Here's What Survivors of a 'Troubled Teen' Program Say Went On Inside

[Music] so this is the binder i kept all my letters from my mom in my dearest teddy you hate me you never thought you could hate me more than you did yesterday you're about to enter a school that will help you i am crying as i write this i am scared that you will never forgive me or understand that i am saving your life exo i love you mom [Music] yes that was my alumni first time she came to visit me and pc one parent child seminar one this is when she came to do a workshop yeah this is the first time she came to visit me you look happy oh it was uh it was very forced this was a letter my mom wrote me on march 9th 2006. you are not the same hoodlum we sent off to school you are becoming a young man and the young man i always dreamed you would be i'm so proud of how hard you have worked to achieve this it's frustrating because i know she didn't know the truth and that she was kind of falling for this act that i was putting on that i knew i had to put on growing up theo charles says he struggled with anxiety depression and suicidal thoughts by high school he was basically a runaway crashing on friends couches using drugs and harming himself that's when his parents intervened there was this knock at the door and i remember kind of looked at my mom because i was wondering you know who that might be and it was these two really big people and the first guy he uh grabbed my wrist and slammed my arms against the counter and next thing i knew there was like a knee up against the back of my knee and my knees were on the ground and it all happened so fast all the guys said is you can do this the easy way or the hard way either way you're coming with us did you know where you were going what was happening to you not at all i remember waking up the next morning and just being so bewildered you know here i am just i don't know a soul i have no direction i just went through this insane experience of being kidnapped the night before theo was brought to cross creek in leverkun utah a tough love boarding school that cost thousands of dollars a month it was part of a wide network of for-profit reform schools around the world that cater to desperate parents theo is just one of thousands of students who went through the program at cross creek yeah it's so funny because people are like oh you you must have been so happy to be there i'm like clearly i had to smile he's since connected with other alumni who are still trying to process what happened there they shared materials from their time at cross creek with vice news i just turned 13 years old they did a full intake cavity search i had to strip naked they you know did this whole thing where they had you spread your legs and shake and then had a staff member march me to the showers it was a male staff member and um so i had a supervised shower which was also very traumatizing i remember the water being very cold they took me to what was going to be my bedroom and i went to bed the days were wake up do your chores if they found a fuzz on the floor you got a consequence i was so afraid of doing something wrong all the time they did have school um school which was mostly just kind of you go to a room and do independent study what were the tactics that the staff used that you really remember shame was a big one we had seminars so every month we had a seminar we had to go through which was three days of intense grueling mind therapy and by therapy i mean there is nothing in there that is evidence-based they did rape reenactments on on the girls that had been sexually abused before the program and they would have a male staff come in and reenact the rape on the victim and while that was happening we were instructed to yell things at her like hor the whole program is based off of a break you down to build you back up mentality um so literally to destroy you so that they could meld you into what they were needing you to be any time they broke a rule big or small former students say they were punished forced to be silent or put in isolation sometimes for months you're in a cement room with nothing technically you were supposed to sit the entire time and be quiet but of course after a while you start mentally breaking so i would do things like sing i would be restrained for that um you know or try to like move around in myself and get restrained for that they also made sure to come in every single day and tell me that my parents cared so little about me that they knew how bad i was and they're choosing not to come pick me up and that i had to live with knowing that that nobody that i was forgotten that nobody cared about me it effectively breaks you you lose your sanity you lose hope that's the big one you just you lose hope and once that's gone you know just nothing cross creek closed in 2012. the campus has since been sold and turned into a motel vice news spoke with more than a dozen former students whose stories echo what sarah mary and theo describe as to the accounts of numerous alumni who have posted their experiences online some former staffers we talked to support their allegations demers was there at the same time as theo i guess i really wanted to believe that they were doing more good than harm but when i left i felt that they were doing more harm than good how did you find this job this was back when you would still pick up a job from the paper sunday classified was searching through it was listed as a youth detention center that was looking for counselors what appealed to you about the job there wasn't a whole lot of work i think it was paying somewhere between eight and eleven dollars an hour at that time it would have been more money than i had ever made and did you have any experience with children with education like absolutely none i had no idea what i was getting into when i started that job not a bit of it and what it became was far worse than what i thought it would have been what did you see kids would be locked up by themselves for days without even being able to talk to anyone [Music] except their counselor and behind the closed door and then they're not allowed to talk about anything that happens in there did you feel like you had to go along with it i thought they must be licensed right they might they must have authority on some like the state must come in and see this and deem this to be appropriate who am i a 25 year old who hasn't made his way doesn't have a high school diploma who got a ged who am i to tell anybody how they should be running anything vice news contacted several former executives associated with the program they categorically deny all allegations of abuse and say the program was licensed by the state of utah citing that as proof they weren't doing anything wrong it was a good program it served thousands of kids over the years and there's the few disgruntled that didn't like their parents trying to help them you think the people speaking out are a negligible percentage of the students that went through the programs that went through cross creek yep but hundreds of students and their families who spent time at cross creek and associated programs alleged a range of abuses at these facilities in a legal fight that was ultimately dismissed over the years similar programs have also faced lawsuits and investigations over allegations of physical and sexual abuse and the deaths of students in their care but the industry keeps going particularly in utah where reform schools are still operating and bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars every year my name is carly and i'm a survivor the demand for change inside these programs has gone viral survivors are now organizing as a movement called breaking code silence which got national attention when paris hilton went public with her experience at a utah facility i was not allowed to speak to or look at my peers the staff verbally abuse me calling me for folder names that should never be said to a child the pressure is working utah state senator mike mckell co-sponsored legislation he sees as a first step towards reform it'll force more inspections and transparency about treatment methods it's the state's first attempt to set new regulations for these programs in 15 years so it's a much bigger industry than i ever realized there's at least 100 facilities in the state of utah it creates 5600 jobs and we we have more than a thousand kids that'll cycle through these programs every single year we have more programs than almost any other state in the nation do you think the size of the industry has anything to do with how little it's been regulated how much money it's been bringing in i i certainly think that helps i think i think our oversight has been lacking given you know the stories that you've heard and some of what these at this point you know hundreds if not thousands of students have said who have gone through these programs why not just shut this industry down i think that's a fair question i think that's a fair question that's something that i wrestle with and and i and as i look at the industry i ask myself is there value to the industry and to be completely honest with you i'm not sure i know there are kids that are helped in the state of utah but i know we've heard a lot of kids as well you have children would you send your children to one of these programs no i felt the program had worked i thought everything was beneficial for him i thought he had grown i had grown we had grown together and oh kumbaya i knew this family who had gone through it and they said it was a good program for one and all meaning the family as well i wanted to get him somewhere for his own good and for his safety and that's all i saw it as what was your impression of what would happen there well i knew they'd be tough but i thought it all made sense and it would be you know what i was looking for and how i could get the help for my son who wouldn't take it voluntarily i want to point out to the fact that we were never alone i would be on the phone with the therapist first and then you would come in the room and then we would have on speakerphone our conversation i was not allowed to tell anyone where he was i know our mail was intercepted and read ahead of time they told you at the time we'll read your mail we're going to read your mail that you send to him and we'll see make sure it's appropriate i knew that the letters he sent to me they would be reading as well ahead of time before they posted it at any point were there any alarm bells or red flags for you about what was going on there they said to me your child's going to manipulate you whatever they can do so that you'll take them out out of this environment and it just seemed very logical i think when i came home i was so under the influence of the program that i wasn't sure if what i'd gone through was abusive or not by the time you graduate they do such a good job of like warping your view on everything that at that point you're going along with this narrative of oh it was what i needed how do you feel about cross creek now it was a manipulative or well orchestrated hurtful project that they put us through when you try to explain to people what you went through there [Music] people didn't believe us it sounds so so far-fetched that people you know first of all they're like well she was making these choices so she got herself there so it's called breaking code silence because we were put on silence all the time we were told not to tell anybody silence silence silent silence and this feeling of coming back and being like we are no longer silent and we are using our voices as a powerful instrument um which is in itself so healing what are the things that you experience that you want people to know the most about what happened that is still happening exactly there's no federal oversight of these facilities utah's reform legislation was signed into law and will take effect in may it could change the landscape for these programs and the teenagers in them but thousands of people say they were victimized at these places over the past few decades as of now there's no plan to help them [Music] what was going on with theo that led you to ultimately pursue cross creek in a lot of respects teddy was a virtual runaway i didn't know where he was going i didn't know where he was sleeping i was living on like various friends couches um kind of whoever would you know take me in for the night i really wasn't here very often i was worried about him not being alive i was worried about his life because he was suicidal i didn't know where he was who he was with i didn't know anything we offered him therapy he wouldn't go i just i needed to keep him safe what was he like when he left the program you were real quiet and real you know you didn't run out and go see you just weren't you you weren't real social there was this thing called the life contract which basically was an agreement that you put out on paper that you were going to behave by a set of guidelines instructed by the program and you had to like graduate from the life contract to really claim your life back i was very quiet when i came home i just wanted to fly under the radar and not ever have to go back to that place did you blame her i didn't know what to think i think i was confused at the world i was brainwashed when i came out i think that when i was kind of grappling with figuring out who i was and grappling with accepting the fact that i was abused i was definitely pissed i was pissed at the fact that [Music] you were so unopen to listening to me being like hey something happened for the longest time i had a lot of emotion i had a lot of anger i had a lot of sorrow i had a lot of trauma and i didn't know what to do with it i was 17 years old and i certainly projected some of it towards you because at the time i wasn't emotionally mature enough to realize that you had been preyed upon as well you

Channel: VICE News

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Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020, utah, troubled teen industry, troubled teens, reform schools, reform school industry

Id: Av0jhwRLOAc

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021