“They told me they had to handcuff me, so I was handcuffed to the female and then walked out of my house in the driveway,” Schwab remembers.
Schwab found herself a captive resident of the Academy At Ivy Ridge near Ogdensburg, New York, which sold itself as a"tough love" boarding school for troubled teens. She and her fellow students were under the strictest rules, not allowed to talk or even make eye contact. Punishment could be severe. “If we said anything that even suggested that we were being abused or made the program look bad, we would be punished instead,” she says.“I ended up cutting my wrists, hoping that it would get me sent to a mental hospital instead,” she remembers. “Because I wanted to be able to see my family for Christmas. It did not work.”
In 2020, Cornelius Fredericks was just 16 when he got in trouble for throwing a sandwich at one facility. He was restrained by school staffers and later died.In 2022, 17-year-old Taylor Goodrich died after a medical emergency at a boarding school in Utah, home to more troubled teen programs than any other state.Legislation McKell sponsored in 2021 is now law in Utah.
“The whole thing was a big scam to get money from parents and keep kids there as long as they possibly could,” says Kristin Schwab. The groups says programs that incorporate clinical evidence and research can do some good. In a statement after the Netflix series the groups said,"The Association will continue to work tirelessly to eliminate systems of abuse and champion genuine, safe solutions for youth in need of authentic therapy.