I never thought I'd be recommending a documentary by Paris Hilton
February 23, 2022 11:22 PM Subscribe
#breakingcodesilence is a campaign organized by survivors of the "tough love" schools of the troubled teen industry. [CW: many kinds of abuse]
In her 2020 documentary This Is Paris, Paris Hilton and other survivors describe kidnapping, solitary confinement, force feeding, drugging, and physical abuse at a school which has a history of decades of abuse accusations. Hilton talks about the persona she created as a result, the persona that made her famous.
In her 2020 documentary This Is Paris, Paris Hilton and other survivors describe kidnapping, solitary confinement, force feeding, drugging, and physical abuse at a school which has a history of decades of abuse accusations. Hilton talks about the persona she created as a result, the persona that made her famous.
If you prefer reading to watching a documentary, here are a couple of additional stories about the documentary and other survivors of the schools:
At 17, Paris Hilton attended a school for troubled teens. She claims she was "abused daily".
‘It’s What I’ve Been Waiting 30 Years For:’ Survivors Of Abuse In Troubled Teen Facilities March On Provo Canyon School
posted by clawsoon at 11:30 PM on February 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
At 17, Paris Hilton attended a school for troubled teens. She claims she was "abused daily".
‘It’s What I’ve Been Waiting 30 Years For:’ Survivors Of Abuse In Troubled Teen Facilities March On Provo Canyon School
posted by clawsoon at 11:30 PM on February 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
Thanks, Schmucko, that's a great previously that I hadn't seen.
posted by clawsoon at 11:32 PM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:32 PM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is the second time I’ve posted this link on Metafilter. I’m sorry bad things happened to Paris Hilton but that doesn’t make her any less awful a person. She does seems to have a good publicist.
posted by rdr at 12:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by rdr at 12:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
R. Evans’ Behind The Bastards has done a number of episodes on this industry, including on Elan and the Judge Rotenberg Center.
posted by progosk at 12:29 AM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by progosk at 12:29 AM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
The New Yorker recently tackled this subject too.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 AM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 AM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
My brother sent his kid to one of these. For him it was a status symbol: all the other c-suites were doing it. He boasted of it. Kidnap and all. Sociopaths will do stuff like this and think its ok if it benefits them. He couldn't see that his 'wayward' (no drugs, no crime) son was crying out for some sincere thoughtful non-competitive attention and connection with his dad. Fucker.
posted by Thella at 1:42 AM on February 24, 2022 [49 favorites]
posted by Thella at 1:42 AM on February 24, 2022 [49 favorites]
It doesn’t matter if they’re a terrible person or not; there is no excuse for institutionalised childhood abuse. Being dragged screaming from your family home in the middle of the night, held captive, and being physically and mentally abused is clearly unconscionable behaviour. This doesn’t excuse any behaviour before or after.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:52 AM on February 24, 2022 [58 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 3:52 AM on February 24, 2022 [58 favorites]
This is the second time I’ve posted this link on Metafilter. I’m sorry bad things happened to Paris Hilton but that doesn’t make her any less awful a person. She does seems to have a good publicist
I came here to post this. I believe you put a similar comment on my fanfare post of her cooking show, much to my chagrin. It should be mentioned every time her name comes up.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:13 AM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
I came here to post this. I believe you put a similar comment on my fanfare post of her cooking show, much to my chagrin. It should be mentioned every time her name comes up.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:13 AM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
I went to school with kids who lived in a religious group home. A kid I knew there tried to run away but was always caught and brought back, which Hilton's stories of running away from these schools reminded me of. At the time, I bought the explanation from the adults that the kid had mental health issues, and that mental health issues was enough of an explanation. I only learned recently how he - assigned she at birth - had been locked in a room for two weeks to break him because he had refused to wear a dress.
posted by clawsoon at 5:34 AM on February 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 5:34 AM on February 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
I think these schools are rarer in Canada, but growing up queer in the 90s, I definitely knew some kids who were secreted off to ex-gay camps. I think many of the tactics were similar.
posted by arcticwoman at 6:24 AM on February 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by arcticwoman at 6:24 AM on February 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is the second time I’ve posted this link on Metafilter. I’m sorry bad things happened to Paris Hilton but that doesn’t make her any less awful a person.
The beginning of that linked article is super cringey in its perpetuation of bad stereotypes about how victims of abuse are supposed to behave, unfortunately. (And also I have no trouble believing that someone from an ultra-rich, WASPy family that has made a lot of money off of classism and exploiting racial disparities to underpay staff, and who has also attended an abusive school that it sounds like was probably also a super sexist, racist, and every other bigotry imaginable-ist environment, would turn out to have some pretty shitty and bigoted views.)
posted by eviemath at 6:57 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
The beginning of that linked article is super cringey in its perpetuation of bad stereotypes about how victims of abuse are supposed to behave, unfortunately. (And also I have no trouble believing that someone from an ultra-rich, WASPy family that has made a lot of money off of classism and exploiting racial disparities to underpay staff, and who has also attended an abusive school that it sounds like was probably also a super sexist, racist, and every other bigotry imaginable-ist environment, would turn out to have some pretty shitty and bigoted views.)
posted by eviemath at 6:57 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
My wife went to school with Paris Hilton. Not at the school she's talking about, but at Cascades, a very similar institution in Northern California. I believe Hilton went to the school in this story after the one in California. The same in all but name.
Everything Hilton says is true. These schools are horrible and abusive. "Counselors" engage in practices that no person should ever do. No one is trained in anything but the ways of the school. It was a horrific.
posted by Snowishberlin at 7:25 AM on February 24, 2022 [24 favorites]
Everything Hilton says is true. These schools are horrible and abusive. "Counselors" engage in practices that no person should ever do. No one is trained in anything but the ways of the school. It was a horrific.
posted by Snowishberlin at 7:25 AM on February 24, 2022 [24 favorites]
It always begins with dehumanization. Your government tells you junkies are scum, your church tells you gays go to hell and deserve it. Their life isn't worth living. These aren't fringe opinions, it's mainstream conservative dogma. If you believe that, of course you'd do everything possible to save your kid.
Another aspect is lofty expectations. The only thing you should expect your teenager to be is weird and irresponsible. That's just how they're wired. You can be embarrassed that they farted in front of your country club friends, but just be embarrassed and move on. It doesn't justify torture camp.
posted by adept256 at 8:13 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
Another aspect is lofty expectations. The only thing you should expect your teenager to be is weird and irresponsible. That's just how they're wired. You can be embarrassed that they farted in front of your country club friends, but just be embarrassed and move on. It doesn't justify torture camp.
posted by adept256 at 8:13 AM on February 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
I've been following Joe Nobody's web comic on similar practices at the Elan "school" in Maine. It's still ongoing and he's moved on to chronicling the lasting trauma that he endured for years after being released. I've been a Patreon contributor because of the emotional and detailed way that he tells his story and also because I want to support him getting his story into the public.
Previous Metafilter thread on Joe's comic.
posted by Alison at 8:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
Previous Metafilter thread on Joe's comic.
posted by Alison at 8:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
When thinking about the class of people who send their kids to such torture-camps, i wondered Perhaps this is another reason why many of them clamor so loudly against ‘more government regulation’ , as that sort of thing would create too much friction against their attepts to avoid the responsibilities of thoughtful and loving parenting, at any cost.
Another reason why the rich and powerful have such disdain for the weak and the poor: they can’t help but believe that if provided any resources in the name of supporting the health and the development of the young, the poors would show just the same small and malicious regard for their own children. Deep down the people who do things like send their kids off to places like these, know they sociopathic assholes, and the only way to live with that is to tell themselves everyone else is too.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:30 AM on February 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
Another reason why the rich and powerful have such disdain for the weak and the poor: they can’t help but believe that if provided any resources in the name of supporting the health and the development of the young, the poors would show just the same small and malicious regard for their own children. Deep down the people who do things like send their kids off to places like these, know they sociopathic assholes, and the only way to live with that is to tell themselves everyone else is too.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:30 AM on February 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
When I heard of the abuse my first thought was "maybe she was sent there because she wasn't following the script of her awful parents". Not saying every kid sent to one of these hellholes becomes a racist but it probably doesn't help. My friend's young babysitter was sent to a prison school in Tijuana. The poor girl would call my friend crying and begging her to rescue her. My friend called as many parents as she could and not one had a problem with a child being sent to an undisclosed site in Mexico (not that it was any worse than the U.S. ones) I have a daughter who was a teenager in the nineties and it was a truly misogynistic, gross, vulgar creepy time. The public conversation is about the President of the United State's semen on a young woman's dress?! Anyway, I feel so sorry for teenagers then and now.
posted by mygraycatbongo at 9:35 AM on February 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by mygraycatbongo at 9:35 AM on February 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
I was abused like this by my parents in my own home for most of my childhood until I got big enough to make my dad eat shit which led to being excomm'd for the next decade
The fact that there's considerable fucking evidence in both psychological and pediatric research that punishment, esp of the abusive, traumatizing type produces unequivocably terrible outcomes in the mental health of children and adolescents, and yet there exists little to no regulation to even really just promote much less enforce non-abusive parenting and schooling is pretty fucking dystopian
Not to mention that the US is notably absent in signing the Child Rights portion of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Imagine if people were offended enough to actually do something like writing to their local officials about cases like these
posted by paimapi at 10:02 AM on February 24, 2022 [10 favorites]
The fact that there's considerable fucking evidence in both psychological and pediatric research that punishment, esp of the abusive, traumatizing type produces unequivocably terrible outcomes in the mental health of children and adolescents, and yet there exists little to no regulation to even really just promote much less enforce non-abusive parenting and schooling is pretty fucking dystopian
Not to mention that the US is notably absent in signing the Child Rights portion of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Imagine if people were offended enough to actually do something like writing to their local officials about cases like these
posted by paimapi at 10:02 AM on February 24, 2022 [10 favorites]
This happened to my brother, but only for a few years. I remember multiple times hearing my mother telling people about my brother's new life living in the woods in this sort of minimalist back-to-nature psychiatric prison for children.
She seemed to find it fascinating to tell people about their innovative technique of taking everything away from the kids -- bed, clothes, maybe food, don't remember -- and making them "earn" back their mattresses and combs, so they'd be able to really appreciate the lives that so many of us take for granted.
And it was nearly in our back yard! Imagine that -- so convenient, since we were in the same Georgia county.
He doesn't talk about it much, but I know it was bad. Like, epically, crimininally bad.
If you're ever preparing for an acting role that needs you to channel helpless rage, just Google Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth.
posted by amtho at 10:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
She seemed to find it fascinating to tell people about their innovative technique of taking everything away from the kids -- bed, clothes, maybe food, don't remember -- and making them "earn" back their mattresses and combs, so they'd be able to really appreciate the lives that so many of us take for granted.
And it was nearly in our back yard! Imagine that -- so convenient, since we were in the same Georgia county.
He doesn't talk about it much, but I know it was bad. Like, epically, crimininally bad.
If you're ever preparing for an acting role that needs you to channel helpless rage, just Google Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth.
posted by amtho at 10:23 AM on February 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
please do check out schmuckos elan school link.
my son went to one of the many derivative rehabs that still exist. all the torture and imprisonment are eliminated, but some other practices remain and are modified, e.g. games.
also, the campus is open, and everyone is free to voluntarily exit the program at any time.
my son had the prison/program choice from his judge and took the program.
after discussing the comic, his comment on the derivative program is: yeah, it's very culty, but it's not malicious or tortuous. super regimented.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:56 AM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
my son went to one of the many derivative rehabs that still exist. all the torture and imprisonment are eliminated, but some other practices remain and are modified, e.g. games.
also, the campus is open, and everyone is free to voluntarily exit the program at any time.
my son had the prison/program choice from his judge and took the program.
after discussing the comic, his comment on the derivative program is: yeah, it's very culty, but it's not malicious or tortuous. super regimented.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:56 AM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
One thing that Schmucko's link talks about is how the schools are very effective at poisoning the parents' minds against their children. The parents are already worried that their children are "going bad". The schools have decades of experience of children desperately trying every way they can to tell parents about the abuse, and the schools know how to spin each of those desperate pleas into, "See, your kid is getting worse, they need us even more than you thought."
In Hilton's case, the entire North American media industry eventually played that "see, your kid is getting worse" role, to the point that even her sympathetic sister ends their discussion about the abuse with this.
posted by clawsoon at 11:15 AM on February 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
In Hilton's case, the entire North American media industry eventually played that "see, your kid is getting worse" role, to the point that even her sympathetic sister ends their discussion about the abuse with this.
posted by clawsoon at 11:15 AM on February 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
In Hilton's case, the entire North American media industry eventually played that "see, your kid is getting worse" role, to the point that even her sympathetic sister ends their discussion about the abuse with this.
Feels a little weird that YouTube showed me a Hilton ad, here…
posted by atoxyl at 12:19 PM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Feels a little weird that YouTube showed me a Hilton ad, here…
posted by atoxyl at 12:19 PM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
> the campus is open, and everyone is free to voluntarily exit the program at any time. my son had the prison/program choice from his judge and took the program.
I see a contradiction here.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:31 PM on February 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
I see a contradiction here.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:31 PM on February 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
Video from Vice on a similar school:
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 warping your view on everything that at that point you're going along with this narrative of, "Oh, it was what I needed."posted by clawsoon at 1:55 PM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
I spent most of a year of my life, at age 12/13, caught up in the juvenile court system. Then when my dad found out I was gay, it got worse. I spent MONTHS locked up, then was sent home. NEVER any therapy or anything. Ah, the early 70's. Before the they invented child abuse for profit.
Except, sometime in the last 10 years, I learned some truth. My dad tried to have me locked up for "life", where life tended to end by age 25, on average. For being gay. I never understood that was the stakes of the situation. Fortunately, the judge didn't approve, and made it too costly for my dad.
Imagine how happy I am, these "schools" didn't exist in my youth.
posted by Goofyy at 2:46 PM on February 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
Except, sometime in the last 10 years, I learned some truth. My dad tried to have me locked up for "life", where life tended to end by age 25, on average. For being gay. I never understood that was the stakes of the situation. Fortunately, the judge didn't approve, and made it too costly for my dad.
Imagine how happy I am, these "schools" didn't exist in my youth.
posted by Goofyy at 2:46 PM on February 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
How can this not be child abuse, in the criminal offence sense of the word?
posted by mumimor at 2:52 PM on February 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 2:52 PM on February 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
How can this not be child abuse, in the criminal offence sense of the word?
The impression I'm getting is that it's amazing how little police and prosecutors will do for you if you're a "bad kid" who "needs discipline".
posted by clawsoon at 3:30 PM on February 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
The impression I'm getting is that it's amazing how little police and prosecutors will do for you if you're a "bad kid" who "needs discipline".
posted by clawsoon at 3:30 PM on February 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
There's a current podcast from Paris Hilton about the industry, called Trapped in Treatment, that covers the troubled teen industry. Much to her credit, the podcast has virtually nothing to do with Hilton herself, or her specific story, if you're disinclined to care about her personally. It's a pretty decent listen. I know I was wary of a podcast about Hilton talking about her life. Thankfully, this is not that.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:02 PM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by 2N2222 at 4:02 PM on February 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
> Imagine how happy I am, these "schools" didn't exist in my youth
I used to be fascinated by the ads I'd see in the back of magazines for military academies, which I bet filled a similar role. I wonder how many gay boys were sent to them to "toughen them up." Or rather, are sent to them -- they're still around, both the private ones and the actual military ones.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:30 PM on February 24, 2022
I used to be fascinated by the ads I'd see in the back of magazines for military academies, which I bet filled a similar role. I wonder how many gay boys were sent to them to "toughen them up." Or rather, are sent to them -- they're still around, both the private ones and the actual military ones.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:30 PM on February 24, 2022
Having read Joe's comic...
The mental and verbal abuse is about dehumanizing the individual, 'victimize or be victimized.' I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there's a direct line from the abuse in the schools to the racist and dehumanizing language in the Hilton leaked tapes. That's not to excuse the behavior, but to point out that these may not be unrelated, and shooting the messenger really isn't really warranted here.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:54 PM on February 24, 2022 [11 favorites]
The mental and verbal abuse is about dehumanizing the individual, 'victimize or be victimized.' I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there's a direct line from the abuse in the schools to the racist and dehumanizing language in the Hilton leaked tapes. That's not to excuse the behavior, but to point out that these may not be unrelated, and shooting the messenger really isn't really warranted here.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:54 PM on February 24, 2022 [11 favorites]
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there's a direct line from the abuse in the schools to the racist and dehumanizing language in the Hilton leaked tapes.
Wow. I’ll try to be civil here so I’ll just ask you to imagine that if instead of being a young blond somewhat rich girl Paris Hilton was a white dude from Appalachia born into grinding poverty with stints in Juvie would you be so eager to excuse her behavior?
posted by rdr at 8:01 PM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wow. I’ll try to be civil here so I’ll just ask you to imagine that if instead of being a young blond somewhat rich girl Paris Hilton was a white dude from Appalachia born into grinding poverty with stints in Juvie would you be so eager to excuse her behavior?
posted by rdr at 8:01 PM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
kaibutsu said explicitly "that's not to excuse the behavior". I think the phrase "shooting the messenger" was also apt. It is a mistake to think that racist behavior is an indelible foundation of personality; we are all somewhat socially conditioned, and Hilton conditioned in an abusive system that, for survival, requires complicity in the abuse. In fact, to fight racist behavior it may help to understand the ways Hilton got messed up. And she is far from the only one bringing attention to this issue.
posted by Schmucko at 8:34 PM on February 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Schmucko at 8:34 PM on February 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
Blaming people doesn't change anything. Understanding WHY people do things is how we find ways to improve the world. Including horrible-acting white dudes from Appalachia (where, it must be said, geeky kind people also reside).
posted by amtho at 9:01 PM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by amtho at 9:01 PM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Near the start of her documentary, Hilton says that her family is "super Republican", which is another possible source of her overt racism. One would hope that by now, as a 40-year-old woman, she would have grappled with that.
posted by clawsoon at 4:29 AM on February 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:29 AM on February 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
the campus is open, and everyone is free to voluntarily exit the program at any time. my son had the prison/program choice from his judge and took the program.
I see a contradiction here.
yeah, me too. but most were in totally voluntarily.
i mean, if one is guilty if multiple felonies, free rehab seems like a pretty good option to me, compared to genpop state prison.
they get you a job, feed you, have clean accomodations, unlimited family visits, group picnics so you can meet your person's cohort and their supervisors. after completion, they'll place you in a sober house, and you get to keep the job.
memail me if you want the contact info of the place. it's in denver.
anyway, this is the paris thread, not the elan thread, I'll drop it. cheers!
posted by j_curiouser at 10:20 AM on February 25, 2022
I see a contradiction here.
yeah, me too. but most were in totally voluntarily.
i mean, if one is guilty if multiple felonies, free rehab seems like a pretty good option to me, compared to genpop state prison.
they get you a job, feed you, have clean accomodations, unlimited family visits, group picnics so you can meet your person's cohort and their supervisors. after completion, they'll place you in a sober house, and you get to keep the job.
memail me if you want the contact info of the place. it's in denver.
anyway, this is the paris thread, not the elan thread, I'll drop it. cheers!
posted by j_curiouser at 10:20 AM on February 25, 2022
> I’m sorry bad things happened to Paris Hilton but that doesn’t make her any less awful a person
When people say, "bad things happened to her," why do you think they mean, "this makes her a less awful person"? Also: should we not be horrified by child abuse when it happens to awful people? Must victims be perfect people before we are allowed to be horrified by their victimization?
posted by MiraK at 12:59 PM on February 25, 2022 [18 favorites]
When people say, "bad things happened to her," why do you think they mean, "this makes her a less awful person"? Also: should we not be horrified by child abuse when it happens to awful people? Must victims be perfect people before we are allowed to be horrified by their victimization?
posted by MiraK at 12:59 PM on February 25, 2022 [18 favorites]
j_curiouser: unlimited family visits
I'm sure that unlimited family contact isn't a cure-all for abuse, but limited family contact seems like one of the biggest red flags around programs like this. It reminds me of residential schools for First Nations, where lack of family contact was one of the things that allowed so much abuse to flourish. If you can only talk to your kid with someone else from the school present - staff or student - get them out.
posted by clawsoon at 1:16 PM on February 25, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm sure that unlimited family contact isn't a cure-all for abuse, but limited family contact seems like one of the biggest red flags around programs like this. It reminds me of residential schools for First Nations, where lack of family contact was one of the things that allowed so much abuse to flourish. If you can only talk to your kid with someone else from the school present - staff or student - get them out.
posted by clawsoon at 1:16 PM on February 25, 2022 [7 favorites]
I am a graduate of one of these programs. Or rather, I am a graduate of a less-extravagantly-abusive "therapeutic boarding school" that largely kept us in line with the threat of being sent to one of the "actually" abusive ones.
The place was run by a megalomaniac who had been found guilty of raping multiple students and still got to run the school because he owned it. Students were made to dig actual six-foot graves, sometimes in freezing weather, as a punishment for suicidal ideation. I was forbidden to speak outside of class or "group" for two months at one point. Tuition was $80k/year. I graduated, after three and a half years, believing the place had saved my life.
It's been shut down now. I suspect it will reemerge under another name. There was a piece written about the place last year that came out on a now-defunct site. If you'd like to see it in weird screenshots, you can read it
here. https://johndeweyacademy.wordpress.com/
If this comment sounds detached, it's because every time the Troubled Teen Industry makes the front page of some sort of media I follow, I get the thousand-yard stare and go around for the rest of the day, maybe a couple days, mentally wandering around the school building from room to room, scene to scene, and wondering if maybe I am bad, I was bad, the school made me good and then I got bad again, I deserved the treatment, I needed the treatment, I should have just fucking stayed bought in, I'd be so much happier and more productive and less bad.
It's been 14 years since I graduated. As long as I was alive before I was sent away. The effects don't fade.
I don't really know why I'm posting this comment. I just want people to know there are people reading this conversation for whom it's about our actual lives.
Sorry. Thanks.
posted by cabbage raccoon at 3:22 PM on February 25, 2022 [33 favorites]
The place was run by a megalomaniac who had been found guilty of raping multiple students and still got to run the school because he owned it. Students were made to dig actual six-foot graves, sometimes in freezing weather, as a punishment for suicidal ideation. I was forbidden to speak outside of class or "group" for two months at one point. Tuition was $80k/year. I graduated, after three and a half years, believing the place had saved my life.
It's been shut down now. I suspect it will reemerge under another name. There was a piece written about the place last year that came out on a now-defunct site. If you'd like to see it in weird screenshots, you can read it
here. https://johndeweyacademy.wordpress.com/
If this comment sounds detached, it's because every time the Troubled Teen Industry makes the front page of some sort of media I follow, I get the thousand-yard stare and go around for the rest of the day, maybe a couple days, mentally wandering around the school building from room to room, scene to scene, and wondering if maybe I am bad, I was bad, the school made me good and then I got bad again, I deserved the treatment, I needed the treatment, I should have just fucking stayed bought in, I'd be so much happier and more productive and less bad.
It's been 14 years since I graduated. As long as I was alive before I was sent away. The effects don't fade.
I don't really know why I'm posting this comment. I just want people to know there are people reading this conversation for whom it's about our actual lives.
Sorry. Thanks.
posted by cabbage raccoon at 3:22 PM on February 25, 2022 [33 favorites]
From an outsider's perspective, some_kind_of_toaster, it sounds like you were the victim of great advertising for a shitty experience. The guy who sold you the rusty Yugo convinced everyone that it was the world's greatest car and you still occasionally wonder if it's your driving that's the problem. "Attack therapy" sounds like a way for charismatic psychopaths to fuck with people and keep power over them. I'm sorry you had to go through the experience. How do you have a trusting relationship after an experience like that?
posted by clawsoon at 4:42 PM on February 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:42 PM on February 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I used to see the ads in the back of Sunset Magazine (which sadly no scanned issues exist on the internet. Thanks private equity) with a sneering Madonna-style 20 year old. I forget the tagline, but it was suitably square. You know, the ads for these schools invariably translate to "do you suck as a parent?" to me, which I realize isn't fair to parents of otherwise troubled kids, but those people aren't using these organizations.
Yesterday (Twitter readout) the great Keri Blakinger, a Marshall Project reporter and felon, reporter of carceral topics, wrote about similar programs that are being run inside prisons that, well, I can't say they're worse than digging your own grave, but the story definitely fits in this thread.
It is a mistake to think that racist behavior is an indelible foundation of personality;
I'm a white guy in the US, I have to acknowledge I'm racist in my head. Beyond the obvious macro causes, I grew up in a lily white suburb in a valley among even more lilier and whiter suburbs. My high school was 1200 kids with maybe 1% black people (including one you've heard of). My paternal grandmother was an old-school Galveston racist, and my best-friend from teenage years' Dad was from South Carolina and was. not. shy. about his attitude. I learned many many epithets from them over the years, and while I was never a knucklehead in that outward way, growing up in my same house for 18 years in these environments imbued me with some thought-patterns that I still wrestle with. When I notice I'm nervous when I shouldn't be, or random flashes of bigotry when grocery shopping or driving, and various other minor events, similar aftereffects from being bullied. The cutting remarks appear as if by butler. I catch myself all the time and I don't (think I) let them affect my interpersonal behavior, but they're there all the same and I'm sure there are things I don't even notice that mark me as not-quite-cool even having been around the proverbial block several times and siting myself on the social margins all through school. I can sympathize and like to think I can empathize in my learned way, but it can never rise to the reality of their experience. Vote for black women.
This is why I scoff when I hear white people say anything like "I'm not racist." For one, conscious white people don't say that because consciousness requires vigilance in counteracting simple reality; and two, what is the goal of saying it? I blanch at the term "virtue signaling," but no non-white person would say "whew, that's a relief!" so the only possible audience is other white people, in which case: why? Doesn't Trump say he's not racist, too?
posted by rhizome at 4:57 PM on February 25, 2022 [9 favorites]
Yesterday (Twitter readout) the great Keri Blakinger, a Marshall Project reporter and felon, reporter of carceral topics, wrote about similar programs that are being run inside prisons that, well, I can't say they're worse than digging your own grave, but the story definitely fits in this thread.
It is a mistake to think that racist behavior is an indelible foundation of personality;
I'm a white guy in the US, I have to acknowledge I'm racist in my head. Beyond the obvious macro causes, I grew up in a lily white suburb in a valley among even more lilier and whiter suburbs. My high school was 1200 kids with maybe 1% black people (including one you've heard of). My paternal grandmother was an old-school Galveston racist, and my best-friend from teenage years' Dad was from South Carolina and was. not. shy. about his attitude. I learned many many epithets from them over the years, and while I was never a knucklehead in that outward way, growing up in my same house for 18 years in these environments imbued me with some thought-patterns that I still wrestle with. When I notice I'm nervous when I shouldn't be, or random flashes of bigotry when grocery shopping or driving, and various other minor events, similar aftereffects from being bullied. The cutting remarks appear as if by butler. I catch myself all the time and I don't (think I) let them affect my interpersonal behavior, but they're there all the same and I'm sure there are things I don't even notice that mark me as not-quite-cool even having been around the proverbial block several times and siting myself on the social margins all through school. I can sympathize and like to think I can empathize in my learned way, but it can never rise to the reality of their experience. Vote for black women.
This is why I scoff when I hear white people say anything like "I'm not racist." For one, conscious white people don't say that because consciousness requires vigilance in counteracting simple reality; and two, what is the goal of saying it? I blanch at the term "virtue signaling," but no non-white person would say "whew, that's a relief!" so the only possible audience is other white people, in which case: why? Doesn't Trump say he's not racist, too?
posted by rhizome at 4:57 PM on February 25, 2022 [9 favorites]
I’ve seen multiple people discuss similar experiences on Tiktok. Some even tried to get help at the airport claiming trafficking. It didn’t matter, the parents signed off on it, and random strangers were allowed to kidnap these kids in the middle of the night and take them across state lines, where their food was severely rationed, they were denied medical care, they were denied hygiene supplies, their communication was censored or parents were told to ignore any complaints because these bad kids were simply liars trying to get out. Completely shocking. And yes, every single aspect of their time there involved dehumanization. The stories of parents trying to repair their relationships with their kids after finally learning the reality of it was obviously pretty grim too.
posted by asimplemouse at 12:21 PM on February 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by asimplemouse at 12:21 PM on February 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
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posted by Schmucko at 11:30 PM on February 23, 2022 [33 favorites]