Pretty sure they blocked me after I commented, so no screenshot.
The US essentially has no restrictions on what parents can do to their children, or pay to have done to them. These companies will show up at night, and take a child out of their bed at night. They explicitly tell parents not to warn the kid what will happen.
Imagine being woken up in the middle of the night, maybe forced to quickly pack, and then be loaded in a van. You have no idea where you are going or why or who or what is going on. You get taken to a facility which is basically a cult. You might be dumped out in rural Utah, with people that have zero training in wilderness safety, who might punish you by denying you food and water.
Children die in these places all the fucking time. There generally is no state or federal oversight of these facilities - so there aren’t really investigations. These places are havens for child predators.
When I was sexually abused at a similar facility and tried to report it - I was placed on heavy doses of antipsychotics in retaliation. They drugged me unconscious, and then punished me for sleeping during “class.” As an adult, I have involuntary shakes and movements associated with the medical malpractice enacted on me.
These places don’t get investigated, they don’t get shut down. I think Utah is one of the only states with any form of agency that watches over these places. Child protective services won’t go in, health care agencies won’t go in.
Children have no rights in the US. They are the property of their parents, to be disposed of as they wish. And fuckers like this agency are delighted to kidnap children that their parents can’t be assed to parent.
I’m just going to leave this here: https://elan.school/ That’s how I learned about this.
I read the whole thing, and it’s haunting, there’s no way this shit could be made up, the gravity is too insane, and there’s also you know, evidence.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve still got quite a few chapters to go, but I wanted to comment this thought before I forget it: it’s so incredibly striking how powerful the small acts of kindness are. I’ve cried more at the little gestures of kindness than at all the cruelty.
I don’t like comics usually but I swallowed that. Such a good read and so traumatizing! I think everybody should read that, it feels so real and I cried and was shocked so many times. Hardly anything before made me feel all the pain with them and I wish the best to everyone who has had to go through that.
That comic made me sob both the first time I read it, and when I came back to the finished product.
And yeah elan school has been sufficiently investigated to leave little chance that Joe wasn’t being as truthful as someone can be about an incredibly traumatizing teenage experience.
The problem with these services is they get you in the door with these too-good-to-be-true deals, but then you’re locked into a bullshit subscription service every month. So you think you’re saving a bundle on the kidnapping, but you end up paying out the ass every month for them to KEEP the kid. Enshittification at work once again.
Fucking Netflix, right? Ughh
Beautiful justice.
Wow. They promise to be honest about their methodology but don’t mention any of it - just “transport”.
Troubled teen facilities have parents sign agreements which give them permission to physically restrain their child, and release them from liability if the child gets hurt. These “holds” can often kill.
I was only put in a hold once. I was on the van, I was being kicked by two other children, the staff refused to intervene, so I opened the van door and attempted to escape. I was groped in this hold.
I do not know how to convey how traumatizing physical restraint is. It happened to me again, in December, when I went voluntarily inpatient and was physically forced into the woman’s ward. I am a trans man, have had surgery and I’m legally recognized as male for more than a decade - I had asked if I could just sleep in the common area as a concession/to not be outed - nope! I got shoved around by four grown men and called “fucking retarded.” I’ll never reach out for help again.
I’m sorry you had to go through this. I hope one day we can have a better society.
That’s the problem when social services are cut to the bone and they have to hire whatever thugs they can get for the shit money they can pay, and they lose whatever trust they might have from the population they’re supposed to serve.
One of my kid’s friends got sent to one of these camps. Luckily the parents chose not to have him kidnapped.
Facilities like this need to be burned down and the staff put to the headsmans axe, in fact did you know a shit tonne of them exist in Utah because of course they do.
Fun fact CPS wanted to send me to one as a child, luckily I was both a stubborn and clever little shit and my threat to burn things was taken seriously. My only condition to not burn things was to not go to it.
As satisfying as fantasizing about arson is, I imagine these facilities are usually insured. It’s also easy to spin into a sob story - these places often take advantage of the fact that they work with underprivileged/foster youth to get community donations. “Oh no, we can’t help children anymore! Gib us money!”
I got my facility taken off DonorsChoose - absolutely enraging that they were able to use that site as a for profit institution.
It’s a problem that needs to be attacked at the root ultimately. Children should have their rights protected. Remember how the US refused to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? We also need more parenting classes - I’ve never been given the opportunity to be a parent, but I’ve talked with lots of parents about things like Love and Logic. Or just even accepting the fact that kids can just be weird or different sometimes - I should not have been punished for being uncomfortable with eye contact.
In the short term, educating people about these individual facilities. Making sure that the children who die in these places have their names remembered. I make signs with the name of the child my abusers killed, and just blanket surrounding neighborhoods with it.
Insurance just spreads out risk over time, it doesn’t eliminate the cost. So the insurers will raise rates for these places, and other similar places.
While I agree with your points I still think my retributionary methods would still have a good bit of effect. A lot of these facilities are ran by the weakest and most evil mother fuckers. While burning them down by itself would get a sob story, going in with a militia and putting the bastards into the ground would sure as shit send a statement. Also if you set it up right you could get the kids medical and general aid attention while your at it, put a rifle between them and anyone who tries to fuck with them again.
Also yes I know this ain’t practical, just boils my blood and makes me embrace the most violent elements of my heritage. I will hold that the fucks running these places need to find a short fuse grenade duck taped to the inside of their homes door.
The fact that these places exist and aren’t shut down has always really bothered me, horrible stuff
the things they can justify with religion should give anyone pause.
Sounds like you need to report Facebook to the FBI. Oh wait, Zuckerberg paid them off. We’ll I guess we’re fucked. Still.
Even before Zuckerberg, these groups often have a religious coating. US law enforcement lets religious groups do whatever they want until the problem becomes undeniable. Even then, they drag their feet, and Republican politicians look sad while talking about how religious liberty is being destroyed.
Ever since Waco the feds will let you do anything if you say its for Jesus
It would be possible to hire them abd turn the tables.
I don’t understand why these weren’t outright banned after the first time a kid got murdered at one, let alone the umpteenth time.
How is the USA a real country
Well considering that North Korea and Russia exist it’s not soooo far fetched. The real surprise is how it has been considered until recently as THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. We were so blind…
Tbf, only Americans considered America the best country in the world. The rest of us have seen it as a third world country in denial when it comes to social issues for decades. The only non-americans who think America is the greatest are people who live in scrap metal shacks in countries run by dictators and egotistical assholes who hate welfare and Healthcare.
I wonder how recently « the rest of us » built that opinion because from my 43 years as a European I certainly saw a lot of adulation of USA for as long as I remember. Even the healthcare pov is rather recent… For a long ass time they were certainly seen as our betters.
Post-WW2 industrial boom + Hollywood + Internet\media presence in US&EU anglosphere due to 300kk+ population.
I think for the persons under 50 this image started to fall apart with 9\11 + Lemon Brothers + the first Trump presidency.
Personally, I have not been a fan of America since Bush, mostly because that was when I got old enough to be somewhat politically aware. My parents weren’t fans either. Especially not my dad. It was due to their wars and their pathetic to non-existing welfare system which we saw as a human right in my country. The fact that they were more interested in having a big military and running war campaigns in other countries than they were securing their population had access to free healthcare and education was repulsive to us.
We saw them as the lesser evil of all the superpowers, but that didn’t mean we adored them. Trump’s presidency is just the end result of decades of American arrogance. I will say that I had a lot of hope for America during Obama’s presidency as he seemed to attempt to establish a welfare system that would be beneficial and more fair for the public, but we have all seen how this has since been rejected by voters so whatever.
THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
Lol, lmao even
it’s not.
Guess it’s time to share this again.
GET YOUR FEELINGS OUT
The energy tied up in all of that is so familiar. Just the entire vibe of senseless unmitigated cruelty and mindless nonsensical screaming hits so hard and reminds me so much of some of the shittiest people I’ve encountered in my life. What Joe describes feels like a horrible distillation of something that’s a lot more pervasive than any one ‘school’ or cult or particular group of organized assholes systematically ruining people’s lives. It hit hard. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you for sharing this. Probably one of the hardest reads of my life, it’s incredibly powerful and well written so it conveys the horrors of the experience in an almost visceral way.
It also really helped me understand at a much more personal level how these addiction/reeducation camps and cults break people mentally and emotionally.
Sure, you read about these kinds of things happening in the news, but it never hit home for me what that experience is like until reading this.
Thank you.
Someone online showed it to me, so I’m glad to share it with other people now. Fucking insane shit. You can bet I’m always looking out for red flags on my friends as their kids get older, in case they fall into one of these traps.
I just spent a couple hours reading the first 70 chapters. That is hard to read and impossible to stop reading.
I’ve only been able to make it to page 10. People often mock the idea of being “triggered” but fuck, it makes me need my trazadone. I want to print this in full color and leave it everywhere I can.
Don’t judge yourself for a ptsd reaction. People mocked triggers, but it was people who don’t understand that acute reminders of traumatic experiences are not merely unpleasant
Yeah - I wish more folks understood what the experience is like. It’s like my brain lights on fire. I get angry, extremely angry and can be verbally really aggressive. If I’m alone, I can usually self regulate, but when I’m around others it’s much harder.
It’s been a struggle as I work to get this facility shut down. When I’m calling state agencies to get my torturer’s facility investigated, the second that I can pick up that they don’t believe, or if they minimize my experience - it ratchets me into a world of pure anger and panic.
I knocked over a container earlier and it made a loud sound as it landed on the ground - it made me angry. Embarrassingly ridiculously angry. It’s stupid, but I had the urge to throw the thing at the wall! I wanted to cuss it out! It’s an inanimate object, it didn’t break, I just needed to pick it up and put the pencils back in. It wasn’t a big deal. But in that split second where I went to that lizard brain, I was furious!
Have you ever been to a support group for this? What you’re describing is a pretty severe ptsd reaction. I know you said elsewhere that you’ve done a lot of mental health stuff and it’s not helped and has been furtherly traumatic, but having other people who can listen and you can know that they do understand might be good for you.
Apologies for contributing to that feeling, definitely wasn’t my intention to upset you!
For those who haven’t read it and are unfamiliar with the horrific teen abuse industry this comic depicts, it’s quite a fucking journey.
It’s great - I actually shared it as one of the links in my post. People do need to know what these places look like, and that visceral reaction I have to it hopefully means that it inspires others.
Oh lol missed it my bad! Thought I checked your links
I made it to chapter 60 over the last 90 minutes.
I can’t even describe how angry I feel about that. Expletives don’t fit. I’m not big on death penalty, but I think these people deserve it - more than some who are sentenced to death.
I also am feeling incredibly grateful that my parents didn’t get caught up in the scam.
It a truly harrowing experience
wtf
is this real? I didn’t read past whenvhe was given anti lice to shower, but can you tell me : are yhe parents responsible for this ?
The parents often truly do not understand how bad these camps are and are often deceived by the institutions themselves. Part of the strategy is to make the treatment so outlandish and to use such strange terminology that the kids can’t properly communicate the abuse without sounding insane. Then they keep telling the parents “no matter what don’t listen to them. They will lie to get out of this. They need to finish it, to see it through, or they will end up in juvie on worse.”
It’s horrific
Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker, this makes no sense to me.
When your kid has behavioral issues that start spiraling out of control, it can put a ton of strain on you and your family, especially if there isn’t a mental health diagnosis (often ignored and even then not a given!). It canbecome all consuming. You can’t send them to hang out with friends, you can’t send them to school, you can’t do anything without them likely lashing out or otherwise causing issues that disrupt everyone’s life constantly. That does not mean the kid is doing something wrong, the reality is just that it can be incredibly difficult to deal with day in and day out for.
At some point you’ll look for anyone that says “I can fix this. We can teach your kids what they need to learn.”
Thank you for taking the time to write that. I can understand those circumstances, what I can’t wrap my head around is the methods described. Children need acceptance and love, on top of discipline; not punishement.
American culture fetishizes “tough love” often at the expense of empathy. Its why our culture bounces between “beat children and make them work” and “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”. These institutions peddle the idea that parents are too soft on bad kids and since it fits our cultural narratives parents and judges often fall for it. This leads to overcorrection (“just talk it through with kids without punishment or consequences”) that reinforces the narrative.
There’s also this idea that teenagers arent really people with rights yet. Like, its insane to me that one can force a 16 year old into such a place against their will. They aren’t adults yet, but they’re close and deserve basic rights. But we have a strong cultural feeling of pater potestas when it comes to underage people.
That’s the other twisted side of all of this. Most of the time, it’s parents who think they are doing what is best for theirchildren. They truly want them to be happy and are just doing the best they can. These horrible organizations suck up their money and prey on their hope
But don’t the kids who finish take revenge on the institutes a couple of years later when they are adults and realize how fucked up it is?
I mean, at least sue them or something? It said it existed 40 years.
Same reason victims of sexual assault struggle to go after the perpetrators.
The kids who get out usually are not in a shape to fight back either mentally or financially and society looks down on them.
The best attempt was Paris Hilton.
They are so fucked up when they leave that they don’t have the capacity to do much.
And even so, the institutions are protected. The people who get out “have a track record”.
They also close down and rename all the time for exactly this reason. It makes it awfully hard to do anything when the court records say We Fuck Up Your Kid LLC hasn’t existed for 3 years. There’s also often layers of legal shells that need to be peeled away too - a lot of them hire teens and young adults partly because they don’t know the law and are easy to throw under the bus when someone DOES die, and they’re easy to threaten into silence. That also doesn’t get into the complicity of local LEOs, town and state governments, and just outright lying - my former boyfriend wound up in one before he killed himself, and to everyone on the outside, they were just told it was a mental hospital for teens, thus, anything they told you was a lie.*
This is so engrossing. I’ve made it to chapter 77 while “working”. What a story.
For real it’s really hard to stop reading
NOOOOOOOO
Wait I don’t recognize that. Fuck, it’s longer and I’m gonna have to read it again
Oh my god he became a drug kingpin
ive been reading this for about 5-6 hours, it’s been worth it
Finished it
There was a post recently, IIRC one of the kids ran away, the “camp” didn’t report it, and the police killed the kid.
There was someone in the comments that defended it, they “worked in the industry”. I didn’t have the guts to call them out on working in the terrorism industry against children, even though my instance is getting deleted this month.
Fuck this and everyone involved
I just found out that my facility claimed another life, within the months I’ve been trying to get the state to investigate it. Not reported anywhere, just personally have been loud enough to have former employees reach out to me.
Fuck anyone involved who doesn’t become a whistleblower.
Even after countless exposés done on these places there are STILL no serious investigations being done. I’m so sorry that happened to you :(
Allegand Jones was killed after refusing to undress for a staff member. Youth Villages at Bartlett is still operating.
It’s these southern states. “Parental rights” is always a code for “children are property to be disposed as we wish.”
But if it’s a got dam fetus
Well yeah, fetuses are the perfect thing to platform.
They don’t make any demands on you.
As far as the US government is concerned at least, they don’t require food, water, shelter, or any assistance. It’s all on the mother. Not “the PARENTS”, mind you. The mother.
Pregnancy complications? Mother’s fault. Never mind that she couldn’t get Healthcare, food, or shelter for herself. Those things are commie-social-Marxism if we just gave them to her.
And when the fetus pops out as a baby after hopefully 9 months, it’s again on the mother to provide. Never mind that she can’t afford Healthcare for herself or her child, or food, or daycare so she can work to afford those things, or, or, or…
And if you think otherwise, clearly you are a spawn of Satan and hate America, something something Jesus.
Theres also “grandparents rights” in some places; some people cant keep their own abusive parent away from their kid(s).
Behind the Bastards has a series on this featuring Mara Wilson.
Zero surprise. IG regularly recommends/sponsors content that genocidal, pseudo-scientific, grifting, fascist, etc. I switched to Pixelfed for regular use.
I had IG ahowing me ads for Arab “housekeeping” services where you could pick your “housekeeper”. Just straight human trafficking and sex slavery brought to you by the fine folks out in Silicon Valley
Some states absolutely have cracked down on these types of places, as they were notoriously used for conversion therapy, among other terrible purposes. I definitely went to one of these places when I was a rebellious teenager, but I was fortunate in only having to go on the weekends during the day. I was also fortunate that the place had some oversight by my state, as I quickly learned that all their “punishments” could easily be defeated by simply refusing to participate (e.g. refusing to run laps, clean the gym floor with a toothbrush, etc). I lasted maybe 3 weekends there before they kicked me out of their “program.”
That was 20+ years ago, and it still kind of blows my mind that those places exist. Therapy and supportive parents will “correct” rebellious behaviors 90+% of the time.
The funniest thing about my story is that it was kind of the reverse of the regular one. My mom was the wild one who did drugs, and was trying to keep me from noticing.
I wasn’t really “troubled.” I didn’t do drugs, I was a shy weird kid with good grades, never acted up in school - I didn’t learn the word “blowjob” until we watched Why Did I Get Married as part of “group therapy.” My mom just was a munchausen psycho. The actual psychiatric hospitals she sent me to would pick up on that quickly, but these fucking places don’t care, they just want the cash.
Munchausen, oof… brutal, sorry you had to endure that as a kid. My wife is a children’s therapist, specializing in play therapy for traumatized kids. It’s definitely opened my eyes to how much misery in society could be dramatically reduced by simple early intervention in young children. So many problems in adulthood are rooted in untreated trauma. Anyway, I hope you’re doing well now, despite having to go through that gauntlet of a mentally unwell parent as a kid.
Also, very much agree that these places should absolutely be nationally outlawed.
Have you punched her in the mouth yet? Sounds like she has it coming.
I’ve never been physically violent as a person, but that didn’t stop her from telling these types of fuckers I was. I don’t think I’ve ever punched anyone. I’ve told her exactly what I think about her a few times, and maybe the punishment is that she has to live with the knowledge that her child hates her.
I cut off contact in my early twenties, briefly tried “maybe she’s better, maybe I was actually a crazy kid” (it is very hard to wrap one’s head around the idea that their parent deliberately hurt them) then discovered that she had lied about my biological father all of my life. That was the final straw.
She is an insane monster. When I wake up and hear she’s gone someday, it will be like the clear skies after a rough storm.
Save a bottle of champagne, if that’s the case. Pop the cork when the storm clears.
