The lost years
Childhood memories taken by the troubled teen industry
Looking back at your childhood, what do you see? Is it happy, is it sad, or is it blurred by trauma? // Illustration by Julia Vreeman
Content Warning: This article contains stories and descriptions of childhood abuse that may be harmful or traumatizing to readers. Please proceed with caution.
A man with bright orange hair opens the door. Your parents stand behind you as he introduces himself as a staff member at the therapeutic boarding school you are about to attend. You are nervous, but hopeful, as the website was friendly and it looked as though the school will help guide you through the challenges you have been facing.
But this is not the case. As soon as your parents leave the nice man with bright orange hair changes. His demeanor becomes strict and mean, the atmosphere is cold and dull and your hope for the future fades as he tells you to undress for a mandatory strip search. This was the experience of Saturn and many other teens sent into the troubled teen industry.
Each year, an estimated 50,000 kids are taken into the troubled teen industry, consisting of wilderness camps, rehabilitation programs, religious facilities and therapeutic boarding schools. These teens are sent for various reasons ranging from mental health issues to forms of misbehavior. Research like this is made by survivors themselves like Jamie, who experienced trauma in the troubled teen industry.
Many of these treatment centers are still active today, and are largely unregulated with no federal oversight, according to the American Bar Association. Trauma resulting from these treatments include going back to previous behaviors, PTSD, changes and difficulties in relationships and many more.
When they were 13 years old, Jamie experienced multiple facilities in the troubled teen industry due to mental health issues, including a wilderness program, a residential treatment center and a therapeutic boarding school.
After leaving the programs, Jamie started researching the industry to show the long-term effects of these programs and spread awareness of this major issue.
People coming out on social media about these programs started a survivor-led campaign called #BreakingCodeSilence, which encouraged people to speak out about their experiences. They work to present research about the industry as well as help survivors and families going through a hard time.
BreakingCodeSilence is sponsoring the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, to end children’s abuse in residential treatment centers. This bill would give more transparency when it comes to youth treatment programs, especially when it comes to identifying and preventing institutional child abuse.
Saturn , now 23, was sent to a therapeutic boarding school when they were 15. After struggling with mental health issues for some time, Saturn turned to drugs. Their parents decided they needed help and looked into boarding schools to help Saturn through this hard time. After looking at the website, which was filled with pictures of people smiling and a beautiful atmosphere filled with scenic woods and pristine water, Saturn decided to go voluntarily.
“[My parents] showed me the website and I was like, ‘Oh this looks great. They have horseback riding and we are going to do fun stuff, I am totally down for this,’” Saturn said.
After saying goodbye to their parents at the facility in Montana, the excitement changed as the demeanor of the staff went from friendly and inviting to strict and dark. After a strip search and intake, Saturn was told the rules and was brought down to meet with the rest of the group.
Saturn said the staff would label them immediately by giving them painful nicknames that reflected the trauma they had been through.
Raelyn entered an all-girls therapeutic boarding school when she was 17 years old.
“You have no privileges and you’re with the staff all the time. You have the least possible amount of freedoms,” she said.
Raelyn also discussed the different forms of therapy the boarding school provided, some of which made the girls relive past traumatic experiences.
“They would create these psychological simulations that were individualized for each girl based on their intimate trauma histories and essentially, in the name of therapy, try to re-traumatize us and force us to have a breakthrough,” she said.
During their time at the school, Saturn experienced physical, verbal and mental abuse through punishments, restraint and name-calling.
The most common form of punishment was called “solo,” where staff members would grab a chair, put it in the corner of the room and force patients to sit there for a minimum of 24 hours. This punishment could last up to months. Bathroom breaks consisted of being watched by a staff member and the meals would be the scraps of everyone else, according to Saturn.
“There was one morning where I laughed too loud and a staff member asked me to get in the chair,” Saturn said. “I refused to get in the chair and that caused a group shutdown, which is when someone refuses to take a consequence. The whole group has to go downstairs, and then they restrain you and physically assault you or force you to sit in the chair.”
Not only were the kids abused during punishments, the staff, who were not trained to handle kids in these situations, would physically restrain them in harsh ways, Saturn said.
Saturn recalls seeing staff physically abuse a girl for not wanting to sit in the chair. The girl ultimately left due to this situation as she was deemed too much of a liability.
Most of the kids were deemed troubled from the start. Staff members wouldn’t trust them when they asked for mental help or were sick, and assumed they were being manipulated by the patients. Due to this, the kids wouldn’t get the care they need, which caused them further mental and physical pain.
“One time, I was struggling, and I tried to tell the staff about how I was feeling and she was like, ‘Are you on your period?’,” Jamie said.
Like Saturn and Jamie, Raelyn also experienced untrained staff who don’t know how to deal with teens who are struggling.
“The qualifications to be [on] staff at one of these therapeutic facilities is nothing, you just need a GED for the most part. Then you just oversee and punish the girls and enforce rules,” Raelyn said.
Jamie personally experienced physical abuse by staff members.
“I was restrained physically a lot in a very painful way,” Jamie said. “That was also being done to me anytime I was having an anxiety attack or a meltdown. Even when I was doing my best to keep calm and say what I needed, they would just restrain me.”
Kids in these programs experienced restrictions on food, showers and talking with their parents, which was monitored and restricted.
“If you disclosed anything that was going on, they would hang up the phone and you’re gonna be put on a phone consequence, meaning that you won’t be able to call your parents,” Saturn said.
One of the most common punishments for kids in these programs is forced silence, leading to the advocacy hashtag, #breakingcodesilence.
“The punishment of having to be quiet and not being allowed to use your voice or speak for periods on end was common,” Raelyn said.
Saturn explained that every Saturday they had to write letters home. Workers forced the kids to smile for pictures and made sure everything stated in the letters was positive.
“You’re constantly being monitored for what you were saying,” Jamie said. “You would be punished if they heard you say something they didn’t like, or if you started crying on the phone call, they would take the phone away from you.”
In Jamie’s own research, they found these programs have been reported to discriminate based on patient gender and/or sexuality. Both Saturn and Jamie experienced this during their time in the troubled teen industry.
“There was a heavy conversion therapy aspect, which wasn’t advertised but was very much happening,” Jamie said. “There was this fear of becoming too close to someone because you would get punished or interrogated for it.”
Discovering identity was a struggle. Jamie said they didn’t get to discover their queerness, which came about nine days into their 18 months at the residential treatment center.
Saturn mentioned hearing words they had never heard before as staff verbally abused kids of color and those part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Since kids are sent to these programs with limited access to the outside world, many have no idea what is going on outside of their program.
“I didn’t know about anything that had happened until I finally got out,” Saturn said. “We didn’t have any news from the outside world. We didn’t know what was going on.”
Jamie remembers missing major aspects of pop culture and news that were happening at the time. To this day, they miss references that their friends make from missing core years of their life.
Leaving these programs is different depending on the person’s situation. Like Jamie, some leave when they “graduate,” meaning they have completed the program’s levels, and in the eyes of the staff, have changed for the better. Some, like Saturn, leave because the cost is too much for their parents to afford. Others leave on their own accord when they turn 18.
After being in several programs over three years, Jamie left trying to find themselves again.
“I just went through this severely traumatizing thing where I completely lost my sense of self,” Jamie said. “It was really confusing for me because outside life had been put on hold. I was 13, [and] in middle school when I felt like my life was put on hold. Then when I came out, I was 16 and in high school, and all my friends had grown up.”
Saturn also struggled to find themself again after being gone for about a year.
“I was expected to do all this therapeutic change, which didn’t happen because I wasn’t actually getting therapy. I was getting traumatized,” Saturn said.
After getting out, Saturn not only had to deal with the same mental health issues as before, but also struggled with Stockholm Syndrome, a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation. People develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time.
“It felt like that program was my only comfort and my only safety in the world, even though it was extremely abusive,” Saturn said.
Raelyn, after three years of being released, finally understood she had been brainwashed after watching This Is Paris, a documentary about Paris Hilton, who also experienced trauma while being in the troubled teen industry.
“I started paying more attention to those profound feelings of grief, and the way that a lot of my freedoms were taken, and how that actually affected me,” she said. “Then I started investigating the legal side and like looking beyond just myself and my experience. I started waking up to my own experience through a perspective of research.”
Raelyn pushed through her trauma and brainwashing by creating a website with all of her research to put things into perspective, not just for herself but for other survivors.
After years of programs, Jamie was diagnosed with PTSD and still deals with it to this day.
“There has not been a single day where I haven’t thought about my time in treatment,” they said.
Time as children and teens are precious.
“Happy memories are essential to our mental health. They strengthen our sense of identity and purpose and bond our relationships,” according to the Positive Parenting Project. When these memories are turned into trauma, people’s sense of identity can diminish.
For Saturn, Jamie, Raelyn and others who have been through the troubled teen industry, gaining those identities back can be hard.
“It really stole my innocence in a way. I was exposed to so many things and I was treated terribly,” Saturn said.
Looking back at their time right after treatment, Jamie was trying to find themself but instead, they felt miserable.
Even the memories before treatment are distorted by what they went through.
“When I look back at my childhood, it is all clouded by this experience. It’s really hard for me to reach the memories that were before that,” Saturn said.
Jamie can remember things before treatment, but it feels like a whole other lifetime.
“I don’t really know who I would be if I hadn’t gone to treatment,” Jamie said. “My conscious life has been me as someone who has been through treatment, so I don’t really know myself as someone outside of that. I would really like to know myself out of that.”