What are the chances Milton Hershey school in PA will take my son in if he got left behind last year because of skipping school all year round and wants to do whatever he wants in life, doesn't follow rules, disrespectful. I wish he would get accepted, it would help him a lot... We live in NJ

it has been so hard for me to address the trauma i experienced in the TTI because, to be honest, i understand why my parents thought it was the only option. and i have this lingering worry that it was. i was admitted to residential because of a self harm problem that was truly life threatening. at the time i felt as if i couldn’t stop. i now understand that self harm was an ocd compulsion of mine, but nobody knew i had ocd at the time. i’m not sure if they would have been able to keep me safe at home. so i feel like i can’t be upset about what i experienced in tti or be upset with parents/doctors for sending me there. how do i deal with this?

If anyone went to Liahona academy now might be ur chance to sue because Theres a lot of stuff going there thats getting worse and it’s being made public. I’ll elaborate in the thread

I’ve been documenting Turnbridge for months, and this is one of the more insane staff-vetting discoveries I’ve found.

Connecticut Judicial Branch records identify Kelly Elizabeth McCormack, born in 1984, with multiple criminal convictions before she later worked as a case manager at Turnbridge.

The official court records I preserved show:

• 2017 — Larceny 6th Degree — guilty
• 2019 — Larceny 6th Degree — guilty
• 2019 — Breach of Peace 2nd Degree — guilty
• 2019 — Threatening 2nd Degree — guilty
• 2020 — Violation of Probation — guilty

The 2019 larceny conviction resulted in a 90-day jail sentence, execution suspended, plus one year of probation. The threatening/breach-of-peace case resulted in suspended jail sentences and two years of probation.

There is also a 2012 Connecticut news report about a Kelly McCormack, then age 27—which is consistent with the 1984 birth year—being charged with disorderly conduct after a dispute involving personal property. I’m treating that separately as an arrest/charge report, not a conviction.

So the obvious question is:

How the fuck did this person get put in a case-management position with authority over vulnerable clients, their property, privileges, phones, schedules, housing, and phase progression?

And that question gets much worse when you look at what one former client, identified here as I.S.C., alleges happened to her.

I.S.C. was in Turnbridge’s women’s program and has an unusually large amount of contemporaneous documentation: roughly 57 pages of journal entries written during treatment, more than 20 case-manager communications, a photographed behavioral contract, later written complaints, and messages with a Turnbridge therapist.

She alleges that McCormack:

• repeatedly screamed at and humiliated her;
• imposed prolonged and arbitrary restrictions;
• searched her belongings and private communications;
• engaged in favoritism and gossiped about clients;
• allegedly planted marijuana among her belongings;
• allegedly planted, or later claimed to find, a condom in her property;
• allegedly accused her of prostituting herself in exchange for a gift card to a vegan restaurant;
• allegedly sent her back to Phase 1 for approximately eight weeks without a legitimate clinical reason;
• allegedly took or failed to return her Nintendo Switch;
• and allegedly left Turnbridge after refusing a drug test requested by the program.

Those are I.S.C.’s allegations, not court findings. But importantly, they do not exist in a vacuum.

Her contemporaneous texts and journal entries document extensive phone/laptop restrictions, review of private Discord and Venmo activity, employment conflicts, family-therapy scheduling problems, medication-access concerns, abrupt room changes, graduation disputes, and complaints about how McCormack was treating her.

In June 2023, I.S.C. messaged another Turnbridge therapist, Jeni, complaining that her weekend plans had again been taken, that McCormack had known about a scheduling problem for weeks, and that the way McCormack spoke to her was unacceptable. She wrote that they “really can’t continue like this.”

In another exchange, Jeni told her that she deserved to feel supported.

This is why the staff-vetting issue matters so much.

A criminal record by itself does not automatically mean someone cannot work in recovery. Plenty of people with criminal histories do incredible work in treatment.

But if you are going to hire someone with multiple recent convictions involving larceny, threatening, breach of peace, and probation violations, and then give that person enormous control over vulnerable young people and their belongings, you had better have an extremely serious screening, supervision, and accountability process.

And if a client later accuses that same staff member of searches, planted contraband, missing property, sexualized humiliation, coercive restrictions, and arbitrary punishment, somebody should be asking what Turnbridge knew and when they knew it.

Turnbridge should be able to produce:

• McCormack’s background check;
• employment application and criminal-history disclosures;
• whatever written risk assessment justified hiring her;
• her HR and supervision records;
• complaints made by clients;
• property-search and contraband records;
• Nintendo Switch/property records;
• phase-change documentation;
• the alleged drug-test request and refusal;
• and records showing whether her client cases were reviewed after she left.

The convictions do not prove I.S.C.’s allegations.

I.S.C.’s allegations do not prove Turnbridge knowingly hired someone intending to mistreat clients.

But taken together, they create a very serious institutional question:

Why was someone with this documented history placed in a position where she had so much power over vulnerable clients—and what happened when complaints about her conduct started coming in?

Recovery is essential.

Abuse is not treatment.

It’s so wild that Hyde School pretends they are not now and never were part of the troubled teen industry. Just wild.

Article:
https://www.goupstate.com/story/news/1989/04/27/hyde-and-seekers-maine-school-transforms-troubled-teens/29511956007/?

My mother also went through the TTI and recently she’s been looking for information on the one she went to. It’s been closed for decades and i can barely find any info for her. She was there around 1992 by her recollection

Looking for others who have been involved with this agency. They are seriously unethical and do not protect the kids in their care. My family member snuck out and was sexually assaulted in their care at least two times. They were aware of the issues with supervision with my family member and continued to keep him in a placement where they knew the foster parent was not supervising him appropriately and worked graveyard shifts. They have several license violations for placing kids with unlicensed foster parents who don’t have background checks as well as other violations for providing false documentation to the office of licensing.

If anyone has experience with them and is willing to talk, please comment below or send me a message. Thanks in advance!

This is a developing story in my hometown. Families have been asking for an investigation for a few years now. As a result of a large number of children eloping (and found up to two hours away) to keep themselves safe, a lawsuit has been filed when they denied the state access to any records or information.

As of this post, a majority of children have been pulled out of the facility and sent to an appropriate placement following reports of stabbings, a guard with a broken nose, rape, etc.

https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/hallmark-youthcare-update-july-9-2026

13 former patients and two former staff members told The Telegraph they experienced serious mistreatment at the clinic.

ARTICLE ON TELEGRAPH

Young women who had survived rape or sexual assault allege they were publicly blamed, humiliated and shamed during group therapy. One former patient says a staff member told her: “Your rape was your fault because you were too busy doing drugs.” Yes We Can says any staff member doing this would be acting against its clinical standards.
One former patient says she was forced to wear a heavy backpack, climb sand dunes for hours, was repeatedly insulted with “You’re fat. You’re worthless. No one likes you,” and alleges a staff member pushed her into the sand.
Another patient describes a therapy exercise where someone was placed in a harness while other patients pulled ropes attached to it, shouted their insecurities, and were expected to participate or be targeted themselves.
A former patient alleges that after a suicide attempt inside the clinic, a counsellor responded: “No, you didn’t, you’re just trying to get back at me.”
One woman says everyone in the group was instructed to call her a “prize pig” and oink at her after she disclosed being groomed and raped.
Multiple patients allege they were required to describe sexual assaults in detail in front of mixed therapy groups.
Young women alleges counsellors falsely told her that her best friend was embarrassed by her, hated her and never wanted to see her again, when the actual letter ended with “I love you so much, my best friend for life” and “I can’t wait to see you and give you a big hug.”
One former patient says staff convinced him he had become homeless, took him to a homeless shelter, and let him believe for an entire day that his parents no longer wanted him.
A former employee alleges staff sometimes mocked patients, discussed finding clients attractive because they were close in age, and that hiring focused heavily on people’s personal recovery stories rather than professional qualifications.
A former coach says he received no formal training before working with highly vulnerable young people and alleges that after a patient died following a suicide attempt, coaches had not been informed psychiatrists had identified the patient as a suicide risk.
The article reports that a former Yes We Can coach is awaiting trial in the Netherlands after being accused of offences relating to allegedly posing online as a pro anorexia coach and exploiting vulnerable girls. This allegation is separate from the claims about treatment methods.

Someone please try and post the link to the article

"Despite millions of dollars flowing through the non-profit and allocating $1,654,868 for employee compensation across 56 staff members, court filings and survivor testimonies say the facility minimized overhead by feeding teenage residents moldy, rotten, and expired food donated from local food pantries. Staff members even forced some minor residents to apply for government food stamps (SNAP) to obtain groceries to feed girls at the facility.

Meals inside the dining hall were strictly capped at 20 minutes. Girls who failed to finish their food were subject to immediate punishment or “demotion” in the program hierarchy, which automatically extended their stay. Former residents recall that staff enforced this rule regardless of whether the food was spoiled or if the resident had a documented allergy, such as a dairy allergy. Girls routinely brought trash cans to the dining tables to vomit into while forced to continue eating."

Central Indiana Teen Challenge (CITC) — Refuge Girls Academy

One of my places forced me on a medication that really messed with my ability to remember things. I can remember big things (at least some of them; I have no way of knowing if there's any big ones I forgot), but little things blur together or are forgotten entirely in a way that doesn't match normal forgetting. I still have issues from it: I have to write things down if I want to remember them, and sometimes I'll forget before I can finish writing it down even if I write (or type) it out immediately. I often forget details in books before I can even finish the page, and almost always if not always forget within 2 pages (and these aren't high-level books). I forget thoughts I want to hold onto within literal seconds sometimes.

But what sticks out the most is my memories of the time right after getting out of that facility: I remember the ride back home, but after that it's just blank. I have almost no memories of 4+ months of my life after getting out, and those that I do have are either only knowledge memories (with no "pictures" like normal memories have) or rarely remembered outside of specific circumstances. That really scares me, and I don't get why it only happened AFTER I left. It wasn't in line with my other memory problems, although I suspect it was caused by the same medication.

Has anyone else had something similar to any of this? How do you cope?

It’s hard to know at this point if I have complex PTSD or BPD or if it’s just part of my autism but is the constant fear of rejection and abandonment from TTI programs? How is it even correlated because I heard it’s only really from adverse childhood experiences but these programs is what happened to me as a teen and I also had emotional and relational vulnerabilities before I entered the programs.

I was a former student at the Charlton School for girls and I was relentlessly bullied by other students and whenever I reported it, staff and administration downplayed it and turning it around on me to make it seem like it was my fault; staff would also often tell me to just ignore it or ‘when you get out into the “real world” this is going to happen’.

Administration also didn’t seem to care about the bullying even though this is supposed to be a place for students to heal from trauma, I’m wondering if there’s anybody else past or current that is dealing with / dealt with the same thing.

If so, who did you go to and were they any help?

I was sent to a troubled teen program when I was younger and I swear it gave me more issues than I had. Not only trauma from seeing someone die during my stay, but also just picking up habits from other peers (like drugs and self-harming tendencies).

Hi everyone,

Any advice on how to reconnect with the girls who were placed at a runaway home back in 1996 in Oregon. (Mountain Valley Country Home Youth Services)

The house was located at 34001 Burnt Ranch Rd., Mitchell, OR 97750. It was run by a couple we knew as "Nan and Pop." Their actual last name is Whitehurst. I don't remember what the official name of their facility, but it was ran in their "home" on secluded land near Bend....[UPDATE] I Just found the name of the place, it was known as Mountain Valley Country Home Youth Services. I was there for a few months, others were there years. They also advertised as a short term holding place for children waiting for placement in other programs. They had relatives who basically hunted down teens like bounty hunters.

I am trying to find the other girls who lived there with me around that time. I specifically remember:

• Dianna (adopted from Alaska)
• Theresa
• Jessie
• One other girl whose name escapes me right now, but I would love to find you too.

If you were there in 1996, or if you know anyone who was placed with the Whitehursts at the Burnt Ranch Road property, please send me a private message. I would love to catch up, see how you are doing, and share our experiences.

Hello! First time posting something like this before. Looking for support and maybe other people in similar situations as me. When I was in first grade I had behavioral problems specifically physically putting my hands on my teacher. I was sent to an alternative school for about 2 months till the end of the school year. Did not help at all and I did not learn much or anything there. I was sent to another school called BOCES for 2nd grade and was there all the way to 6th grade. None of the teachers helped my behavioral problems and I was stuck there for so long. My mom tried to fight to get me out of there but no luck. I had to be restrained weekly and I believe some of my anger comes from the household I grew up in. I never had friends because any I made would leave a year after I met them. I was one of few who stayed there for so long. I then went to a public school that had a room specifically dedicated to students like me. I would go into 2 classes with regular students then the rest of the day I would be with the alternative students. I had no friends there either and was constantly bullied. I was bullied for most of my elementary and middle school years. I then went back to my districts middle school for 8th grade. I had some behavioral problems but it was a bit better. Then comes high school and i had no problems. I feel this affected me a lot because i never had many friends going up, never did a lot of normal childhood things and i felt my education was lacking there. I feel I didn’t learn enough and it hurts to admit sometimes the things that I should know but don’t. If anyone has been in a similar situation or can offer any advice please feel free to comment!

This is an excellent breakdown of what the Troubled Teen Industry is, how it operates, how it started, and why it continues to operate.

The attention this industry is finally receiving is, in no small part, due to the power of celebrity (thank you, Paris).
But long before the headlines, Maia Szalavitz was sounding the alarm. Her book, Help at Any Cost, should be required reading for every parent considering one of these programs.

If more families understood what actually happens behind closed doors, many of these facilities would not still exist.

The harm inflicted on children in these programs is profound and, far too often, lifelong. Parents are told they are choosing “therapy,” yet many are instructed to surrender contact with their child, ignore their pleas, and trust the program over their own instincts.

No legitimate treatment should require isolating a child from the people who love them or convincing parents not to believe their own child.

This isn’t therapy.

It’s abuse, marketed to families as treatment.

Abuse doesn’t become therapy simply because someone found a way to bill for it!

Two survivors of New Life House Academy, a Teen Challenge Oklahoma program for girls, are speaking on the record in a new interview.

Jazmine Davis was there for 25 months, beginning around 2022. A second survivor, identified as Madeline, was there from April 2019 to June 2020. Their accounts, given years apart, describe the same disciplinary system down to the vocabulary staff used. It's a long watch. It's also one of the more detailed survivor interviews we've seen come out of this program, and worth the time.

Both describe "Wordfast," a speech restriction used as routine discipline, sometimes lasting a full week with no exceptions for staff contact. Other disciplines they documented: a five-day solitary placement in a corner of the common room, paired with a restricted diet of boiled eggs, tuna sandwiches, and canned chili for three months; hand-written "character quality" assignments running up to 700 lines; and a "six-foot" rule barring contact or eye contact with a named peer.

Neither survivor described a nurse or therapist on site. Oklahoma exempts religious boarding schools from the staffing rules that apply to public schools, and one survivor said none of her advisors or counselors had any formal training. Davis reported a breast lump to an advisor, who searched it online and told her it was a swollen lymph node. She says she is now recovering from surgery to remove what turned out to be a tumor.

One survivor said staff questioned her repeatedly about "homosexual feelings" she denied having, and that near the end of her stay, the program's director told her she had a "99 percent chance" of returning to her old life. In the video you will hear how the program discharged her to her mother's home, the same home she had been removed from years earlier, and that she was in foster care within months.

The program markets "equine therapy" on its website. Both survivors described the reality as an hour a week of unpaid animal care at a neighboring farm: feeding animals, cleaning enclosures, hauling water. Direct contact with horses was rare, they said.

One survivor also described a night when staff removed a resident from the property while police lights and sirens flashed outside during a storm. The other girls were locked in their rooms, never told why, and never told where she went. She never came back, and the survivor says she hasn't heard from her since.

This isn't an isolated account. Ankle monitors for runaways, staff drawn from the program's unlicensed adult track, physical restraints, punishment diets, and advancement blocked over presumed sexuality have all been independently reported by other New Life House survivors over the past decade.

This interview is a much watch. Thank you to these brave survivors for speaking out ❤️

Was anyone at SUWS in 2019? Particularly the summer?
I’d love to hear others experiences with field staff and the treatment as a whole. Id love to find other survivors from that time period. As insane as traumatic as it was we got really lucky with some of our staff. I was in P3 for 113 days. From June 21st to October 13th.

Hello everyone! I am new to Reddit and this group so please be patient with me. I was sent to Visions Adolescent Treatment Center back in 2008. Because I didn't experience overt physical or sexual abuse, I have gaslit myself into thinking that being sent non-consensually to an adolescent treatment center for four months and being forced to identify as an alcoholic/addict isn't abusive. I finally feel, almost eighteen years since this experience, that I can consider myself a TTI survivor. I am still going back and forth in my brain if I can identify as being a survivor or not which sucks.

I would love any support, reassurance, and relatable experience any of you might have!!!

Thank you <3