fight for regulation is now, including The Accountability for Congregate Care Act.
If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at (323) 364-6356. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)
Links of interest:
Trapped in Treatment Podcast: https://trappedintreatment.com/
Unsilenced (Non-Profit): https://www.unsilenced.org/
Breaking Code Silence (Non-Profit): https://www.breakingcodesilence.org/
NeuroClastic (Autism collective): https://neuroclastic.com/
In the news:
KUER - Hard to Shut Facilities Down (3/22/22): https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2022-03-22/even-after-serious-allegations-heres-why-shutting-down-a-teen-treatment-facility-in-utah-is-no-easy-task
KUER - Paris Hilton Goes to Washington (10/20/21): https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2021-10-20/paris-hilton-and-activists-brought-change-to-utahs-troubled-teen-industry-now-they-are-pushing-for-a-new-federal-law
KSL - Utah State Bill 127 Signed (04/06/21): https://ksltv.com/459317/paris-hilton-on-hand-for-signing-of-bill-regarding-youth-care-centers/
Salt Lake Tribune - The Troubled Teen Industry (08/30/20): https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/30/inside-utahs-troubled/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
I'm admitting it. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you don't
keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
thank you truly. If you can shine as you're going
to death, you can shine as you're going through Middle Lange, Right, Yeah, like,
(00:24):
why not start now? I'm going to enjoy my life.
At the end of the day, I'm just a little
particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah,
just aspect or aspects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm
Ali Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I
can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers
(00:46):
and getting dirty. Okay, this episode is a little bit dark. Today.
I'm talking about what is called the troubled teen industry,
which I have been obsessed with for some time. There
are hundreds of teen rehab facilities and wilderness camps and
residential treatment centers all over the country that had been
riddled with reports of physical, emotional and sexual abuse for decades,
(01:10):
and they are absolutely not regulated by our government. So
you might have heard that Paris Hilton, who was abused
herself in one of these facilities in Utah, went before
the state Congress in February last year calling for legislation
to reform the troubled teen industry. Utah's Bill sp one
passed in April last year. In October, she and other survivors,
(01:32):
including our guest, went to Washington to begin the work
for legislation at the federal level. And I'm honored to
have my guest, Caroline call here today to talk about
her personal experience in one of these places when she
was a teenager, as well as her current advocacy work
to bring major changes to the way the industry is conducted.
Caroline Cole is an entrepreneur, activist, and trauma focused women's
(01:56):
transformation coach. She's the director of government relations for a nonprofit,
Breaking Code Silence. Breaking Code Silence is a network of
institutional abuse survivors who are or were incarcerated in the
US troubled team industry. Caroline is a co host of
the new podcast executive produced by Paris Hilton, called Trapped
and Treatment. Please be aware that there is some discussion
(02:20):
of assault and abuse which might be triggering for some people.
Caroline Cole, I'm so happy to have you on this
podcast today. I have a lot of questions. Thank you
so much for having me, and I hope to answer
some of those today. Well, I won't let you off
until you have so it might be a five hour podcast.
(02:40):
So let me start by saying that I have a
few friends who have teenagers that were and are exhibiting
acute anxiety. Um. I have friends whose children have had
addiction issues, and everybody circles around this idea of sending
their team to they call it boarding school. Unfortunately, the
(03:04):
people I know whose kids went there, it was not
a successful situation. And I've read, of course about what
Paris Hilton dealt with, and I've read so many other reports,
even in the Salt Lake City Tribune, about how these
camps i'll call them, are not monitored, are for profit,
(03:27):
and are riddled with reports of abuse. So before we
get into all that, and just so my listeners know,
Caroline is nodding knowingly, do you mind telling me about
your own experience? Can we start from your personal journey? Absolutely? Um,
So I also went to a facility like the ones
(03:50):
that we're hearing about today, and uh, the one that
I went to was actually in Upstate New York and
it was called the Academy at Ivy Ridge and it
was owned by a parent company that was based out
of Utah called WASP and that stood for the Worldwide
Association of Specialty Programs. And so, you know, at the
(04:10):
time I was fourteen, I was going through a lot
of the things that fourteen year olds go through. You're
figuring out your place in the world, your hormonal you've
got you know, friend drama, and you're approaching this time
in your life where you're expected to be independent and
have your life figured out, and there's a lot of
you know, anxiety, and so you know, at that time,
(04:31):
I admittedly had been struggling with some depression, anxiety, um
not getting along with my family, and also trying to
keep up with school and it just felt like a
lot of pressure. So at the time, my mom, like
a lot of parents now, got onto Google and she
started searching helped for my daughter struggling teen teen resources
(04:54):
and was looking for anything that she could find. And
so she had found this website called teen help dot
com mom, and it looked like outwardly, it looked like
a like a referral service almost right, like they were
just like a resource center that could help you find,
you know, adequate services for for your children. So she
(05:14):
got on the phone with them, and you know, they
and as they do, sold her this story that, Wow, no,
your daughter is headed down the wrong path. If you
do not take immediate action, she is going to die.
She is going to end up in jail. So were you,
I mean, it doesn't sound like you were exhibiting anything
that wasn't sort of normal teenage stuff. Why would your
(05:36):
mother even google this to begin with? Why would she
think to send you away? Were you shoplifting? Were you?
I mean, were you acting out in such a big
way that she felt she needed to look for help
that way. So at that point I had developed a
lot of resentment towards my mom, and you know, she
was carrying on her own relationships and dating someone. And
(06:00):
you know, at that time too, I was very much,
like I said, kind of trying to find my place
in the world. And so I was super into music.
I was into punk rock. I wanted a mohawk more
than anybody, and I was obsessed with like late seventies,
you know, I thought I was going to be a
music journalist, and so I was like wearing fish nets
and my mom was like, no, you're fourteen, you can't
wear fish nets, Like what are you doing? And I
(06:22):
was putting on thick, dark eyeliner and a lot of
that scared her, right, And so that was a good
majority of it. I did not use drugs. I didn't
sneak out. I wasn't running away, you know, things like that. Um.
And not to justify I do want to mention, though
not to not to justify that even those things would
be okay to send your child away. I think really
(06:44):
what we need to focus on is community based resources
and and finding assistance within the home setting. So I
just wanted to make that clear. So yeah, you know,
she looked at these people as knowing what they were doing,
and they sold her this idea and she'll tell you this, Um.
They sold her this idea of family reunification, right, and
(07:04):
that's saying true to her. She was like, yeah, my
family is fractured. This is not my daughter. We don't
have the relationship that we used to have. I want
a unified family. And that was the package that they
sold her. Yeah, any parent that here's family reunification is
going to go sign me up of course exactly, So
how did you agree to go? So I actually didn't
know that I was going, and you'll hear this a
(07:27):
lot through other survivors who tell their stories. Um, at
the time, I actually thought that I was going to
summer camp, and I was really excited. I had like
my Douffel bag packed. I had my little canteen in
there with my initials on it, and I'm thinking, I'm
going to summer camp and this is gonna be fun.
And it was the summer right before I started high school,
so I had all of that on my mind too,
(07:48):
about you know, starting high school and being with my friends.
So did your mother tell you you were going to
summer camp? She did? She did. And oftentimes I will
say that's usually encouraged by the program off and tell
parents and say, oh, see that you guys are going
on a family trip or you guys are you know,
doing something else. And so I think it was around
four or five o'clock mid afternoon, and my door flew open.
(08:13):
I see this man and a woman standing there, and
they're dressed all in black. Never seen these people in
my life. Jesus cursed. They come in, gun's blazing, They're like,
you're under our custody now, don't make any sudden movements.
And I had never been through anything like that before,
so I didn't know what to do or and I
didn't plan on fighting or doing anything. Um, But I
(08:34):
cooperated with them and they ended up staying in a
hotel with me that night in downtown San Diego, and
then the next day we flew all the way to
New York, where they then handed me off to two
other transporters who then drove me, I believe, about six
and a half hours to upstate New York. And what
are you thinking the whole time? You knew you weren't
(08:55):
going to play archery and make ceramics? Did It's right
at this point, you know, it's actually kind of horrible
because I was that naive. I thought, I really thought,
because they told me once we were in the car
that I was going to boarding school. So I was
kind of like, hell, yeah, get me out of here.
This might be awesome and this is going to feel
(09:17):
like college, is what I was thinking. Um, But it
was very apparent that it was an institution. All of
the doors were magnetized, they were long, white cinder block hallways.
I mean this was not a glamorous place. Yeah, this
was This sounds more girl interrupted than like woo who
summer camp. It got very real, very fast. Okay, yeah, so,
(09:41):
uh were you abused? Like did that happen? Were you?
Were you starving? Like these are some of the things
I've read. So at this facility, we were not allowed
to talk ever. Ever, I was not allowed to look
at you and make eye contact. I could not move
without permission. So and by move I mean literally turned
(10:04):
my head, I mean to stand up, to move at all.
They would consider that to be like an attempt at
running away or you know, look even looking out windows.
We weren't allowed to look out windows. Um. That was
considered you know, making plans to run away. And so
if you were to receive a like demerit um or
(10:25):
what they called a correction, If you received a correction
like that, you would lose all of your points and
all of your levels, which essentially meant that you would
have to start over. That would add many months to
your program. There for very very very minor things. Did
you have a roommate. We had what they called bunk buddies,
and so you would be in a room there would
be four people to a room. What was allowed in
(10:47):
the room was very very little. You were allowed to blanket,
you were allowed a couple of uniforms. No shoes were allowed,
and so you wouldn't try to run away. Um. All
of the windows had bars on them with motions and
there's on the outside. And we were never allowed to
turn off our lights or shut the door. So this
is prison. I mean this sounds like a state prison
to me. Absolutely. So it was always, um a lurking
(11:12):
threat that if you were to be obstinate in any way,
and by obstinate, I mean telling the dorm parents I'm
not doing that, or stepping out of line, or making
it obvious that you were being defiant, UM, you would
be physically restrained. What is physically restrained? Me, I'm happy
that you're asking that, because I think a lot of
people just assume what it means. UM, So what would
(11:36):
happen is, let's say I stepped out of line. We
were all expected to stand in a line in line
structure military style. So if I were to step out
of line and talk back to a dorm parents say
I'm not doing this anymore, I'm done with this, she
would have a walkie talkie and she would say backup,
staff and um, about four or five male staff members
would come running from wherever they were and essentially they
(11:59):
would tackle you and they would shove your face into
the ground, they would twist your arms behind your back,
they would sit on your legs, and they would pile
on top of you until you surrendered. And even if
you're not having that happened to you, it's a very
traumatic to witness to hear, because these are your friends,
these are people you care about, of course, and and
(12:22):
that was the game. That's how they got us to comply.
If you still didn't want to comply, after that, they
would send you to intervention, which, in so many words,
it's essentially solitary confinement. You're stuck in a tiny room,
no windows, center block walls, by yourself, and you're there
until you say, okay, I'll get with the program, will
(12:42):
do what you want me to do. Did you try
to reach your mother and to get me the hell
out of here? So it was explained to us upon
entering this facility that if we tried to communicate that
to our parents, that that was manipulation and that we
were lying, and our parents were already primed and told that, like, look,
(13:02):
your your child's going to say that they hate it here.
They're going to say that all this bad stuff is
happening to them, they're manipulating you. Don't fall for it.
This is the same behavior that they've had it home, right,
So then you have a parent we're like, yeah, maybe
maybe their kids were lying to them, maybe they were
sneaking out. And so they hear this and they're like,
oh no, that's what they did at home. I can't
(13:24):
fall into that. I have to be strong and give
them this tough love. So there was that, and then
I want to explain just one other part of this program.
So you had to earn a phone call home. So
I actually didn't have a phone call with my mom
for about a year, so twelve months a year, which
is a very long time when you're fourteen. It was
(13:46):
your was your mother freaking out? I mean, didn't she
want to hear from you? Was? Oh, of course, didn't
she think that was concerning And she did good. But
at the time, again you're being told by these people
who are supposedly professionals that this is part of the program.
I know it's hard right now, but stay strong. Mom
and dad stay strong. Um, this is gonna be for
(14:06):
their own best interest, right, They've got to break away
from you, and they've got to find themselves, and it's
all a part of this treatment plan. But at the
same time, even if we tried to write some of
these things home, I mean many times this happened to me,
they would actually redact the letters with black sharpie, or
they would not send them at all, and you would
be brought in for a meeting asking why you're manipulating.
(14:28):
And so you have no access to telephones, to internet,
to even TV. We had no idea what was going
on in the world during that time, no news, no
like you're cut off. So in that same no, I
will explain just one more thing is that if you,
let's say, tried to run away, because you're thinking, I'm
going to go find a phone and as soon as
(14:48):
I get a phone, I'm going to tell my family
what's happening. You know, we were told on the daily
that if someone tried to run, we were to chase
them down and we were to break their legs and
stop them by any means possible. So you knew that
if you try to run, it's not only staff members
chasing you, it's your friends, it's everybody. You've got forty
(15:12):
people hunting you, doing anything to stop you. It's terrifying.
It's terrifying. Even listening to this, I can't imagine. So,
how long were you in the facility? I was there
for two and a half years, Caroline. That's a long time.
It's a very long time. Two and a half years.
(15:32):
What did you do for two and a half years?
Did you just become a shell of yourself? I mean,
did they break you down? So when I first got there,
the first thing that I noticed, and it's just it's
giving me goose bumps right now even remembering this. But
first night that I got there, I slept out in
the hallway and when I woke up, there were girls
(15:55):
all around me and they were lining up and they
had their uniform and their toilet trees in their hands,
and they were lying end up, standing by the bathroom
ready to go in and get ready for the day.
And uh, I remember looking at how strangely hollow they were,
and you could see it in their eyes, in their face,
and so you know, we're social creatures. And going for
(16:19):
two years of not talking, not being able to reach
out in hug someone or say I love you, or
you just excuse me or thank you. We're having that connection,
you turn inside yourself. It's the only way to keep
your mind connected um to reality, to what you're doing.
And of course you're somewhere where you don't want to be,
(16:41):
and so the whole time you're playing movies in your mind,
trying to keep yourself hopeful, trying to keep yourself thinking
about when you get out. Um, okay, so what was
the worst thing that happened of all the atrocities for
you personally, That probably ways over and over in your mind.
(17:02):
For me, it was a lot of what I witnessed.
So I never while I was there, had experienced physical restraint,
mostly because I complied to a fault. I was quiet,
I kept to myself. I minded whatever anyone told me
to do, which is a weird also kind of trauma,
(17:23):
because you start to um, you feel broken in the
sense that you complied so much to the people that
were abusing you, and so that isn't just a trauma
in and of itself. Being in that environment alone is traumatizing.
Seeing it happen to your friend and knowing that it
could be you next, you know, you stand there with
your eyes forward, head down, heart pounding, knees shaking in panic.
(17:49):
And so for me, there's a memory. Um, so there
was one student there and she had decided that it
was enough and she needed to do anything possible to
make it to a hospital to be able to reach
her parents, and so she actually threw herself over the
second story floor of a stair rail. And UM, those
(18:10):
sounds will for every day in my mind. You could
hear gasps and people go, and then you hear a noise,
and then something hit the ground and you hear people saying,
oh my god, she jumped, and and again we're not
allowed to talk, so you were just hearing staff members
reacting to this. And um, there were a lot of
instances like that. I mean, that's one. That's one I
(18:32):
have to tell you. Listening to this, so it sounds
like you're pitching me a plot for a horror film. Seriously,
let's take a short break, all right, let's get back
to it. And how did you eventually get out? Why
(18:55):
were you released after two and a half years on
good behavior. So it was a very long time. By
the time I left, I had been there out of
the entire facility. I had been there for the second longest,
and so the only other person who had been there
longer was my dear friend to this day, Monica, and
(19:17):
she had gotten there two weeks before me, and so
we left at the same time. And we actually got
to leave because we had completed the program, which means
that we had climbed up through all of the levels
and all of the ranks that we were required. There
were six levels in total, but yeah, we completed the program,
and at that point, you know, it was a huge
(19:38):
honor to have graduated. We attended our brainwashy final seminar
with our parents and then after that we were allowed
to go home, and you know, it seemed unreal at
that time. Did you tell your parents everything that happened
at the time, I didn't, hm. And really why that
(19:58):
was is because it had been thrilled into us that
if we complained about the program, that we were not
working the program, and that meant that we were what
they would call playing the victim. And so if we
were playing the victim, that means that we were not
ready to go home, right, So it's this whole psychological
thing of if you complain that means you're not ready.
So you learn to just be quiet because you want
(20:19):
to be ready to go home and you don't want
to be sent back. So that was also the fear
that if I look like I'm not going with the program,
then I might get sent back. So tell me about
these seminars. Even though they're going to make me want
to pull my hair up. They're very atrocious. Um there,
they sound like they're probably really CULTI right, they're incredibly culty.
(20:40):
So if you think of this, like what's come out
about Nexium. Are you familiar with the story. Yeah, so, um,
very very very similar self help style. Um, brainwashing and UM.
This kind of ideology came from a cult that started
in the late fifties called sinnol On and they participated
(21:02):
in something called attack therapy, And it was this idea
that if you be rated and belittled someone and like
got inside their mind and their trauma and broke them down,
that you could somehow build them back up. And so
in our facility and in these WASP programs and a
lot of programs like it, they really preach this idea
(21:24):
of accountability, which on on surface level, sounds good, right,
and the worst thing in the world was to be
a victim. Right, You do not want to be a victim.
If you are a victim, you're not working the program,
you're not ready to go home. As I explained, So
essentially what seminars would look like is you would share
your deepest, darkest traumas and then you would be torn
(21:47):
apart in front of a room of about a hundred people.
And some people would share stories of sexual assault or
abuse at the hands of a family member, and then
we would be made to tell that person that they
were a victim, that they were a slot, that they
(22:08):
asked for it, that they needed to be accountable for
the trauma that had happened to them, and it was
applauded if you could make that person break down. Um.
And so you know, there's a lot of trauma for
us too about the things that we've done to other people.
Oh yeah, Um, you know, we were put in positions
(22:29):
where we were forced to be the abuser in a
lot of cases, and that's really heavy to deal with.
Oh god, I'm sure. So did you know anybody that
was sexually abused? Because I know that that's something that
is rampant and threw a lot of these institutions I did,
and with several people. Actually, So there was a woman
(22:53):
at our facility who was the girl's side supervisor, and
she is particularly bitter, gruff, mean woman, and she can
make your life. Help um. So again back to points
and levels. You know, the more points you have, the
higher levels you have, the closer you are to going home.
(23:15):
And she had no problem just snapping her fingers and
ripping that away from you. And so people were very
motivated to comply with whatever she would say or do.
And everybody knew that this person had favorites. She actually
then carried on relationships with these women and I was
(23:35):
witnessed to some of that. I do know that, uh,
the people that she did this too are actively dealing
with this trauma and it's incredibly hard for them. I'm
sure she was a predator and they just sort of
did what they had to do to survive this place. Yeah,
did your mother ever apologize to you? She has, Yeah,
(23:59):
she has very recently. In the situation of where there's
private placement, where a parent is placing a child in
a facility like this, parents are being victimized, They're being conned.
If you look at these websites. Oh, they're the most
gorgeous websites. You log on. You see kids singing Kumbaya
around a campfire. They're smiling, they look like squeaky clean,
(24:21):
like I love you mom and dad. Uh. They look
like everything that a parent with a struggling teenager would want.
And these programs tout things like leadership development and character
building and like even college prep style quality. And it's
just not it is a sham, but it's just a
(24:43):
perfect recipe because you have parents that are just over
their head, and as a parent, I can understand falling
into that trap. So then they get you. They victimize
you in a way so that you can't retaliate, and
you're left with years of trauma and they've just made
(25:04):
a shipload of money. And by the way, you know,
we can't say this is every facility like this. Again,
this is not all schools. But I have read that
in Utah itself, the industry pulled in three hundred and
twenty eight million dollars in revenue in twenty alone, just
in that year and accounted for sixty hundred jobs. And
(25:27):
I also read, and you can attest to this, that
a lot of these therapists aren't even licensed. So this
is a racket that seems to be incredibly profitable and
nobody's really doing the checks and balances with them. Yeah.
So for a number of years, whenever I would tell
my story to people, their very first reaction would all
(25:48):
I mean, it was so predictable. Their first reaction would be, oh,
so you were a bad kid. Hawk you were? You
were a troublemaker, weren't you? You went to one of
those facilities. And so that was our ideology as a culture,
is that these are bad kids and they can't function
in school and there's no other choice, and we have
(26:09):
to send them away because that's the only option. And so,
you know, I think we've kind of embraced this idea
of like, yeah, you get what you deserve, you make
bad choices, this is what happens. And you know, it
shows such a callousness that we have towards young people
and mental health. These are mental health issues. I've not
(26:31):
met one person who has not experienced trauma before they
were sent to a facility like this. So it's the
issue actually bad kids, or is it the fact that
we don't want to recognize that young people have mental
health needs that we are not fulfilling, and we're not
fulfilling in the right way. I mean, even when I
hear you talk about this, I think about like alcoholics
(26:54):
and how alcoholics anonymous. The reason that it works is
because there's a sense of community and it's nurturing, and
that's the opposite of what these are doing. I mean,
these are just horror houses. Really, it's it's the opposite
of everything that you need, especially as a teenager. I mean,
(27:15):
how much was this a year? Uh So, I believe
my mom paid, and I will tell you this was
about seventeen years ago. My mom was paying about five
thousand dollars a month. Now that price has gone up substantially,
and oftentimes caregivers, parents and even states now because they're
(27:36):
now taking children from child welfare, children from juvenile justice
special education, they're paying like sixteen thousand dollars a month.
I mean, they're expensive. This is a lot of money.
So if we want to dig in just for a second,
because I know you were asking about, like, how is
this industry possible? I'll explain some of the logistics because
(27:59):
I think it's actually rather fascinating to understand how we
got to this place, and um, it was a journey
I went on when I started facing this trauma and
then trying to understand, like how is this legal? How
is that legal? For some? So here's the real kicker
is that the facility I went to was not licensed,
It was not accredited, and so I couldn't transfer any
(28:21):
of my academic credits, which meant that I ultimately left
school with a tenth grade education and that created years
of repercussions for me that I'm still dealing with to
this day. It was essentially a guy from Utah who
bought a building in New York, made a website he said,
some mer kids. I think he was like an electrician
(28:43):
before he had no absolutely no knowledge of child development
psychology like anything. We didn't have any nurses there. There
were no psychiatrists, like it was just some some guy.
How is that possible? I know, it's a really good question.
So when these facilities first came about in the like
(29:04):
late fifties, sixties and seventies, is really when this industry
took off. They would spring up in little towns, you know,
mid America, UM specifically Utah, and at the time people
had issues with it, like it's actually incredible that we
started this conversation way back then and little to no
(29:26):
progress has been made. But people would question. Let's use
pro Volcanian School for an example, which is the topic
of our podcast, Trapping Treatment. So when pro Volcanian School
popped up, the community immediately said, wait a second, they're
keeping kids in shackles. How is this a school. This
is not a school. And so then they said, but
(29:48):
it's also not really a detention center, and it's also
not a mental health facility. And so these facilities have
always existed in this void of no one really knowing
what they are or how they identify. So when we
look at regulation of an industry, a lot of that
depends on the license of the business or school or
(30:10):
detention center, right, and so once we know what category
it falls in, then we know what regulations apply to it.
But because these facilities always said nope, no, nope, we're
not a school, we're not a detention facility, we're not
a mental health provider like, it's been virtually untouchable from
any kind of regulatory body. So government has been very
(30:33):
hesitant to want to intervene because for a lot of
years these facilities were all private pay private dollars, so
they saw it as private industry, we can't really regulate,
we can't interfere, And so that's actually really changed in
the past twenty years. And now we're seeing a large
number over a hundred thousand young people every year through
(30:56):
public placements, child welfare, juvenile justice, special education, who are
entering these facilities, So that dynamic has changed a little bit,
but still the oversight is horrendously lacking. And and does
insurance now play a parton this? Does Medicaid cover any
of this when they send their kids to these places?
(31:18):
So private insurance largely will not pay. Medicaid does pay
for some facility. So here's kind of the real kicker
is that from state to state licensure and licensure requirements
varies drastically. But let me ask you this. If I
started one of these places, Okay, I'm going to buy
a building and I'm I'm going to just say, oh,
(31:39):
I've started a treatment center for teens, and let's say
that you know it doesn't comply in any way that
you know kids have gotten hurt. They could shut me down,
but I could reopen another place down the street if
I wanted not even down the street. You could do
it in the same building. You could call yourself a
different name, have same residents there, same roster of staff,
(32:01):
and then call yourself a different name, And this happens
a lot. Is the government starting to intervene more now? Yes?
And no? Okay, So fundamentally there's some issues with the
government intervening. Because let's use Massachusetts for an example. Of
Massachusetts does not require therapeutic boarding schools to be licensed
(32:23):
in the state, so they're not even required to be
licensed at all, which then means that they're not required
to report anything. The state doesn't know how many people
are in there. They also don't know if there's been
any deaths, if there's been any physical restraints taking place.
They have no idea, so their access to that information
is really lacking. I'll give you another example in Utah.
(32:46):
Previous to the bill that we just passed, we were
able to pass in a bill on which changed some
of these requirements. But previous to that, facilities were only
required to report incidents that required more than first aid
once a month. Okay, So that kind of leaves a
lot to the imagination. More than first aid. What does
(33:08):
that mean is this hospitalization. Is this a death once
a month? So that can leave you to question that
even when the state got those reports, they're not going
to that facility to investigate something that happened a month ago. Um,
they kept those reports. I'm, you know, making some broad
assumptions here, but they kept those reports stacked on a
desk somewhere, and and there was not actual advocacy or
(33:31):
investigations taking place, which is again part of this issue
of even if there is oversight, what are the actual
practices of the oversight? Are they meaningful? Jesus? I also
read that at Provocani in school, they wouldn't even give
you a name. They wouldn't call you Caroline, They'd call
you three oh nine. You know, they just give you
(33:51):
a number. I mean, that's how dehumanizing it was. And
that was the point um interesting story. So the man
who owned the facility that I went to a family,
A member of his reached out to us last year,
and this family member said, look, I am deeply embarrassed
(34:14):
about what my family has done to you and to
the entire survivor community. I want to help. So I
had an opportunity to meet with him in person, and
like like finally, like I'm sure you can imagine, Like
I had so many questions and so um. The one
thing that I asked, out of many things, but the
one thing that I asked was was it ever about
(34:36):
helping children? Was it ever about helping? Because I I
felt like inside myself, I really wanted to believe that
somewhere along the way things just got out of control.
But I wanted to at least believe that the intention
was to help. And what he said to me was
he kind of laughed, and he said, it was never
(34:58):
They knew what they were doing was it was never
about helping you guys. They looked at you as a commodity,
as a number, as a dollar sign profit profit mm hmm.
You know, it's it's amazing to me that most of
these facilities didn't have a licensed nurse or any real
health care because they were giving these kids injections of sedatives.
(35:21):
It's it's it's crazy, it's illegal. So interestingly enough, I
suffered from migraines, and you know, at one point in time,
I was having a migraine so horrific that I went
to the hospital and they ended up giving me like
a cocktail of bena drill and like another antihistamine. And
(35:41):
so those sedatives that they use on these kids is
usually Bena drill mixed with Howdall, which is like a
very heavy ani psychotic. Jesus, and so I just got
the bena drill half of it right, not even the antipsychotic. Really,
I was like, give me anything. And when I tell
you that, for hours after that, I could not even
(36:04):
willingly open my eyes. I was out. I was incapacitated,
not in control of my body. And so what we're
seeing coming out of these facilities is that they're using
these sedatives so often that it's leaving children debilitated and
unable to advocate for themselves. If it takes you two
days to recover and then a couple of days later
(36:26):
you get another one, I mean you're always in this
state of not being able to function well. And imagine
the sexual abuse that happens there. I mean you're practically
being roofied in this facility. Yes, and there's actually a
really horrific documented case of this, as there are several,
but again going back to not everything is required to
be reported, and some things just aren't found out until
(36:49):
you know much later. But there was a Devereaux facility
in Philadelphia eight year old little girl Jesus who had disability,
and they had inoculate at her with that seditive and
unfortunately she was horrifically assaulted. How why was an eight
year old in a facility like this? So some of
(37:10):
these facilities take children as young as six who could
just be autistic, right absolutely, who could just have some
other issue that they're not saying, Yes, God, Caroline, it's
so awful, it is really awful. And um there is
currently a facility in Massachusetts and and the population that
they served there is largely autistic individuals. And so they
(37:35):
use a device called g E D and it is
an electro shock device. And I'll admit I was a
little bit naive. I didn't really know. I didn't know
about this style of intervention, and so I like wanted
to believe, Like my rational mind was like, oh, maybe
maybe it just feels like a little pinch, Maybe it's
(37:55):
not that bad. And um, So Neuroclastic an organization called
neuro Plastic. Please look them up. If you are a
parent that has a child with disability or who is neurodiverse,
please look up Neuroclastic they're incredible. But they issued a
report on this issue, and one of the things that
this report cited is that that electro shock is actually
(38:17):
ten times more powerful than a stun gun, ten times
more powerful. And you know, it's claimed that this device
is being used to intervene on self harming behavior. So
if someone is smashing their head against a wall or
doing something that could cause incredible damage. Um, But that's
actually not what's being reported from the facility. It's for
(38:39):
things as simple as standing up without permission. Um. Very
similar to the allowances of the facility that I went to.
Oh my god, Caroline, and we'll be right back, and
(39:01):
we're back. So a lot of these survivors there's got
to be residual mental health issues with them. I have
read a lot about PTSD with some of the people
that happened later on. So tell me a little bit
about that. Well, there's a really high rate of suicide,
(39:22):
and there's also a really high rate of addiction and
also abusive relationships afterwards. So even myself, I'm a domestic
violence survivor and I went into a relationship which you know,
in hindsight, it's wild. I was almost seventeen when I
left the facility, and then I was in this relationship
when I was nineteen, and so you know, if you
(39:44):
look at just the dynamic of like how much I
had to silence my own feelings in the facility of
like this is abuse, this is wrong run you know.
So then when I'm out and actually having relationships with people, UM,
I had already silenced that part of me that would said,
don't tolerate this, get safe. And we see that, I mean,
(40:04):
our survivors have just like an outstanding amount of chronic
PTSD chronic illnesses. We also see a lot of that
too in our population. And so we're actually in the
middle of developing an academic study where we'll be able
to look at kind of the life of the survivors.
So we're going to be asking them questions about what
(40:26):
happened before, what happened while you were there, and then
what was your life like afterwards, So we can start
to establish um, these unique experiences as being a population
in and of itself, so hopefully we can then start
to develop treatment for it. So tell us where the
fight is now, what's going on today? So I'm the
co CEO of an organization called unsilenced, and we are
(40:50):
a group of survivors with lived experience of this industry.
People who have gone to ranches, boot camps, wilderness programs,
behavior modification facilities, psychiatric units, all of the above, people
who have experienced institutional abuse. And we're doing several things.
The biggest and probably most noteworthy right now is the
(41:10):
Accountability for Congregate Care Act, which we have actually been
able to partner with Paris Hilton to get exposure on
this issue. The Accountability for Congregate Care Act does several things,
and I will say this is the first step of many.
There's no miracle piece of legislation out there that's going
to shut this industry down. It's just impossible. By now,
(41:33):
this industry has actually infiltrated so much of the mental
health system in psychiatric facilities that we have to do
a little bit of some untangling, right what is true
mental health treatment and what is this, you know, behavior modification,
and where are the lines? What is therapeutic and what's not?
And so what this bill will do is it will
(41:54):
create a very comprehensive bill of rights for young people
in these facilities. So it's everything from the right to
be free from physical restraint, the right to access education,
the right to deny gynecological exams. UM. Forced pap smears
are a thing that happens in these programs, not all
(42:15):
of them, but some. And so we we outline, you know,
all all of the hallmarks of what we're seeing. And
then what we do in this bill is we are
asking states to come up with minimum licensure requirements that
would support and uphold this bill of rights. So this
needs to trickle down to the state level where we're
making sure that these things are not happening. UM. On
(42:39):
top of that, one of the rights that we have
listed in this bill is the right to recourse, the
right to be able to contact a protection and advocacy agency,
and the right to report the abuses that are happening. Right,
so that has always been a big wall and being
able to have these young people advocate for themsel else
(43:00):
is even access to a telephone, access to say what's happening?
Is happening. The other thing that this bill will do
is it will create funding for protection and advocacy agencies.
So every single state has something called a Protection and
Advocacy Agency or pen A, and p and a s
are allowed to go in any facility or anywhere where
(43:22):
disabled people exist. So they're largely known as like disability
rights centers or disability law centers. Across the US, every
single state has one, and they can enter any facility
at any time. They can investigate, they can talk to
the young people there in private, they can talk to
staff in private, they can write reports, they can make
recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services and
(43:45):
also to the Department of Justice, and they can also litigate.
So they have a lot of power, and we feel
that it's necessary at this point to have a third
party be able to, you know, intervene and inspect and
take action on behalf of these young people. So it's
it's a little bit like the foster care system. You
have an outside person that comes in on behalf of
(44:06):
the children and interviews them and make sure that the
place that they're dwelling in is safe. Similar. Yes, so,
and and that's actually a really interesting point. So we
have child abuse response systems in our nation, like like
you said, cps UM, but what's really strange is that
they will only respond to child abuse that's happening in
(44:28):
the home. If it's happening in a facility that's out
of their jurisdiction, and so oftentimes when abuse is reported
it falls onto law enforcement. Well, law enforcement is already stressed, overstrained,
and usually they just looked for like was a law broken,
yes or no? Was someone injured? And even then it
usually doesn't result in any kind of meaningful action. There
(44:51):
was a guy who worked at Red Rock and he
reported he said, look, these kids are not being fed properly,
they're being threatened. And he got fired for it and saying, hey, listen,
there's you know, there's abuse happening. So it I can't
believe that this doesn't already exist, that these people aren't
watched all the time. These programs are especially litigious, and
(45:16):
you know, when they've got a bank roll of millions
upon millions of dollars every year, it's very easy for
them to take people to court. And that's historically has
just always been what's happened to whistleblowers. And I'm actually
expecting to find something in my mail any day now
saying that they're wanting to take me to quarter you know,
(45:37):
cease and desist or something like that. Yeah, if you're
gonna if you're gonna make noise that's gonna probably upset
them exactly. So you know, we'll see what happens over
the course of this next year as we continue to
push forward with the Accountability for Congregate Care Act. I
am aware that these providers already know what we're doing,
and they are preparing their counter argument, and so you know,
(45:59):
it'll be interesting next year. But I do hope that
this bill gets past and and urge your lawmakers or
urge your congress people to get involved with this issue.
It is a bipartisan issue as well. I just want
to emphasize that very important. It's affecting every community in
every state, and is this the best way to support you?
(46:21):
That the best thing we can do. So there's a
lot of ways that you can get involved. I would say, immediately,
go to our website Unsilenced dot org. You can email
me directly. I will give you all of my contact information.
Go to our website. We have something right now called
a street team, uh and we're a remote organization, so
(46:42):
everything that we do is in the online space. This
is our battleground. And so we might say to the
street team, okay, everyone head over to Twitter. We need
you to tag X, Y, z politician on this post.
Let's get attention to make this go viral, and so
we've been able to really apply a lot of pressure
and making movement that way. Uh So, like, get involved.
(47:03):
If you have someone in your life who's been affected
by this industry, please give them our information. Like I said,
our website is on silenced dot org. You can also
find us on Instagram, TikTok. We're also on Facebook and
our handle is unsilenced underscore. Now is there any merit
into creating a website for parents that basically tells you
(47:27):
about these particular schools. Interestingly enough, we have a massive database.
If you go to our website and you click on
I think it's Investigations, and you'll see something there that
says facility archive and click on that and it's going
to show you a map and you can hover over
each state and it will highlight that state and you
(47:49):
can click into it and then it will list all
of the facilities in that state. If you click into
a facility, it's going to show you a long list
of everything from DHS records, police records, um news articles,
survivor stories, anything that we can document and get our
hands on. We put into this database. Um our website
(48:10):
also has a list of different red flags to watch
out for. So if you are trying to find help
for the young people in your life, you can find
some recommendations there and we'd be more than happy to
find those resources for you as well. So if you're
not finding it on our site, reach out to us. Yes,
the irony that treatment leaves a community of survivors. So
tell me about your podcast that that Paris Hilton produces. Yes, So,
(48:35):
Trapped in Treatment is our podcast which exposes the troubled
team industry. And so we actually document the history of
pro Vocanian School, which is the facility that Paris went to,
and we take you inside the journey of showing up
at the facility, living there for however long you're there, um,
(48:59):
experiencing that type of discipline, and then we go into um,
you know, what life is like after, you know. Ultimately
we talked about the movement and and everything that we're doing. Now.
Oh God, I can't wait to listen. You know, you
need a season at least to go through everything that
you guys have gone through. I'm so sorry that you
(49:19):
went through this, I really am. My heartbreaks for you
and every survivor that had to deal with this, especially
because their children, children, they their frontal lobe hasn't developed yet,
and to be put through all of this should be illegal.
So thank you for sharing your story. Well, thank you,
and I appreciate you, you know, sharing the platform, and
(49:41):
it's been an honor. Thank you. Usually at the end
of Go Ask Alli, I have my guest asked me
a question, but I've been so fascinated by what Caroline
has been talking about that I sort of blew through
it because I wanted every last minute with her to
talk about this, because it's it's unimaginable, I mean really
(50:03):
unfathomable that these institutions still exist and are not regulated.
And I have to say I have great empathy, and
I feel so honored to be able to talk to
Caroline and and my hats off to the survivors that
are going into Congress now and fighting to help people
(50:24):
not only who are incarcerated now, but in the future.
And my feeling is, if legislation is not passed correctly,
we got to close these places down. Thank you for
listening to Go Ask Ali. Check out our show notes
for a lot more information. Be sure to subscribe rate
(50:45):
and review the podcast, and follow me on social media
on Twitter at Ali Wentworth and on Instagram at the
Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me
a question or suggest a guest or a topic to
dig into, I would love to hear from you, and
there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can
call or text me at three to three four six
three five six, or you can email a voice memo
(51:07):
right now from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast
at gmail dot com. If you leave a question, I
just might hear it and go ask ally. Go Ask
Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership
with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
(51:27):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
I'm admitting it. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you don't
keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
thank you truly. If you can shine as you're going
to death, you can shine as you're going through Middle Lange, Right, Yeah, like,
(00:24):
why not start now? I'm going to enjoy my life.
At the end of the day, I'm just a little
particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah,
just aspect or aspects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm
Ali Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I
can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers
(00:46):
and getting dirty. Okay, this episode is a little bit dark. Today.
I'm talking about what is called the troubled teen industry,
which I have been obsessed with for some time. There
are hundreds of teen rehab facilities and wilderness camps and
residential treatment centers all over the country that had been
riddled with reports of physical, emotional and sexual abuse for decades,
(01:10):
and they are absolutely not regulated by our government. So
you might have heard that Paris Hilton, who was abused
herself in one of these facilities in Utah, went before
the state Congress in February last year calling for legislation
to reform the troubled teen industry. Utah's Bill sp one
passed in April last year. In October, she and other survivors,
(01:32):
including our guest, went to Washington to begin the work
for legislation at the federal level. And I'm honored to
have my guest, Caroline call here today to talk about
her personal experience in one of these places when she
was a teenager, as well as her current advocacy work
to bring major changes to the way the industry is conducted.
Caroline Cole is an entrepreneur, activist, and trauma focused women's
(01:56):
transformation coach. She's the director of government relations for a nonprofit,
Breaking Code Silence. Breaking Code Silence is a network of
institutional abuse survivors who are or were incarcerated in the
US troubled team industry. Caroline is a co host of
the new podcast executive produced by Paris Hilton, called Trapped
and Treatment. Please be aware that there is some discussion
(02:20):
of assault and abuse which might be triggering for some people.
Caroline Cole, I'm so happy to have you on this
podcast today. I have a lot of questions. Thank you
so much for having me, and I hope to answer
some of those today. Well, I won't let you off
until you have so it might be a five hour podcast.
(02:40):
So let me start by saying that I have a
few friends who have teenagers that were and are exhibiting
acute anxiety. Um. I have friends whose children have had
addiction issues, and everybody circles around this idea of sending
their team to they call it boarding school. Unfortunately, the
(03:04):
people I know whose kids went there, it was not
a successful situation. And I've read, of course about what
Paris Hilton dealt with, and I've read so many other reports,
even in the Salt Lake City Tribune, about how these
camps i'll call them, are not monitored, are for profit,
(03:27):
and are riddled with reports of abuse. So before we
get into all that, and just so my listeners know,
Caroline is nodding knowingly, do you mind telling me about
your own experience? Can we start from your personal journey? Absolutely? Um,
So I also went to a facility like the ones
(03:50):
that we're hearing about today, and uh, the one that
I went to was actually in Upstate New York and
it was called the Academy at Ivy Ridge and it
was owned by a parent company that was based out
of Utah called WASP and that stood for the Worldwide
Association of Specialty Programs. And so, you know, at the
(04:10):
time I was fourteen, I was going through a lot
of the things that fourteen year olds go through. You're
figuring out your place in the world, your hormonal you've
got you know, friend drama, and you're approaching this time
in your life where you're expected to be independent and
have your life figured out, and there's a lot of
you know, anxiety, and so you know, at that time,
(04:31):
I admittedly had been struggling with some depression, anxiety, um
not getting along with my family, and also trying to
keep up with school and it just felt like a
lot of pressure. So at the time, my mom, like
a lot of parents now, got onto Google and she
started searching helped for my daughter struggling teen teen resources
(04:54):
and was looking for anything that she could find. And
so she had found this website called teen help dot
com mom, and it looked like outwardly, it looked like
a like a referral service almost right, like they were
just like a resource center that could help you find,
you know, adequate services for for your children. So she
(05:14):
got on the phone with them, and you know, they
and as they do, sold her this story that, Wow, no,
your daughter is headed down the wrong path. If you
do not take immediate action, she is going to die.
She is going to end up in jail. So were you,
I mean, it doesn't sound like you were exhibiting anything
that wasn't sort of normal teenage stuff. Why would your
(05:36):
mother even google this to begin with? Why would she
think to send you away? Were you shoplifting? Were you?
I mean, were you acting out in such a big
way that she felt she needed to look for help
that way. So at that point I had developed a
lot of resentment towards my mom, and you know, she
was carrying on her own relationships and dating someone. And
(06:00):
you know, at that time too, I was very much,
like I said, kind of trying to find my place
in the world. And so I was super into music.
I was into punk rock. I wanted a mohawk more
than anybody, and I was obsessed with like late seventies,
you know, I thought I was going to be a
music journalist, and so I was like wearing fish nets
and my mom was like, no, you're fourteen, you can't
wear fish nets, Like what are you doing? And I
(06:22):
was putting on thick, dark eyeliner and a lot of
that scared her, right, And so that was a good
majority of it. I did not use drugs. I didn't
sneak out. I wasn't running away, you know, things like that. Um.
And not to justify I do want to mention, though
not to not to justify that even those things would
be okay to send your child away. I think really
(06:44):
what we need to focus on is community based resources
and and finding assistance within the home setting. So I
just wanted to make that clear. So yeah, you know,
she looked at these people as knowing what they were doing,
and they sold her this idea and she'll tell you this, Um.
They sold her this idea of family reunification, right, and
(07:04):
that's saying true to her. She was like, yeah, my
family is fractured. This is not my daughter. We don't
have the relationship that we used to have. I want
a unified family. And that was the package that they
sold her. Yeah, any parent that here's family reunification is
going to go sign me up of course exactly, So
how did you agree to go? So I actually didn't
know that I was going, and you'll hear this a
(07:27):
lot through other survivors who tell their stories. Um, at
the time, I actually thought that I was going to
summer camp, and I was really excited. I had like
my Douffel bag packed. I had my little canteen in
there with my initials on it, and I'm thinking, I'm
going to summer camp and this is gonna be fun.
And it was the summer right before I started high school,
so I had all of that on my mind too,
(07:48):
about you know, starting high school and being with my friends.
So did your mother tell you you were going to
summer camp? She did? She did. And oftentimes I will
say that's usually encouraged by the program off and tell
parents and say, oh, see that you guys are going
on a family trip or you guys are you know,
doing something else. And so I think it was around
four or five o'clock mid afternoon, and my door flew open.
(08:13):
I see this man and a woman standing there, and
they're dressed all in black. Never seen these people in
my life. Jesus cursed. They come in, gun's blazing, They're like,
you're under our custody now, don't make any sudden movements.
And I had never been through anything like that before,
so I didn't know what to do or and I
didn't plan on fighting or doing anything. Um, But I
(08:34):
cooperated with them and they ended up staying in a
hotel with me that night in downtown San Diego, and
then the next day we flew all the way to
New York, where they then handed me off to two
other transporters who then drove me, I believe, about six
and a half hours to upstate New York. And what
are you thinking the whole time? You knew you weren't
(08:55):
going to play archery and make ceramics? Did It's right
at this point, you know, it's actually kind of horrible
because I was that naive. I thought, I really thought,
because they told me once we were in the car
that I was going to boarding school. So I was
kind of like, hell, yeah, get me out of here.
This might be awesome and this is going to feel
(09:17):
like college, is what I was thinking. Um, But it
was very apparent that it was an institution. All of
the doors were magnetized, they were long, white cinder block hallways.
I mean this was not a glamorous place. Yeah, this
was This sounds more girl interrupted than like woo who
summer camp. It got very real, very fast. Okay, yeah, so,
(09:41):
uh were you abused? Like did that happen? Were you?
Were you starving? Like these are some of the things
I've read. So at this facility, we were not allowed
to talk ever. Ever, I was not allowed to look
at you and make eye contact. I could not move
without permission. So and by move I mean literally turned
(10:04):
my head, I mean to stand up, to move at all.
They would consider that to be like an attempt at
running away or you know, look even looking out windows.
We weren't allowed to look out windows. Um. That was
considered you know, making plans to run away. And so
if you were to receive a like demerit um or
(10:25):
what they called a correction, If you received a correction
like that, you would lose all of your points and
all of your levels, which essentially meant that you would
have to start over. That would add many months to
your program. There for very very very minor things. Did
you have a roommate. We had what they called bunk buddies,
and so you would be in a room there would
be four people to a room. What was allowed in
(10:47):
the room was very very little. You were allowed to blanket,
you were allowed a couple of uniforms. No shoes were allowed,
and so you wouldn't try to run away. Um. All
of the windows had bars on them with motions and
there's on the outside. And we were never allowed to
turn off our lights or shut the door. So this
is prison. I mean this sounds like a state prison
to me. Absolutely. So it was always, um a lurking
(11:12):
threat that if you were to be obstinate in any way,
and by obstinate, I mean telling the dorm parents I'm
not doing that, or stepping out of line, or making
it obvious that you were being defiant, UM, you would
be physically restrained. What is physically restrained? Me, I'm happy
that you're asking that, because I think a lot of
people just assume what it means. UM, So what would
(11:36):
happen is, let's say I stepped out of line. We
were all expected to stand in a line in line
structure military style. So if I were to step out
of line and talk back to a dorm parents say
I'm not doing this anymore, I'm done with this, she
would have a walkie talkie and she would say backup,
staff and um, about four or five male staff members
would come running from wherever they were and essentially they
(11:59):
would tackle you and they would shove your face into
the ground, they would twist your arms behind your back,
they would sit on your legs, and they would pile
on top of you until you surrendered. And even if
you're not having that happened to you, it's a very
traumatic to witness to hear, because these are your friends,
these are people you care about, of course, and and
(12:22):
that was the game. That's how they got us to comply.
If you still didn't want to comply, after that, they
would send you to intervention, which, in so many words,
it's essentially solitary confinement. You're stuck in a tiny room,
no windows, center block walls, by yourself, and you're there
until you say, okay, I'll get with the program, will
(12:42):
do what you want me to do. Did you try
to reach your mother and to get me the hell
out of here? So it was explained to us upon
entering this facility that if we tried to communicate that
to our parents, that that was manipulation and that we
were lying, and our parents were already primed and told that, like, look,
(13:02):
your your child's going to say that they hate it here.
They're going to say that all this bad stuff is
happening to them, they're manipulating you. Don't fall for it.
This is the same behavior that they've had it home, right,
So then you have a parent we're like, yeah, maybe
maybe their kids were lying to them, maybe they were
sneaking out. And so they hear this and they're like,
oh no, that's what they did at home. I can't
(13:24):
fall into that. I have to be strong and give
them this tough love. So there was that, and then
I want to explain just one other part of this program.
So you had to earn a phone call home. So
I actually didn't have a phone call with my mom
for about a year, so twelve months a year, which
is a very long time when you're fourteen. It was
(13:46):
your was your mother freaking out? I mean, didn't she
want to hear from you? Was? Oh, of course, didn't
she think that was concerning And she did good. But
at the time, again you're being told by these people
who are supposedly professionals that this is part of the program.
I know it's hard right now, but stay strong. Mom
and dad stay strong. Um, this is gonna be for
(14:06):
their own best interest, right, They've got to break away
from you, and they've got to find themselves, and it's
all a part of this treatment plan. But at the
same time, even if we tried to write some of
these things home, I mean many times this happened to me,
they would actually redact the letters with black sharpie, or
they would not send them at all, and you would
be brought in for a meeting asking why you're manipulating.
(14:28):
And so you have no access to telephones, to internet,
to even TV. We had no idea what was going
on in the world during that time, no news, no
like you're cut off. So in that same no, I
will explain just one more thing is that if you,
let's say, tried to run away, because you're thinking, I'm
going to go find a phone and as soon as
(14:48):
I get a phone, I'm going to tell my family
what's happening. You know, we were told on the daily
that if someone tried to run, we were to chase
them down and we were to break their legs and
stop them by any means possible. So you knew that
if you try to run, it's not only staff members
chasing you, it's your friends, it's everybody. You've got forty
(15:12):
people hunting you, doing anything to stop you. It's terrifying.
It's terrifying. Even listening to this, I can't imagine. So,
how long were you in the facility? I was there
for two and a half years, Caroline. That's a long time.
It's a very long time. Two and a half years.
(15:32):
What did you do for two and a half years?
Did you just become a shell of yourself? I mean,
did they break you down? So when I first got there,
the first thing that I noticed, and it's just it's
giving me goose bumps right now even remembering this. But
first night that I got there, I slept out in
the hallway and when I woke up, there were girls
(15:55):
all around me and they were lining up and they
had their uniform and their toilet trees in their hands,
and they were lying end up, standing by the bathroom
ready to go in and get ready for the day.
And uh, I remember looking at how strangely hollow they were,
and you could see it in their eyes, in their face,
and so you know, we're social creatures. And going for
(16:19):
two years of not talking, not being able to reach
out in hug someone or say I love you, or
you just excuse me or thank you. We're having that connection,
you turn inside yourself. It's the only way to keep
your mind connected um to reality, to what you're doing.
And of course you're somewhere where you don't want to be,
(16:41):
and so the whole time you're playing movies in your mind,
trying to keep yourself hopeful, trying to keep yourself thinking
about when you get out. Um, okay, so what was
the worst thing that happened of all the atrocities for
you personally, That probably ways over and over in your mind.
(17:02):
For me, it was a lot of what I witnessed.
So I never while I was there, had experienced physical restraint,
mostly because I complied to a fault. I was quiet,
I kept to myself. I minded whatever anyone told me
to do, which is a weird also kind of trauma,
(17:23):
because you start to um, you feel broken in the
sense that you complied so much to the people that
were abusing you, and so that isn't just a trauma
in and of itself. Being in that environment alone is traumatizing.
Seeing it happen to your friend and knowing that it
could be you next, you know, you stand there with
your eyes forward, head down, heart pounding, knees shaking in panic.
(17:49):
And so for me, there's a memory. Um, so there
was one student there and she had decided that it
was enough and she needed to do anything possible to
make it to a hospital to be able to reach
her parents, and so she actually threw herself over the
second story floor of a stair rail. And UM, those
(18:10):
sounds will for every day in my mind. You could
hear gasps and people go, and then you hear a noise,
and then something hit the ground and you hear people saying,
oh my god, she jumped, and and again we're not
allowed to talk, so you were just hearing staff members
reacting to this. And um, there were a lot of
instances like that. I mean, that's one. That's one I
(18:32):
have to tell you. Listening to this, so it sounds
like you're pitching me a plot for a horror film. Seriously,
let's take a short break, all right, let's get back
to it. And how did you eventually get out? Why
(18:55):
were you released after two and a half years on
good behavior. So it was a very long time. By
the time I left, I had been there out of
the entire facility. I had been there for the second longest,
and so the only other person who had been there
longer was my dear friend to this day, Monica, and
(19:17):
she had gotten there two weeks before me, and so
we left at the same time. And we actually got
to leave because we had completed the program, which means
that we had climbed up through all of the levels
and all of the ranks that we were required. There
were six levels in total, but yeah, we completed the program,
and at that point, you know, it was a huge
(19:38):
honor to have graduated. We attended our brainwashy final seminar
with our parents and then after that we were allowed
to go home, and you know, it seemed unreal at
that time. Did you tell your parents everything that happened
at the time, I didn't, hm. And really why that
(19:58):
was is because it had been thrilled into us that
if we complained about the program, that we were not
working the program, and that meant that we were what
they would call playing the victim. And so if we
were playing the victim, that means that we were not
ready to go home, right, So it's this whole psychological
thing of if you complain that means you're not ready.
So you learn to just be quiet because you want
(20:19):
to be ready to go home and you don't want
to be sent back. So that was also the fear
that if I look like I'm not going with the program,
then I might get sent back. So tell me about
these seminars. Even though they're going to make me want
to pull my hair up. They're very atrocious. Um there,
they sound like they're probably really CULTI right, they're incredibly culty.
(20:40):
So if you think of this, like what's come out
about Nexium. Are you familiar with the story. Yeah, so, um,
very very very similar self help style. Um, brainwashing and UM.
This kind of ideology came from a cult that started
in the late fifties called sinnol On and they participated
(21:02):
in something called attack therapy, And it was this idea
that if you be rated and belittled someone and like
got inside their mind and their trauma and broke them down,
that you could somehow build them back up. And so
in our facility and in these WASP programs and a
lot of programs like it, they really preach this idea
(21:24):
of accountability, which on on surface level, sounds good, right,
and the worst thing in the world was to be
a victim. Right, You do not want to be a victim.
If you are a victim, you're not working the program,
you're not ready to go home. As I explained, So
essentially what seminars would look like is you would share
your deepest, darkest traumas and then you would be torn
(21:47):
apart in front of a room of about a hundred people.
And some people would share stories of sexual assault or
abuse at the hands of a family member, and then
we would be made to tell that person that they
were a victim, that they were a slot, that they
(22:08):
asked for it, that they needed to be accountable for
the trauma that had happened to them, and it was
applauded if you could make that person break down. Um.
And so you know, there's a lot of trauma for
us too about the things that we've done to other people.
Oh yeah, Um, you know, we were put in positions
(22:29):
where we were forced to be the abuser in a
lot of cases, and that's really heavy to deal with.
Oh god, I'm sure. So did you know anybody that
was sexually abused? Because I know that that's something that
is rampant and threw a lot of these institutions I did,
and with several people. Actually, So there was a woman
(22:53):
at our facility who was the girl's side supervisor, and
she is particularly bitter, gruff, mean woman, and she can
make your life. Help um. So again back to points
and levels. You know, the more points you have, the
higher levels you have, the closer you are to going home.
(23:15):
And she had no problem just snapping her fingers and
ripping that away from you. And so people were very
motivated to comply with whatever she would say or do.
And everybody knew that this person had favorites. She actually
then carried on relationships with these women and I was
(23:35):
witnessed to some of that. I do know that, uh,
the people that she did this too are actively dealing
with this trauma and it's incredibly hard for them. I'm
sure she was a predator and they just sort of
did what they had to do to survive this place. Yeah,
did your mother ever apologize to you? She has, Yeah,
(23:59):
she has very recently. In the situation of where there's
private placement, where a parent is placing a child in
a facility like this, parents are being victimized, They're being conned.
If you look at these websites. Oh, they're the most
gorgeous websites. You log on. You see kids singing Kumbaya
around a campfire. They're smiling, they look like squeaky clean,
(24:21):
like I love you mom and dad. Uh. They look
like everything that a parent with a struggling teenager would want.
And these programs tout things like leadership development and character
building and like even college prep style quality. And it's
just not it is a sham, but it's just a
(24:43):
perfect recipe because you have parents that are just over
their head, and as a parent, I can understand falling
into that trap. So then they get you. They victimize
you in a way so that you can't retaliate, and
you're left with years of trauma and they've just made
(25:04):
a shipload of money. And by the way, you know,
we can't say this is every facility like this. Again,
this is not all schools. But I have read that
in Utah itself, the industry pulled in three hundred and
twenty eight million dollars in revenue in twenty alone, just
in that year and accounted for sixty hundred jobs. And
(25:27):
I also read, and you can attest to this, that
a lot of these therapists aren't even licensed. So this
is a racket that seems to be incredibly profitable and
nobody's really doing the checks and balances with them. Yeah.
So for a number of years, whenever I would tell
my story to people, their very first reaction would all
(25:48):
I mean, it was so predictable. Their first reaction would be, oh,
so you were a bad kid. Hawk you were? You
were a troublemaker, weren't you? You went to one of
those facilities. And so that was our ideology as a culture,
is that these are bad kids and they can't function
in school and there's no other choice, and we have
(26:09):
to send them away because that's the only option. And so,
you know, I think we've kind of embraced this idea
of like, yeah, you get what you deserve, you make
bad choices, this is what happens. And you know, it
shows such a callousness that we have towards young people
and mental health. These are mental health issues. I've not
(26:31):
met one person who has not experienced trauma before they
were sent to a facility like this. So it's the
issue actually bad kids, or is it the fact that
we don't want to recognize that young people have mental
health needs that we are not fulfilling, and we're not
fulfilling in the right way. I mean, even when I
hear you talk about this, I think about like alcoholics
(26:54):
and how alcoholics anonymous. The reason that it works is
because there's a sense of community and it's nurturing, and
that's the opposite of what these are doing. I mean,
these are just horror houses. Really, it's it's the opposite
of everything that you need, especially as a teenager. I mean,
(27:15):
how much was this a year? Uh So, I believe
my mom paid, and I will tell you this was
about seventeen years ago. My mom was paying about five
thousand dollars a month. Now that price has gone up substantially,
and oftentimes caregivers, parents and even states now because they're
(27:36):
now taking children from child welfare, children from juvenile justice
special education, they're paying like sixteen thousand dollars a month.
I mean, they're expensive. This is a lot of money.
So if we want to dig in just for a second,
because I know you were asking about, like, how is
this industry possible? I'll explain some of the logistics because
(27:59):
I think it's actually rather fascinating to understand how we
got to this place, and um, it was a journey
I went on when I started facing this trauma and
then trying to understand, like how is this legal? How
is that legal? For some? So here's the real kicker
is that the facility I went to was not licensed,
It was not accredited, and so I couldn't transfer any
(28:21):
of my academic credits, which meant that I ultimately left
school with a tenth grade education and that created years
of repercussions for me that I'm still dealing with to
this day. It was essentially a guy from Utah who
bought a building in New York, made a website he said,
some mer kids. I think he was like an electrician
(28:43):
before he had no absolutely no knowledge of child development
psychology like anything. We didn't have any nurses there. There
were no psychiatrists, like it was just some some guy.
How is that possible? I know, it's a really good question.
So when these facilities first came about in the like
(29:04):
late fifties, sixties and seventies, is really when this industry
took off. They would spring up in little towns, you know,
mid America, UM specifically Utah, and at the time people
had issues with it, like it's actually incredible that we
started this conversation way back then and little to no
(29:26):
progress has been made. But people would question. Let's use
pro Volcanian School for an example, which is the topic
of our podcast, Trapping Treatment. So when pro Volcanian School
popped up, the community immediately said, wait a second, they're
keeping kids in shackles. How is this a school. This
is not a school. And so then they said, but
(29:48):
it's also not really a detention center, and it's also
not a mental health facility. And so these facilities have
always existed in this void of no one really knowing
what they are or how they identify. So when we
look at regulation of an industry, a lot of that
depends on the license of the business or school or
(30:10):
detention center, right, and so once we know what category
it falls in, then we know what regulations apply to it.
But because these facilities always said nope, no, nope, we're
not a school, we're not a detention facility, we're not
a mental health provider like, it's been virtually untouchable from
any kind of regulatory body. So government has been very
(30:33):
hesitant to want to intervene because for a lot of
years these facilities were all private pay private dollars, so
they saw it as private industry, we can't really regulate,
we can't interfere, And so that's actually really changed in
the past twenty years. And now we're seeing a large
number over a hundred thousand young people every year through
(30:56):
public placements, child welfare, juvenile justice, special education, who are
entering these facilities, So that dynamic has changed a little bit,
but still the oversight is horrendously lacking. And and does
insurance now play a parton this? Does Medicaid cover any
of this when they send their kids to these places?
(31:18):
So private insurance largely will not pay. Medicaid does pay
for some facility. So here's kind of the real kicker
is that from state to state licensure and licensure requirements
varies drastically. But let me ask you this. If I
started one of these places, Okay, I'm going to buy
a building and I'm I'm going to just say, oh,
(31:39):
I've started a treatment center for teens, and let's say
that you know it doesn't comply in any way that
you know kids have gotten hurt. They could shut me down,
but I could reopen another place down the street if
I wanted not even down the street. You could do
it in the same building. You could call yourself a
different name, have same residents there, same roster of staff,
(32:01):
and then call yourself a different name, And this happens
a lot. Is the government starting to intervene more now? Yes?
And no? Okay, So fundamentally there's some issues with the
government intervening. Because let's use Massachusetts for an example. Of
Massachusetts does not require therapeutic boarding schools to be licensed
(32:23):
in the state, so they're not even required to be
licensed at all, which then means that they're not required
to report anything. The state doesn't know how many people
are in there. They also don't know if there's been
any deaths, if there's been any physical restraints taking place.
They have no idea, so their access to that information
is really lacking. I'll give you another example in Utah.
(32:46):
Previous to the bill that we just passed, we were
able to pass in a bill on which changed some
of these requirements. But previous to that, facilities were only
required to report incidents that required more than first aid
once a month. Okay, So that kind of leaves a
lot to the imagination. More than first aid. What does
(33:08):
that mean is this hospitalization. Is this a death once
a month? So that can leave you to question that
even when the state got those reports, they're not going
to that facility to investigate something that happened a month ago. Um,
they kept those reports. I'm, you know, making some broad
assumptions here, but they kept those reports stacked on a
desk somewhere, and and there was not actual advocacy or
(33:31):
investigations taking place, which is again part of this issue
of even if there is oversight, what are the actual
practices of the oversight? Are they meaningful? Jesus? I also
read that at Provocani in school, they wouldn't even give
you a name. They wouldn't call you Caroline, They'd call
you three oh nine. You know, they just give you
(33:51):
a number. I mean, that's how dehumanizing it was. And
that was the point um interesting story. So the man
who owned the facility that I went to a family,
A member of his reached out to us last year,
and this family member said, look, I am deeply embarrassed
(34:14):
about what my family has done to you and to
the entire survivor community. I want to help. So I
had an opportunity to meet with him in person, and
like like finally, like I'm sure you can imagine, Like
I had so many questions and so um. The one
thing that I asked, out of many things, but the
one thing that I asked was was it ever about
(34:36):
helping children? Was it ever about helping? Because I I
felt like inside myself, I really wanted to believe that
somewhere along the way things just got out of control.
But I wanted to at least believe that the intention
was to help. And what he said to me was
he kind of laughed, and he said, it was never
(34:58):
They knew what they were doing was it was never
about helping you guys. They looked at you as a commodity,
as a number, as a dollar sign profit profit mm hmm.
You know, it's it's amazing to me that most of
these facilities didn't have a licensed nurse or any real
health care because they were giving these kids injections of sedatives.
(35:21):
It's it's it's crazy, it's illegal. So interestingly enough, I
suffered from migraines, and you know, at one point in time,
I was having a migraine so horrific that I went
to the hospital and they ended up giving me like
a cocktail of bena drill and like another antihistamine. And
(35:41):
so those sedatives that they use on these kids is
usually Bena drill mixed with Howdall, which is like a
very heavy ani psychotic. Jesus, and so I just got
the bena drill half of it right, not even the antipsychotic. Really,
I was like, give me anything. And when I tell
you that, for hours after that, I could not even
(36:04):
willingly open my eyes. I was out. I was incapacitated,
not in control of my body. And so what we're
seeing coming out of these facilities is that they're using
these sedatives so often that it's leaving children debilitated and
unable to advocate for themselves. If it takes you two
days to recover and then a couple of days later
(36:26):
you get another one, I mean you're always in this
state of not being able to function well. And imagine
the sexual abuse that happens there. I mean you're practically
being roofied in this facility. Yes, and there's actually a
really horrific documented case of this, as there are several,
but again going back to not everything is required to
be reported, and some things just aren't found out until
(36:49):
you know much later. But there was a Devereaux facility
in Philadelphia eight year old little girl Jesus who had disability,
and they had inoculate at her with that seditive and
unfortunately she was horrifically assaulted. How why was an eight
year old in a facility like this? So some of
(37:10):
these facilities take children as young as six who could
just be autistic, right absolutely, who could just have some
other issue that they're not saying, Yes, God, Caroline, it's
so awful, it is really awful. And um there is
currently a facility in Massachusetts and and the population that
they served there is largely autistic individuals. And so they
(37:35):
use a device called g E D and it is
an electro shock device. And I'll admit I was a
little bit naive. I didn't really know. I didn't know
about this style of intervention, and so I like wanted
to believe, Like my rational mind was like, oh, maybe
maybe it just feels like a little pinch, Maybe it's
(37:55):
not that bad. And um, So Neuroclastic an organization called
neuro Plastic. Please look them up. If you are a
parent that has a child with disability or who is neurodiverse,
please look up Neuroclastic they're incredible. But they issued a
report on this issue, and one of the things that
this report cited is that that electro shock is actually
(38:17):
ten times more powerful than a stun gun, ten times
more powerful. And you know, it's claimed that this device
is being used to intervene on self harming behavior. So
if someone is smashing their head against a wall or
doing something that could cause incredible damage. Um, But that's
actually not what's being reported from the facility. It's for
(38:39):
things as simple as standing up without permission. Um. Very
similar to the allowances of the facility that I went to.
Oh my god, Caroline, and we'll be right back, and
(39:01):
we're back. So a lot of these survivors there's got
to be residual mental health issues with them. I have
read a lot about PTSD with some of the people
that happened later on. So tell me a little bit
about that. Well, there's a really high rate of suicide,
(39:22):
and there's also a really high rate of addiction and
also abusive relationships afterwards. So even myself, I'm a domestic
violence survivor and I went into a relationship which you know,
in hindsight, it's wild. I was almost seventeen when I
left the facility, and then I was in this relationship
when I was nineteen, and so you know, if you
(39:44):
look at just the dynamic of like how much I
had to silence my own feelings in the facility of
like this is abuse, this is wrong run you know.
So then when I'm out and actually having relationships with people, UM,
I had already silenced that part of me that would said,
don't tolerate this, get safe. And we see that, I mean,
(40:04):
our survivors have just like an outstanding amount of chronic
PTSD chronic illnesses. We also see a lot of that
too in our population. And so we're actually in the
middle of developing an academic study where we'll be able
to look at kind of the life of the survivors.
So we're going to be asking them questions about what
(40:26):
happened before, what happened while you were there, and then
what was your life like afterwards, So we can start
to establish um, these unique experiences as being a population
in and of itself, so hopefully we can then start
to develop treatment for it. So tell us where the
fight is now, what's going on today? So I'm the
co CEO of an organization called unsilenced, and we are
(40:50):
a group of survivors with lived experience of this industry.
People who have gone to ranches, boot camps, wilderness programs,
behavior modification facilities, psychiatric units, all of the above, people
who have experienced institutional abuse. And we're doing several things.
The biggest and probably most noteworthy right now is the
(41:10):
Accountability for Congregate Care Act, which we have actually been
able to partner with Paris Hilton to get exposure on
this issue. The Accountability for Congregate Care Act does several things,
and I will say this is the first step of many.
There's no miracle piece of legislation out there that's going
to shut this industry down. It's just impossible. By now,
(41:33):
this industry has actually infiltrated so much of the mental
health system in psychiatric facilities that we have to do
a little bit of some untangling, right what is true
mental health treatment and what is this, you know, behavior modification,
and where are the lines? What is therapeutic and what's not?
And so what this bill will do is it will
(41:54):
create a very comprehensive bill of rights for young people
in these facilities. So it's everything from the right to
be free from physical restraint, the right to access education,
the right to deny gynecological exams. UM. Forced pap smears
are a thing that happens in these programs, not all
(42:15):
of them, but some. And so we we outline, you know,
all all of the hallmarks of what we're seeing. And
then what we do in this bill is we are
asking states to come up with minimum licensure requirements that
would support and uphold this bill of rights. So this
needs to trickle down to the state level where we're
making sure that these things are not happening. UM. On
(42:39):
top of that, one of the rights that we have
listed in this bill is the right to recourse, the
right to be able to contact a protection and advocacy agency,
and the right to report the abuses that are happening. Right,
so that has always been a big wall and being
able to have these young people advocate for themsel else
(43:00):
is even access to a telephone, access to say what's happening?
Is happening. The other thing that this bill will do
is it will create funding for protection and advocacy agencies.
So every single state has something called a Protection and
Advocacy Agency or pen A, and p and a s
are allowed to go in any facility or anywhere where
(43:22):
disabled people exist. So they're largely known as like disability
rights centers or disability law centers. Across the US, every
single state has one, and they can enter any facility
at any time. They can investigate, they can talk to
the young people there in private, they can talk to
staff in private, they can write reports, they can make
recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services and
(43:45):
also to the Department of Justice, and they can also litigate.
So they have a lot of power, and we feel
that it's necessary at this point to have a third
party be able to, you know, intervene and inspect and
take action on behalf of these young people. So it's
it's a little bit like the foster care system. You
have an outside person that comes in on behalf of
(44:06):
the children and interviews them and make sure that the
place that they're dwelling in is safe. Similar. Yes, so,
and and that's actually a really interesting point. So we
have child abuse response systems in our nation, like like
you said, cps UM, but what's really strange is that
they will only respond to child abuse that's happening in
(44:28):
the home. If it's happening in a facility that's out
of their jurisdiction, and so oftentimes when abuse is reported
it falls onto law enforcement. Well, law enforcement is already stressed, overstrained,
and usually they just looked for like was a law broken,
yes or no? Was someone injured? And even then it
usually doesn't result in any kind of meaningful action. There
(44:51):
was a guy who worked at Red Rock and he
reported he said, look, these kids are not being fed properly,
they're being threatened. And he got fired for it and saying, hey, listen,
there's you know, there's abuse happening. So it I can't
believe that this doesn't already exist, that these people aren't
watched all the time. These programs are especially litigious, and
(45:16):
you know, when they've got a bank roll of millions
upon millions of dollars every year, it's very easy for
them to take people to court. And that's historically has
just always been what's happened to whistleblowers. And I'm actually
expecting to find something in my mail any day now
saying that they're wanting to take me to quarter you know,
(45:37):
cease and desist or something like that. Yeah, if you're
gonna if you're gonna make noise that's gonna probably upset
them exactly. So you know, we'll see what happens over
the course of this next year as we continue to
push forward with the Accountability for Congregate Care Act. I
am aware that these providers already know what we're doing,
and they are preparing their counter argument, and so you know,
(45:59):
it'll be interesting next year. But I do hope that
this bill gets past and and urge your lawmakers or
urge your congress people to get involved with this issue.
It is a bipartisan issue as well. I just want
to emphasize that very important. It's affecting every community in
every state, and is this the best way to support you?
(46:21):
That the best thing we can do. So there's a
lot of ways that you can get involved. I would say, immediately,
go to our website Unsilenced dot org. You can email
me directly. I will give you all of my contact information.
Go to our website. We have something right now called
a street team, uh and we're a remote organization, so
(46:42):
everything that we do is in the online space. This
is our battleground. And so we might say to the
street team, okay, everyone head over to Twitter. We need
you to tag X, Y, z politician on this post.
Let's get attention to make this go viral, and so
we've been able to really apply a lot of pressure
and making movement that way. Uh So, like, get involved.
(47:03):
If you have someone in your life who's been affected
by this industry, please give them our information. Like I said,
our website is on silenced dot org. You can also
find us on Instagram, TikTok. We're also on Facebook and
our handle is unsilenced underscore. Now is there any merit
into creating a website for parents that basically tells you
(47:27):
about these particular schools. Interestingly enough, we have a massive database.
If you go to our website and you click on
I think it's Investigations, and you'll see something there that
says facility archive and click on that and it's going
to show you a map and you can hover over
each state and it will highlight that state and you
(47:49):
can click into it and then it will list all
of the facilities in that state. If you click into
a facility, it's going to show you a long list
of everything from DHS records, police records, um news articles,
survivor stories, anything that we can document and get our
hands on. We put into this database. Um our website
(48:10):
also has a list of different red flags to watch
out for. So if you are trying to find help
for the young people in your life, you can find
some recommendations there and we'd be more than happy to
find those resources for you as well. So if you're
not finding it on our site, reach out to us. Yes,
the irony that treatment leaves a community of survivors. So
tell me about your podcast that that Paris Hilton produces. Yes, So,
(48:35):
Trapped in Treatment is our podcast which exposes the troubled
team industry. And so we actually document the history of
pro Vocanian School, which is the facility that Paris went to,
and we take you inside the journey of showing up
at the facility, living there for however long you're there, um,
(48:59):
experiencing that type of discipline, and then we go into um,
you know, what life is like after, you know. Ultimately
we talked about the movement and and everything that we're doing. Now.
Oh God, I can't wait to listen. You know, you
need a season at least to go through everything that
you guys have gone through. I'm so sorry that you
(49:19):
went through this, I really am. My heartbreaks for you
and every survivor that had to deal with this, especially
because their children, children, they their frontal lobe hasn't developed yet,
and to be put through all of this should be illegal.
So thank you for sharing your story. Well, thank you,
and I appreciate you, you know, sharing the platform, and
(49:41):
it's been an honor. Thank you. Usually at the end
of Go Ask Alli, I have my guest asked me
a question, but I've been so fascinated by what Caroline
has been talking about that I sort of blew through
it because I wanted every last minute with her to
talk about this, because it's it's unimaginable, I mean really
(50:03):
unfathomable that these institutions still exist and are not regulated.
And I have to say I have great empathy, and
I feel so honored to be able to talk to
Caroline and and my hats off to the survivors that
are going into Congress now and fighting to help people
(50:24):
not only who are incarcerated now, but in the future.
And my feeling is, if legislation is not passed correctly,
we got to close these places down. Thank you for
listening to Go Ask Ali. Check out our show notes
for a lot more information. Be sure to subscribe rate
(50:45):
and review the podcast, and follow me on social media
on Twitter at Ali Wentworth and on Instagram at the
Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me
a question or suggest a guest or a topic to
dig into, I would love to hear from you, and
there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can
call or text me at three to three four six
three five six, or you can email a voice memo
(51:07):
right now from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast
at gmail dot com. If you leave a question, I
just might hear it and go ask ally. Go Ask
Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership
with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
(51:27):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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