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How Reddit Shut Down the Worst Troubled Teen School in America

Heart Starts Pounding w/ Kaelyn Moore

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In 1970, a man with no clinical training opened a "therapeutic boarding school" in the Maine woods. For forty-one years, students inside were subjected to organized beatings, forced fight rings, and psychological torture while journalists, state investigators, and even Congress failed to shut it down.

Then, in 2010, one anonymous Reddit post did what none of them could.

TW: Child Abuse, mention of suicide, addiction

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20 Comments

@lisaguarinos7490 3 months ago

Hundreds of witnesses describing the exact same events... "not enough evidence"

@Rowyn_Raccoon 3 months ago (edited)

The absolute rage this school's entire lore fills me with is unreal. There isn't a prison sentence long enough.

@Rissa89 3 months ago

"insufficient evidence" except for the literal documentary with evidence. Okayyy

@SapphicAlix 3 months ago

I don’t think I can watch this one. I was kidnapped and held against my will for 3 months in a TTI wilderness program when I was 15-16 and TTI content it too triggering for me to watch. But I just wanted to say thank you for covering the TTI with your platform.
Thousands of teens are still sent to TTI programs every year. Thousands of teens are still kidnapped every year to do so.
I have C-PTSD from my countless traumas but being kidnapped and held captive were some of the worst things I’ve ever gone through. It’s so important for people to know that children are being kidnapped every day and held captive for months or years and about the abuse that going in these programs that lead to children dying- both in the programs themselves and afterwards due to suicide because their PTSD from the TTi is so bad.
So just thank you for covering this. I’m active in the TTI survivor community and one of our main goals is raising awareness about what these programs are like and how they affect us long-term. So just thank you so much for using your platform to raise awareness about the TTI and for reaching people who would have otherwise never known the TTI exists.

@geekyraven 3 months ago

I think the reason people didn't care to do anything to stop this is because children are seen as property, instead of treated like people

@Teeteetootoo 3 months ago

I had a neighbor who attended this school. He was in so much pain years later. He was and alcoholic. When he was drunk, I could hear him upstairs yelling at his girlfriend in the same tone and cadence they made the kids yell at each other. He's sober and doing much better now. But yeah. Horrible stuff.

@thejourney1369 3 months ago

Dawn’s story is especially heartbreaking. She was running away to marry her boyfriend. She didn’t know that he had died a few days earlier.

@ChefSarah4104 3 months ago

My 9 year old is "spicy." There's no flight or attitude or annoyance that would make me want to send her away. My heart breaks for all of those poor kids.

@NoreenV 3 months ago

The parents that send their kids to these places are just as f’ed up as the monsters who work there. WTAF is wrong with people. It makes me so angry 😡

@ArwenNMyrtlesMom 3 months ago

So, I had 100% non-troubled teens. You know how? I treated them like human beings. Usually it's a troubled parent that's the problem. Hope your "troubled teen" isn't in charge of your retirement home selection.

@BodyCamUncovered414 3 months ago

I was a victim of Eau Clair academy in eau clair wisconsin its been 17 years and i still cant be woken up out of my sleep without feeling like im having a heart attack from beatings from full grown men to sexual assault and locked in cells if your “defiant” its so many people that have been traumatized by this so call teen center its now been closed down as of last year after 60 years of being open

@saylorcole16 3 months ago

Every time you said “and the school stayed open” after every expose on them HOWWWW what resource are we supposed to reach out to for help if the people put in place to keep these checks and balances. So incredibly frustrating.

@bayleekrein1505 3 months ago

The sad thing about this story is that it is still happening millions of trouble teen places are still open and abusing kids and they have websites that makes these places seem like a good things but trouble teen industries are extremely abusive and I had been too 15 of them during my life 4 years old too 18 years old and I was abused in physically mentally psychologically and verbally and many more ways and I can’t believe I surveyed it because many times I was close to death and the worst part was that I was an orphan so no one came to save me from these places I was just passed along like garbage and my reasons for being sent there was being too difficult and too hard to handle no other reason I guess I just didn’t matter to anyone but hey I’m 18 now I got out a 3 months ago and I’m trying to put my life together

@Faunria 3 months ago

My mother was in a place like this, and she still has trauma from it many many years later. Just awful how they treat fellow human beings.

@Anemicpanda 3 months ago

It's disgusting how none of the adults admitted to the abuse and none were held accountable, yet they forced teenagers to do the same. 😢😡

@CrystalCorgi42 3 months ago

I have friends who got sent to places like this. One guy I dated came back worse everytime. Another who was sent for smoking weed was told he could go home if he admitted to doing worse drugs and after months he finally did and they used it to keep him there even longer.

@CrankyCat78 3 months ago

"Troubled teen" is a wild blanket statement. Kids undergoing puberty in a society that isn't made for them are going to be troubled by default. Look at high school and what time it starts. Study after study has shown that students do better if high school starts at 10am. But people will call teeangers lazy, and in the same breath complaining about them staying up until midnight on a school night - because we know their sleep rythym is different to children or adults, but we want to shoehorn them into how we have society set up for maximum capitalist efficiency. The way teenagers act is rooted in biology and sociology that goes back to when we lived in tribes. Only addressing a way to work within that biology can you effectively help teenagers.

@Aurealis0 3 months ago

Hi Kaelyn! Not the exact same thing, but I know a guy who I used to date but now are just friends, so he felt more comfortable telling me things, who was sent to “wilderness therapy” a couple years back when he was a teen, and it is quite literally atrocious what happens at those places too, hell what he told me happened to him was probably the worse case I’ve ever heard about the topic. Of course I won’t go into detail because someone else’s trauma is not my story to tell without permission, but the scars he’s shown me and the stories he’s talked about were devastating to hear about. The place he went to is still up and going too and multiple people have died there too ):

@sleepyspacegremlin 3 months ago

My stepsisters went to one of these troubled teen schools. They are not successful, happy people 😢

@oogawa13kokomi 3 months ago

Another thing to add to the list of "this country hates children"... I hate it here and I am filled with absolute rage that people who hurt others, especially animals and children, are protected or swept under the rug.