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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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.
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.
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.
Wtf is Elan and why am I only hearing about this now?
Where’s the Johbn Oliver episode about this? Still in production?
Elan was thankfully finally shut down in 2011, so it’s no longer destroying children. Just took four decades!
The big issue, as I campaign to get my own torturers facility closed down, is that they weaponize privacy laws. Both the facilities and the state. They pretend they are protecting children by refusing to investigate. The double speak is fucking insane.
Good to hear it’s been shut down at least.
Both the facilities and the state. They pretend they are protecting children by refusing to investigate. The double speak is fucking insane.
Yeah I know about bureaucratic fuckery as well. It’s very different here in Finland, but the insanity of how the system actually works is pretty mindblowing in some cases. The worst part is that no-one believes me though, as “that sort of thing doesn’t happen in Finland.” In the US you can at least find someone who believes in the right thing, even if most people don’t. Like it’s big enough that someone will agree with you. Haven’t found anyone in Finland yet.
Thanks for those links, I got to read more into this shit. Won’t be expecting a John Oliver episode though, if it’s not a “hot issue”.
Tbh I think they weaponise all laws. Laws really don’t matter to them. Well, laws do, justice doesn’t. I’ve found that out. Laws only matter if you have practically limitless funds so you can actually make the argument for your rights. When you don’t, there’s no fucking justice. So depressing.
Realizing the power imbalance inherent in contract law was a major radicalizing force in my life. I believe Hobbesian and Lockean theories of social contracts are still so widely taught in U.S. civics classes (uncertain of their global reach in schools) because it’s important to convince kids early on that people choose to enter into these agreements with larger power structures for their own good. If that view isn’t ingrained deep within your self then you’ll realize how absurd it is to enter into a legally binding contract with a party that has all the power in the relationship. Why would you?! They write the language, they limit your rights, they reserve the right to change the agreement, they reserve the right to terminate the arrangement. Companies, countries, it’s all from the same playbook. If you break it, fines or jail. If they break it, good luck. If it’s not enumerated in the document it doesn’t matter because they fall back on their power to do what they please anyway. It’s wielded as a weapon that forces you to accept the status quo under threat of retaliation. How do you assert your right to anything in this system? Playing along by paying for someone to represent you and asserting your belief in and support of the legal structure that has disenfranchised you, of course. You still don’t even have a seat at the table.
How do you assert your right to anything in this system?
Yeah it’s just ridiculous. The most ridiculous thing in the recent years has been browsing the web anywhere where the new EU EULA laws apply.
Now it’s become less so, but it still for most sites often takes literally 15 minutes to go and click off all the “legitimate interest” bits. Just like straight up wanting to refused everything is taking me longer than it would to load that site on 56k. And that’s not even to begin to consider that someone would actually read the hundreds of pages of all this hundreds of different deals. For every fucking website. It’s literally impossible to make an informed decision about any of those deals or agreements, because there’s just too much fucking info.
I’ve literally quoted the law at Finnish authorities and tried contacting journalists and politicians, and I’m still yet to find a single person who would be even willing to accept that the cops did something illegal. I don’t need for them to change the past, but stop fucking gaslighting me about how the present works when I’m showing you photographic evidence you’re ignoring.
Youknow?
Even when literally caught in the act, even when I have black on white about them saying something that is clearly inaccurate, they’ll just ignore their mistake. And usually blame me. Even my mom implicitly victim blames me.
Fucking society, being ruined by greedy psychopaths
There’s two episodes about this on Behind the Bastards. Fucking heartbreaking!
zuckerborg does need access to young minds.
Facebook has been advertising scams and bogus health products to me for a while now.
