Teens sent to what are meant to be therapeutic programs may return home after months to years of trauma, or weeks after their death. The billion dollar troubled teen industry is the cause; while claiming to be therapeutic, their methods to heal adolescents could be no farther from it.
As stated by Cathy Krebs in the article Five Facts About the Troubled Teen Industry, the troubled teen industry is, “...a network of private youth programs, therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, religious academies, wilderness programs, and drug rehabilitation centers.” The facilities are run by faith-based groups, nonprofits, or private companies. The programs pledge to aid adolescents with behavioral issues, addiction, eating disorders, and in some instances sexual orientation and gender identity. The troubled teen industry has been operating for at least 50 years, with allegations of abuse existing for decades.
Lauren Romaro of the Public People Organization stated in the article What is a Troubled Teen that “...it is usually a culmination of several events and problems that eventually cause the individual to be labeled as a troubled teen.” The events and/or problems that may lead to the label ‘troubled teen’ include but are not limited to: little or no interest in school, violent behavior, having depression, being suicidal, abusing drugs or alcohol, being perpetually sad of angry, and stealing from work or home. However, many of the signs of being a troubled teen are fairly common among adolescents of this generation and should not result in enduring the horrors of the programs in the troubled teen industry.
There are multiple ways in which adolescents can get sent to the programs; Breaking Code Silence stated in the article The Troubled Teen Industry that adolescents are placed in the programs through “...child welfare and juvenile justice systems, school districts’ individualized education programs, refugee resettlement agencies, mental health providers, and private parental placement.” In order to transport adolescents to the program, unsilenced.org mentioned the programs often recommend youth escort services, or “legal kidnapping.” These services alone can be traumatic - which has resulted in permanent trauma - and have little to no government regulation. Unsilenced.org continued that, “children are often forcefully seized, handcuffed, and transported from their beds in the middle of the night by strangers.”
Once they arrive at the location of the program, teens usually have their belongings immediately taken and often have to endure a forced strip-search. The teen is then taken to the group living area, where they initially have no privileges. Most programs use level-based systems that force adolescents to earn basic privileges. Treatment mentioned by unsilenced.org includes: Isolation, sleep and food deprivation, sedatives, forced labor, aversion therapy (designed to make a patient give up a bad habit by associating it with negative feelings), attack therapy (the client becomes the focus of verbal attacks and humiliation), physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, etc. At the camps, there have been at least 350 deaths that are known of, thousands of deaths by suicide after being in the program, as well as the onslaught of trauma causing various mental illnesses - such as PTSD - following the program.
When asked about how she felt regarding the mistreatment of adolescents in the programs, Sofia Henderson, Liberty sophomore, said, “We need to get the government involved. I feel like we don’t speak up enough for these people and they go unheard, and I think bringing awareness to this topic will help these teens and stop these camps from happening because it’s abuse.”
Unfortunately, there is no government interference and/or regulation in the programs of the troubled teen industry. In the article The Troubled Teen Industry by Breaking Code Silence, it was brought to light how although the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs for Teens Act was proposed by Representative George Miller in 2009, speaker of the house and chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, it was never passed, despite additional introductions. This leaves many programs unlicensed and poorly regulated, thus continuing the violation of human rights of adolescents across the country.
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Cover photo courtesy of Breaking Code Silence Campaign
Loujain Habibi is a staff-writer and editor for The Lion's Roar. You can learn more about the writer by clicking here.
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