A new documentary series documenting the abuse of troubled teens at New York’s Ivy Ridge Academy has led to new police calls from former students against the now-closed boarding school. A police investigation has begun.
Netflix’s “The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnappings” follows director Katherine Kubler and her former classmates as they visit the site of a school that closed in 2009. All of the students’ files, including Kubler’s, were left in an abandoned location, allowing students to obtain more information. Insight to process what happened to them.
They spent years isolated from their families and were “treated like prisoners and subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse,” the series said.
Former students claim they were subjected to abuse ranging from kidnapping from their homes, strip searches, starvation, sleep deprivation, corporal punishment, and solitary confinement. On the other hand, they said they had no formal education.
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Teenagers who participated in the program were reportedly forbidden from laughing, talking, or communicating with the outside world at all. Phone calls and letters to parents were closely monitored, and any attempts to tell parents about the abuse they had suffered were intercepted and punished.
The victims said they were “brainwashed” by a program that painted them as drug-addicted, manipulative and hopeless. He also said similar harmful techniques are used in existing programs for troubled teens across the country.
Several former students have reported sexual abuse at the facility, which the filmmakers called “Ivy Ridge’s open secret.”
“They dehumanize children as liars and manipulators and use that to create compliance,” said one interviewee.
Mr. Kubler and his classmates described a mandatory endurance training course called a “seminar.” One seminar involved spending about an hour screaming and slamming towels wrapped in duct tape on the ground. If the exercise is canceled, they will be sent to a new seminar to break it.
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Katherine Kubler and a group of her former classmates visit an abandoned school where they say they were physically and mentally tortured. The school, which was quickly closed, was left with gruesome graffiti and records left behind, including those of the students themselves. (Netflix)
The two former students, who participated in the program for 22 months when they were 15 years old, sit in chairs and repeat the words, “palms up, palms down, palms together, palms apart,” with their hands. He said he had to act out the instructions. For 8 hours straight.
Kubler said that in high school, he lived a “typical teenage life: drinking, smoking, sneaking out at night.”
She was expelled from boarding school in second grade for drinking in 2004 and thought her father would pick her up. Instead, her parents arranged for her two men to kidnap her and take her to Ivy Ridge.
Kubler said the trauma she endured there lasted her entire life and that one of her college roommates told her:[didn’t] I need to explain the program to everyone. [she] met. ”
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New York State District Attorney Gary Pasqua of St. Lawrence County said new reports have continued to come in since the documentary aired on March 5. (Netflix)
“I have no disclaimers to tell people because they drill into you this complete sense of shame and how you’re such a terrible person just to be there. “I felt like there were issues,” she said.
The St. Lawrence County District Attorney’s Office and state police announced at a press conference Monday that since the series first aired on March 5, complaints of abuse at schools near Ogdensburg have been pouring in daily.
District Attorney Gary Pascua urged the public not to call the prosecutor’s office to harass staff or inquire about the investigation. He also asked the public not to enter the abandoned Ivy Ridge property.
“I understand the reaction that would occur when people saw what was in these videos. But that’s not the reason, it’s not a reason to give someone a free pass to harass anyone, no matter who they are. It’s not a thing, it’s a business,” Pascua said. “Please. Let us do our job.”
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Film director Katherine Kubler said her 15 months at the school changed her forever. (Netflix)
Former school employees have also been harassed and even threatened with violence, Pascua said.
The three-part documentary alleges that the school’s staff are untrained and unqualified, as are those who created the program itself.
At the age of 14, Kubler, pictured with her father Ken, was expelled from boarding school for drinking, then abducted by two men, handcuffed, and brought into trouble. He said he was taken to a program for troubled teens. (Netflix)
In the final episode of the series, titled “Follow the Money,” filmmakers investigated where the profits from these programs went. Robert “Bob” Litchfield founded the World Association of Special Programs and Schools, and Academy at Ivy Ridge is one of his more than 25 boarding schools or youth programs affiliated with the Utah-based group around the world. It was.
According to the documentary, the organization made millions of dollars each year before disbanding amid a legal battle over abuse allegations.
“There are glimmers of hope, but these places are like whack-a-mole,” Kubler said. “Sometimes a store closes and reopens under a new name… sometimes in the same building and with the same staff.”
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The Netflix film advocates for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which calls for more thorough accountability for these programs. The proposed bill would formally ban the use of restraints and seclusion, designate an entity to make recommendations regarding the length of a student’s stay, and collect outcome-oriented data at least six months after a student’s return. become.
