Both of you good responses, tho if you punt them they go too far and if you eat them (unless alive, where it is just as good, or better sometimes, better) you don’t get the screams of pain, far better than crying
@@WeldersFSC You shouldn't hit your kids... Instead you should talk to them about what they did, the situation of it and why not to do it. And maybe you can ground your kids for a week of not seeing your friends. Also, hitting is actually concidered abuse.
Hey guys! Fun fact! The "troubled teen" industry still exists and kids are still legally kidnapped to attend these camps just in case anyone was wondering.
"And some students sent in the ring were even pregnant." Considering students were restricted from any physical contact, and that the adult abusers could punish the children however they wanted... That alone is extremely horrifying despite how understated it is.
Given that’s it a place for troubled teens I would presume those people were pregnant before they arrived. At least I sure hope so cuz the alternative is horrific to think about
@@quickman1047 judging by the fact people were there for up to 3 years i feel like that wouldnt be the case. absolutely disgusting what probably happened :(
Imagine escaping what could only be called a horrifically inhumane and cult-like prison, crying out to the first truck you see for salvation, only to be raped and murdered and left in a ditch on the side of the road, that's one of the bleakest most depressing things I've ever heard
That and the kid that just got shot for all his trouble. Those two were the saddest part of this video, honestly. All of that pain and effort to survive to end up...not.
@@ElysetheEevee Yeah but her story is still worse. I think the guy got shot because he was mistook for a burglar or something. The girl was assaulted and killed with intent. People like that make me sick to my stomach.
It is so incredibly fucked up that that poor girl managed to escape from Elan and the first person she found, coming straight from hell, abused and killed her immediately. My god. May she rest in peace.
It's disturbingly common. It's as if they see a broken person and think "oh well, they're already fucked up, might as well." Rapists really are the scum of the Earth.
@@peanutbuttermotherchucker agreed! it's absolutely demented to even think of doing something like that, i believe in rehabilitation but there are some people too far gone
Unbelievable that this school only closed in 2011. 41 years of torturing teens. What's even worse is that "troubled teens" are still abused today and sent to these shitty camps.
I went to this school. It’s been 25 years, I still can’t just sit down and watch this, but I scrubbed through it and read the transcript - your presentation looks very good and thorough and accurate, and you seem to have a very gentle and thoughtful way of presenting it. Thank you for sharing our story with others. These schools cause long term, complicated harm.
@@好吧-h6k have you ever went on foot to a place that is new to you and try to find a way through without knowing where you are or where you are going, one minute feels like an hour, nervous, afraid, confused, tired, and frustrated, even when you have a sane mind it's hard and not to mention she was only a lost child. It's fun to believe we can do better but the truth is most of us would do the same.
I was going into this video expecting to be creeped out or spooked but I ended up coming out of it fucking angry. Everyone involved in running this school deserve a life of punishment and to rot in hell.
@@jurgenkk even if you are mentally the strongest person in the world I don’t think you’d be able to come out of an experience like this without trauma that will affect you for the rest of your life. This isn’t simply a few days of mistreatment, but years of unending torture.
I was in one similar to this. Was forced to strip naked and lay on a cold hard floor for hours in a tiny 8x8 square room that was padlocked. There was a tiny window where staff would watch me. And it was cold. No blanket, nothing. No underwear or socks either. First time I got put in there, I got a cold because of it. The reason? I was feeling suicidal (which was completely valid considering the circumstances), and they encourage you to talk to staff when you feel that way so they can "talk you down". Turns out that actually means throwing you butt naked into a cold room with concrete floors. Girls would frequently be stripped naked by or under the eye of male staff. I was 15. Others were much younger. Some were adults under 21 that were wards of the state. They made us wear plain blue shirt and pants, unless you were a "runner", then you were stuck in a bright yellow jumpsuit. Those sucked really bad during the summer because it was long sleeved. There were community showers and toilets like prison with scheduled use times, we walked in a line to and from the cafeteria and to the on-site school building, got locked into our rooms multiple times a day for hours with nothing in there but a Bible and our beds, were forced to be active outside for hours in the heat of summer with no consistent source of water. It was hidden way out in the middle of the woods in Rural Missouri where it was sure to go unseen by the outside world. We were allowed one 10-minute phone call per week, so we could choose to either call our caseworkers and beg for another placement, or spend 10 minutes talking with a loved one. The woman who decided everything for us was the most heartless person I've ever met. She was abusive to everyone, even staff members. She would smile when something bad happened to a child in front of her. I saw it If a kid had a breakdown, they called in the "crisis van", which was a van full of strong men who would physically subdue the resident, often painfully for the resident. I am severely traumatized and was physically injured more than once, as well as psychologically abused. I have been unable to find a therapist or drug yet that can help me. The reason I was there? I was a foster kid with depression, and they didn't want to take the time to find me a foster family. Sadly this was the case for many other children I met there. And I went to multiple facilities like it, but this was by far the worst. Valley Springs Youth Ranch in Black/Lesterville, Missouri. They paint themselves as a "treatment facility" for troubled youth, but it's really just legal child trafficking. Don't send your kids away. Become foster parents for teens if you can. And most importantly, hold these people and facilities accountable.
This was heartbreaking to read. I am so sorry for whatever you had to go through. I know a "sorry" won't help much. I am a teen and I can't imagine a life where my basic human rights were just snatched from me. I really hope you recovered and that your traumatic experiences don't haunt you as much today.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. A major reason I specifically want to foster and adopt teen children, despite many people saying it would be very difficult is because of this. Foster children in general are overlooked enough as it is, and teenagers hardly ever even get a second glance because so many people are just looking for a child they can mold into something they want.
I went through the same things. Amazing how similar the programming is in every one of these places, no matter where in the US they are. There are many similarities to prison procedures, including the self-harm protocol. But these schools likely have even less regulation, as they're private institutions. Willow Springs in Reno/Sparks, NV; Thunder Road in Oakland, CA; Heritage Oaks "Hospital" in Sacramento, CA. WS and HO both had pediatric wings, and WS frequently placed small children in solitary confinement. We could hear them screaming from the adolescent wing. People with addictions and behavioral/mental health issues (real or perceived) are heavily stigmatized and given a degraded social status in the US, despite the progress we've made as a society in terms of acceptance and treatment. We need twice the amount of hard evidence proving abuses like these for anyone to even consider taking us seriously. In addition, few people are even concerned about what goes on in these facilities because of the kinds of people that are affected. It's the same belief that keeps our jails and prisons as inhumane as possible. It's based on a self-righteous narrative of "individual responsibility" that's contributed to the decay or disappearance of most of America's social services, public and private. "They must have done something to get themselves put in Elan, so they deserve whatever punishment they get." And that continues to be the dominant narrative in the US despite all evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of punitive behavioral treatments.
This just makes me blood-boilingly angry to read, the horrors you were forced to endure. I was already familiar with these types of facilities, and reading this, I feel a strong sense of vengeance (for lack of a better word) for these horrible programs and the immense social, emotional, and psychological damage they do to innocent children and to society. These flagrant constitutional and human rights abuses need to be fucking stopped, and it's disgusting they still operate to this day in the United States. I'm so sorry you had to go through all this. ❤️ May future generations avenge you legally, and get these places shut down forever.
@@jamkat7785 The people should know, the more horrific it is the greater it's effect on people and it having that disgusted effect on people is a good thing, increases chances of change too.
@truly nobody You calling the people that lived through the worst financial crisis in modern history *Twice* lazy? With your pensions, 401ks, social security, etc? You're talking about people who will be paying their college debt into their 40s lesser than old people who sit on their mountains of wealth, detached from the modern world while running almost every facet of the government and economy.
This ‘troubled teen’ industry is absolutely still alive and there are probably thousands of teens who are facing similar treatment today. Advocating against this industry is just as important as ever.
I haven’t looked into it yet, but I imagine this place wasn’t the first and like you said, it definitely wasn’t the last... but it does seems like this one place had a whole lot of influence on the spread of traumatic abuse under the guise of discipline
The place I was at a kid actually died, it was under adolescent DOC star academy Custer SD look it up. No one got sued and the staff write on their LinkedIn profiles about how fulfilling it was as a job. It’s a fucked world, man. Unfortunately you can’t sue in every case and expect it to bring back a dead child
@@darkmomokocore3919 police is generally good, yes there's a LOT of media posts against it in america but they're good people, i respect them with all of my heart...
I agree with both of you to a degree. Some have tried all things possible and trust the wrong people. I had my oldest at 15, effectively ruining his and my childhood. I had a very angry child on my hands and was in no condition to help him as I became mentally disabled. My mom talked me into enrolling him into a Christian school for a couple months. He lived there with a nuclear family and structure. We thought he thrived 🤷🏻♀️ He's 27 now. He recently told me that the only thing the school did was introduce him to gangs. He continued being a lost, angry child until I grew up and bonded with him. He doesn't act out anymore and is a loving respectful son. I don't know why I'm saying this, I've never told anyone. I guess I'm trying to say that every decent parent wants the best for their child. Sometimes circumstances don't allow the best unfortunately. One Love 💛
P. S. It wasn't my decision to get pregnant at 14. It was a 26 yo mans. I had no parents around. So please don't say I should have thought about this before I got pregnant. I was forced into SA. I kept my beautiful baby 💞 Thank you 🌹
To be fair, even as someone sent to one of these places, the parents are often lied to and defrauded and never know. Communication is censored, there's no phone to call for help, and parents are instructed to believe the child is being "manipulative" if they ever complain. Sometimes you have to basically lie to get out and the parents have no idea. However, once they actually go on campus and experience one of the "seminars" and aren't horrified, then I'm truly concerned about their critical thinking skills. Within hours of that seminar a parent should be leaving and taking their child with them. In WWASP facilities these were performed under the group Resource Realizations by David Gilcrease. The T.A.S.K.S. trainings. There were some that even included r*pe re-enactments as attack therapy. These places were gulags. Also many children sent there do not realize they are being abused until years later. It's taken some 20 years to fully understand. I understood quickly and tried to inform others that I attended with and was actually attacked and criticized for doing so. That was in 2009. I attended one of these places in 1999-2002.
"you're gonna act like a baby, you should be treated like a baby" Babies don't get spanked or screamed at. They're babies. They should be calmed down. They won't understand why they are being yelled at or hurt. Babies are just babies.
It's insane that parents are so comfortable with not being able to contact their kids. I went to a boarding school which was the polar opposite of this (voluntary, fun, a place to explore who you are and break rules with other kids for a year) and the only reason my parents let me go was because they had seen it with their own eyes, could communicate with me all they wanted, and got to go home every few weeks. How could any parent just send their kid across state lines and let them stay there for years with limited communication? Makes me sick.
I was just thinking about this. I watched this with my mum and the first thing she commented, after her initial shock was "How on earth does any parent handle being unable to check on their child???" It's really a stark difference that's made me wonder if the US parent-child culture is this cold and distant everywhere. It's pretty unthinkable here in Greece.
@@ElvenAngel I live in the United States. My mom has made it clear more than once that, even after I leave home for good as an adult, she wants to be in frequent contact with me. She absolutely would not consider sending me to a boarding school... period, probably, but definitely not one that wouldn't let her talk to me often. Frankly, she'd probably assume that a boarding school that doesn't allow its students to contact their parents very often is a major red flag for abuse. And she'd be right.
I wish i personally could have helped him leave this plane of existence, slowly. So many kids suffering through the damage he inflicted until their eventual deaths. People like that are the worst.
Yeah that part is heartbreaking like much of this video. But for that girl to escape hell only to be greeted by an even worse form of hell is so sad. She was brave for sure.
i couldn’t help but tear up when hearing about dawn. i can’t even imagine how much courage it must have taken to escape and then to be assaulted and have your life be so cruelly taken away by someone who you thought was going to be your savior? just unbelievably horrible
Even disregarding the fact that tragically he was essentially beaten to death, the excuse that he had “regularly faked headaches” when a student had died of a brain aneurysm is patently absurd. Like nobody outside of the school when hearing this considered that maybe he _wasn’t_ faking and was just neglected.
Phil’s story is absolutely heartbreaking. The kid didn’t go down without a fight, and with that alone he deserves a ton of respect. Ricci and the rest of the Elan staff have a spot reserved for them in Hell.
If there’s no afterlife, they will never be held accountable for their crimes, just like many other criminals. They will happily live the rest of their lives, spending millions they’ve made of their prison camp for underaged. This world sucks.
It makes me beyond angry that a man who turned child abuse into a profitable business managed to escape justice. I can’t imagine how sick your mind has to be in order to rationalise treating children that way.
Because he did not care. The only thing he wanted was the parents' wallet. When you're money hungry you'd do anything to get that sweet, wonderful cash. Money and power will always and forever be a double-edged sword, and as much as I hope I am incorrect, might eventually be the downfall of humanity.
@@bashartz I guess you could say money has been and still is fucking up humanity. Its been our downfall for years, we just haven't reached the inevitable end yet.
The punishments for these programs, and people involved with it, should be test subjects to radiation poisoning. Like legit, this would be the most beneficial punishments to the scientific community and the general public
I had a friend in high school who was sent here for a short time. He never talked about what went on there, but his story of being kidnapped at night is something I’ll never forget. The worst part is he was not a bad kid, he had shitty parents who didn’t want to be parents
@Rusty Howe Wtf??? these scums really exist?? Dear god I'm really pissed off How come they LITTERALY consent to the kidnapping of their children? Sick bastards
I know a kid who has the same experience. Kidnapped at night. Her parents should have been sterilized. I’m so sorry for you pain. So so so sorry. There are better people out there. Just sadly not a lot
Any parent who signs their kid up for something where the first step is openly kidnapping them at night is pathetic and weak. Sorry you were too much of a failure to raise your kid properly, but don't put them through this because you failed.
There was a case where the would-be kidnap victim killed one of the kidnappers who came for them in the middle of the night. It was ruled self-defence and they faced no punishment for it. That needs to happen more often, in my opinion.
parents who send their kids to shit like this don’t deserve kids. saddest part is the majority of those kids probably had “behavioral issues” because of how their parents treat them. nauseating.
@@FyerBear That's because they are worthless mfs. Imagine taking that much money out of your retirement savings or bank account you earned from a office job that earns you a slightly higher salary than a McDonald's worker just to send your kid to somewhere worse than juvenile because you couldn't bother to raise your kid and parent them.
@Faith it’s a combination of both. The profit incentive makes it so you want to spend the least amount of money and resources as possible. That means you make more money, but the staff you hire will be deranged and hungry for suffering at worst or indifferent to the suffering at best.
Not always, I was beat and beat badly, beat so bad I've been put into the hospital multiple times. As youth I got into fights and lashed out, but as a father I have never beat my kids or even had the slightest thought of beating my kids if they mouth off. My beatings only have strengthen my need to protect my kids so I'd say for me it's had the complete opposite effect
He came home. In a box. This sent chills down my spine. I honestly hate parents that thinks sending their child away to some facility they heard about and not even see him face to face once a week is a good idea.
My bf was born in the early 70s and went to something exactly like this. He still can't describe his experience without crying his eyes out and he's one tough dude.
The absolute hatred for children in this place is astounding. Worse even so when you realize that more often than not, kids who act out are doing so for a valid reason, mostly trauma and mental illness. These kids didn’t need to be beaten and screamed at. They needed to be held and cared for and given the proper time and dedication that it takes to raise any child right.
Exactly, childrens are flawed and its normal for a child or a teenager to act irrationally, they don't know shit about the world yet, extreme punishments and expecting perfection from them isn't a way to "fix" them to be a better person, i personally think its up to those children's to better themselves just be there to guide them, not this, and i hate how i used to think this is normal as a child. I see it every time when i was in elementary school.
Thank fucking god you said that, I also keep a knife under my pillow all the time so if that’d happened to me someone may have died. An it’d all to be blamed on the parents, I’m sure there’s others who do the same
@@lilorin1516 I always had this chilhood fantasy of escaping a really strict, prison like boarding school like this one, just to be able to say ''f u, i finally did it'' to the people in charge. After seeing this im just glad i was never really put into such a situation. Like you, i also sleep with a knife within arms reach.
Out of all of these horrible series of events, that poor girl Dawn's story hit the hardest. She was thrown into a hell by her oblivious parents, and after enduring months of torture, she finally managed to escape, running for her life, only to run into a monster on the road and die a horribly agonizing death. I can't even imagine the kind of despair and hopelessness she had felt. :(((
The fact that this camp was designed by a psychologist is appalling. Even back in the 70s we knew how ineffective punishment is for behaviour change, how psychologically damaging verbal abuse is and how problematic power imbalances are within groups of peers.
Yeah, it really is sickening. Like, your a professional, did you not read the books? Did you not listen during lectures?? And the fact that people just eat that shit up because it's from a professional, like it's just so goddamn disgusting.
>"If you're gonna act like a baby, you're gonna be treated like a baby." I really hope someone looked into this guy if he thinks that this is how you treat a baby - by screaming at them and hitting them.
Hey, abuse breeds monstrous behavior. Abuse is the only way places like this stay in business, those abused people vent on their own children and others, creating more "problem children" to fuel the Abuse Industry. The gear keeps turning and the beast is fed.
As someone with autism that has frequent autistic meltdowns, I was horrified at that part. I'm sure some students there had autism and had meltdowns as well, and in turn were reprimanded, having more meltdowns and the loop continues. It's horrifying.
@@oddeyesies I feel you so had. I have severe anxiety that caused me to have meltdowns when I was younger (and still today less frequently) and my dad employed almost the exact ame punishment. All it taught me was to hide y emotions as much as pssible.
So, one of my former best friends was actually a graduate of this. She used to tell me that they'd make her relive her sexual abuse. There were a bunch of kids, male and female, who were raped on campus. She found out that one of the people who came forward with this actually killed himself. It's a common outcome from this kind of abuse. Over the years, I met a bunch of people who were from this industry. Most of them have very serious drug issues and none talk to their parents. I haven't seen one that has been okay since then. I'd put this on par with human trafficking, if I can be blunt.
Yeah I was honestly surprised at the lack of sexual abuse from this. Least nobody is talking about it. But this kind of environment seems like it'd be able to almost make it ritualistic.
My theory on why this is the case is that there's just too many people complicit there would be dozens of students that would have been involved considering that they liked making the students part of these rituals. if there was any punitive sexual abuse nobody is gonna talk about it. the victims aren't gonna wanna bring in a small army upon themselves and the ones who would have done the abuse even though they were victims themselves of this culture aren't gonna wanna bring down more chaos into their lives so they're just gonna keep this bottled up forever. they're gonna take it to their graves but the lack of any mention of it in a place you had teenagers monitored 24/7, no shower privacy.... speaks volumes to me. something has to give and they engineered it so that energy was placed somewhere.
The worst mistake a parent can make is thinking a child will act and think like an adult. Kids are dumb as hell; they're kids. It's the responsibility of parents to help them grow up, not expect it to happen naturally. Edit: I can't believe I still have to say this but I used the word "dumb" here as a figure of speech.
@@r3born206 exactly, usually it’s the parent that decides arbitrarily depending on how they can best avoid responsibility, either by saying their kid should have acted more mature or that they can’t control their child’s childish behaviour :/
@@r3born206 children are like the new ones and they need to be taught right and not immediately put stress or pressure on to them.They would eventually learn about life and become and act like an adult ONCE they become an adult.
Kid's are not ''dumb as hell'', the assertion that children are inherently stupid has been used as justification for the ''troubled teen industry'' for centuries.
@@anxietywave8735 Apology for the vague hyperbole. What I meant was that kids behaving irrationally every now and then isn't an irregularity that the parents need to worry about. It's part of their growth and development to eventually become impressionable and rebellious. It is the duty of parents to guide them during this stage of development, but do so in a way that it doesn't violate children's rights with too much restrictions, or spoil the children by giving them too much either. I don't mean to say that kids being stupid is a justification for these junior concentration camps. I'm just saying that it's perfectly normal for children to behave that way, and parents need to accept that. English is not my native language so be patient with my wording please.
Yeah and the whole ass school is being manipulative by itself. I meant the one who created the school and the rules. And the other rule that "cant look at the opposite gender" how are they supposed to do when walking past eachother? Look down or closed their eyes? And also the audacity to the parents to PAY 50K DOLLARS just to fucking send them at a "school" like this.
I was never a fan of Paris Hilton, but I ended up watching her latest documentary out of curiosity. Discovering she had been sent to one of these children labor camps, even kidnapped in the middle of the night, has caused her such extreme PTSD that she's still having trouble sleeping or living her life each day was heartbreaking. Not only because of Paris, but because of all the children that are imprisoned and tortured in these facilities who still don't have a voice. This isn't even tragic. This is pure evil. It's pure evil.
She’s been an advocate for exposing these institutions since that documentary’s release. The doc was a way for her to address it publicly ahead of appearing in court against the program that she was apart of. People are more and more aware of this now, but they do still exist.
there’s a phineas and ferb episode that heavily references elan. candace has a dream about her actually managing to get her mother to find out what phineas and ferb were doing and she sends them to this reformatory school that marketed themselves as a good place that will help their students improve, when in reality they were brainwashed and candace had to go back and save them because she misses them in the episode, the thing i remember most is the two boys having to clean the bathrooms with a single toothbrush
Theres a part where the brothers are at a table with tools on it. Whenever Phineas tries to grab a tool and say "Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!" they get sprayed with cold water. This repeats until the the brothers no longer have the desire to build anything, and do not pick up the tools.
Yes I thought of that episode whilst watching this video! As a kid I thought it was a wholesome episode about sibling relationships and appreciating them but now knowing about stuff like Elan, elements of the episode (such as the prison Phineas and Ferb were sent to) actually makes it pretty dark. And to think Elan was still open when the show first aired
Exactly, god i wish we could at least know who he was. This was the only good thing to happen in the video, specially when considering the following stories right after :(
It’s especially lucky for that kid considering the fact that Joe Ricci had the right connections with the right people to be able to basically intimidate the police into looking the other way/keeping their mouth shut if they came across something suspicious involving the school.
The fact that Elan managed to exist even well in the 2000s is frightening. And the fact that it's not unlikely that even more "schools" like this are active right now even more so.
I was in a "group home" for troubled kids in the 2000s. The staff there basically has no credentials. You only needed a high school diploma. Their resumes included retail work, etc. But most shocking, a lot of them were former _bouncers._ The amount of abuse there was crazy. I saw some shit... I kept my mouth shut, followed the program, and stuck to myself. I _"graduated"_ after 8 months and was sent home to my mother, who sent me back to another boarding school. The trauma from those didnt _reform_ or help me. I ended up a drug addict and alcohol from 15 until my early/mid 20s. Periods of homelessness, etc. I'm doing better now. I got cleaned up, went back to school, have a good job, etc. But I still have a therapist. I still struggle. I deal with depression, anxiety, PTSD, nightmares, etc. These abusive places didnt help kids. They need psychological help, guidance, and positive role models. I can't imagine how many of these kids grew up to be, just, fucked up. I do volunteer work now. Because I get it. I've been there.
When he said 50,000 to pay for this my jaw dropped. To pay that much for your kid to get assaulted is awful. Imagine the amount of real help and guidance you could get for your child with that. The parents just want to hand them off like a bad pet to get trained instead raising them.
Rightly said! It's sickening (i'm out of words to explain the amount of disgust) to see how parents themselves ruin their children, themselves, and the entire household.
the fact that this stayed open for so long and closed because of bad pr and not because of the law is a insane testament to how our society treats kids as objects or animals more than people
This is despicable. "Troubled teens" are troubled for a _reason,_ often due to parents not understanding how to parent their child properly. I, for one, was heavily medicated by an overzealous psychiatrist because I wasn't behaving the way my mother expected and she refused to accept any blame, pushing for answers where there were none. I suffered two seizures from taking a couple medications which are _explicitly not supposed to be combined._ Once I realized this, I made the decision to stop taking those meds and confront the quack about it. Do you know what he said to me? He offered to add on _yet another,_ seizure medication! I never went back there, and I worked on my issues with a proper therapist, without medication. Bad parents will look for any solution except the one in the mirror, and youths don't always get the chance to even have someone listen to them about _why_ they're upset. My mother was prideful, stubborn, and a drunk, and this video makes me highly uncomfortable, because it brings back my own nightmares from childhood through the teen years.
I’m sorry you had to suffer through that. You’re right though, some parents outright refuse to even acknowledge any faults within them and blame their child for problems that they caused. It’s horrible.
I feel your pain... Been through very similar stuff and now 38 still trying to have a normal life. Through out this video, I wanted to reach out to this poor souls and somehow help them. 😥
Behind almost every "troubled teen" is actually a troubled household. Maybe there is something wrong with the parent's marriage, their finances, their family relationships, their mental health, etc. Fix the problem at the root. And nearly always, the root is almost never the teenager.
agreed. but also a “troubled teen” can choose their own path. they aren’t dumb, and can differentiate from right and wrong. they just choose to ignore the consequences
@@jocelyn-nk9es Most of the time their circumstances forces them to choose the "easy way out" which is most of the time "wrong way"... Without proper guidance mistakes will be inevitable and before you know it a simple mistake can lead to bigger ones..
"nearly always... almost never" see, you and @jocelyn are right - some of the kids are just bad and so are partially to blame for getting treated like this
This is especially horrifying for me to watch as someone who went to a "therapeutic" boarding school for my depression that was somewhat similar. We were neglected there and I dropped 22 pounds from malnourishment. I was 117lbs going in, and 95lbs coming out. The school was shut down for neglect and tax evasion soon after I was kicked out. The "therapy" there was very cult-like and similar to brainwashing. Once I went back home and was finally able to tell my mom what it was like, she was horrified. Parents, don't do this to your kids. The people running the schools can lie to you, and say that your child is lying when they try to tell you how they're treated. Don't let them end up like me.
I almost got sent to a “troubled teen” camp. My mom convinced my dad they would do more harm then good for me. She spent about a month talking him out of it. I’m so glad she was in my corner for that occasion.
@The Beardless 1 oh no it most certainly was not. I was being sent away cause my dad thought I was on drugs. Turns out I just had type one diabetes and was dying. Once I got hospitalized and diagnosed they realized why I lost so much weight, my skin was grey, and my hair was falling out. I was also moody all the time because I was sick.
Exactly my thoughts. I kept thinking to myself "when would this place get exposed and shut down?" once I watched 3/4 of the video only to be shocked and sick to learn that this was very recent.
I remember talking to a homeless man on a bridge, who told me about this program. he said that he was forced to go through it when he was a teen and it ruined him mentally. I thought he was full of it. Sorry for ever doubting you Joe.
Sometimes it's important to really listen to people. From being homeless, which started age 17 when my abusive adoptive parents just decided to kick me out cuz I wouldnt attend their cult church anymore, I found out how many homeless shelters were structured on the abuses Elan is based on. Especially Salvation Army. People in so many settings are being made to accept being 'guilty'
As someone who was “threatened” with military/boarding school when misbehaving, this is horrifying. My heart breaks for these children and anyone who is undergoing this in secret.
@@Reinhard96 however, if you get a good lawyer you might just escape it... The judge is pretty much constrained to the merits of the argument in the adversarial model of justice system followed in the US.
Unfortunately, parents who send their kids to places like this are usually too dumb to realize that their child’s behavior is often a product of the parent’s actions and behavior. It disgusts me how many kids had to experience this literal torture just because their parents were too lazy to actually talk to their child and work on the underlying issues.
@@bmona7550 I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you're okay It must be really hard to accept that you're the problem and you're the one who needs to change, especially as a parent And I know a lot of parents assume that kids just get over things 😢 When I was in therapy my therapist low-key begged my family to do proper family therapy and they refused, because they didn't want to admit to themselves that they were at fault for some things But then again, having a kid is a huge commitment and some people don't see that 😅
My friend was abducted just like this in the middle of the night by youth mental facility people, and it wasn't 1970; it was 1990. He wasn't even the slightest bit "troubled" or any of the things his parents claimed, he was just into skating and punk music, not a corderoy-wearing, grace-saying Christian like they were. A solid month he was IMPRISONED for being an absolutely normal healthy 16 year old.
one thing brought up in this is that the kids were not allowed to talk poorly of the school but what isn't to say that the parents wouldn't just not believe them. if i was being mistreated by an adult my parents would have 100% sided with the adult because why would an adult lie about abusing me. so glad i never went to this school.
Forbidden Actions at Elan: -talking too loudly -talking too softly -talking too much -not talking enough my brain is melting just trying to comprehend this, I can't imagine how it was like for the kids
Then I'd say 'stop screaming, you're talking too loudly. That's not allowed PLUS I can't understand you to respond appropriately'. Tough crap for them, they shouldn't break their own rules that they set, they have no reason to have exception to. Don't care if they're staff. Lead by example and all that. They'd probably kill me for being disabled though lol. Never let me have my 'aid, hate me for not being able to hear, not responding to their screaming, never talking other than to say 'can't understand you'. Nevermind the autism (which I didn't know I had at the time, that's new for me) which makes me a stickler for rules which is dumb with conflicts like this. -_- Oh and this IS me being broken, thanks middle school. They would hate me breaking and just turning into what they're trying to change people out of.
Literally the worst thing for a growing kid is inconsistency. Getting yelled at whatever you do breaks a person. It's so so harmful and I'm so sorry for all these victims
It is just sickening to find none of the faculties was actually held responsible for such cruelty. They profited from these kids' suffering and eventually got away with it. Unbelievable.
Everyone looks at Guantanamo now like it's an exception for the torture of US citizens. Nobody looks at children. It's a general phenomenon. Even parents themselves can torture and manipulate their children and they will never have the strength to speak out, because they might just be sent back and tortured even worse. Child abuse is the central reason for why there's so many troubled adults out there who do crimes. Childhood trauma is almost impossible to overcome later. If we want a healthy and empathic society, we have to look at the children and not look away for comfort.
The past we may not be able to save, but we can certainly rectify it now by learning from it rather then honoring it. By making sure we don’t let a repeat of what happen by going after those that got away with it and prevent future monsters and demons like them from doing it again.
Since the parents allowed their kids to go to this prison, they also deserve to be sued for negligence in the crimes aginst their children's dignity, physiscal integrity and probably their lives.
Those parents should have been put to death and be forced to drink the kool aid cynide just like Jonestown went through around the same time this was happening int he 70s and 80s.
I might be wrong but aren't they sent mails of how they're treated very equally and they'll go as far as to fabricate the original work so it looks like they were having a normal life inside the camp. I don't think they would be blamed for that though since they thought this was for the better and that they'll be well behaved.
The parents thought this place was going to change their kids for the better. Remember- they didnt know about the cruel methods up until the end. The parents were manipulated aswell.
A guy who was nearly a victim of one of these kidnappings called into a podcast I listen to. He apparently shⱺt one or both of the kidnappers (I believe one fatally) as they entered his room and was stuck in legal limbo for a long time as a result. As I recall, his parents were mad at him too.
The scariest part is that many former "graduates" have publicly denounced this place decades ago and people probably brushed them off saying things like, "damn, that's crazy. Want another beer?" or just been, "well, that's all in the past. What's important is you're safe now. Want another beer?" and not investigating it any further. What's more is that these kids were usually already disturbed people before this all happened to them, so they normally have a pre-existing credibility problem. Unbelievers, and especially school staff, could say, "you're really going to believe what (s)he has to say? They're delinquent". They experience the same stigma former inmates face.
Its awful. We're just "bad kids" and we "lie all the time". I'm not a thug, I was a clinically depressed child. I tell the same stories I hear from survivors old enough to be my parents. They refuse to see the patterns in our testimonies.
@@pumpkin_cat792 Yeah man, it seems like it's human nature, unfortunately. Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry, and you will cry alone, it's fucked up.
Awful. at least the police today respond to even the smallest calls or reports just in case, but back then, you report being tortured constantly verbally, physically, and sexually? bullshit you’re making it up! haha! ah.. yeah fuck that shit
Thats what happened with Bhad Babie. She spoke out about the abuse and neglect people go through at that camp that dr.phil endorces and because of her past history of being a brat people ignored her and nothing was done about it regardless of the fact that she was one of dozens of people whove spoken out about the camp
Paris Hilton got sent to one of these places and speaks out about it to this day. I really feel for these kids. Many of them told their parents they were being abused, including sexually, and 9/10 times they didn't believe them and kept them there. I don't care how bad your child is acting out, if they ever tell you they are being abused, you need to take it seriously and investigate the claim at the least.
I remember watching Filthy Rich (netflix Epstein docuseries) and the victims were talking about their experiences. A lot of them described how they started acting out and getting into things like drugs after they were assaulted. Just something to keep in mind about these kids being shipped off to these schools
@@swimmerkat3965 That's called using unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to "deal" with the trauma from the horrendous abuse one was the victim of. That's why the medical community is finally re-evaluating how they perceive and treat addicts. Throwing them in prison for several years or a 30-day stint in rehab and tossing them back out on the street doesn't fix the underlying issue. Prison is inhumane and is not meant to help addicts, and rehab is a band-aid solution. They need therapy in order to get to the underlying issue and to help them work towards recovery and a sense of "normalcy"-- whatever that looks like to them. It's also why activists are trying to get the government to subsidize mental healthcare, because often those who need it most cannot afford to pay for the therapy, transportation, and medication out of pocket or copays because their insurance won't pay for one or all three or doesn't cover enough. If society truly wants to help, it needs to actually care for and about our poor, our sick, and our hungry. Instead of demonizing them and treating them as a burden.
Yeah, I went to one of these programs. The first thing they tell your parents is that you’ll lie to go home. They’ll say your accusations of abuse are merely attention seeking behavior. I was in the system for a year and a half and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover
I attended a “boarding” school for troubled teens and kids as well. A “Christian” one no less. They beat kids with paddles, “jailed” kids in the attics of the dorm rooms, there were numerous SA incidents, a girl lost her arm due to the circulation being cut off by the admin, and the counselors and owners all lived on property. A teacher once stabbed the top of my head with a red pen and the other adults smiled and told me how absurd it was that I could say she would ever do such a thing. They are still open. Not sure who is there now or what’s happening anymore, but I can’t imagine they’ve strayed too far from their path years ago.
Wow still watching the video, but the place I was at also had a big brother program. They used to bully my brother and I and claim our stuff was theirs and the staff would take their side
Few things are scarier than having delusional sociopaths in control who have convinced themselves they have God on their side. It makes anything they do "good" by virtue of them being the ones doing it.
I work with a guy who was at Elan for almost a year. Apparently, they sent people to his house and they "kidnapped" him - brought him up to the school. He said that it was extremely far in to the wilderness. The only thing that he disclosed was the "Ring", and how they would zip-tie kids' wrists and make them fight. He made allusions to darker happenings as well (definite sexual violations), and it seemed like the school was part of a huge cover-up years later. He is absolutely...without a doubt, deeply affected by these memories and shows scars in his psyche that won't ever heal. Poor guy is always on edge and displays hyper-vigilant behavior. I thank God that the worst place I have seen was my local high-school. Thanks Nexpo. You give these people a voice well after they vanished in to obscurity by the winds of change. I will speak to the guy tomorrow. I'll be back to report my findings.
The thought of escaping this insane, abusive, and downright evil cult, thinking you’re finally about to get home, only to be raped and murdered on the side of a highway is one of the most tragic things I’ve heard. This video is amazingly informative and well-put-together, but it’s been really difficult to get through.
This story made me really mad. I'll never get why parents don't hold themselves accountable for their children. God damn me if I choose to send my child away to "correct" them, and they end up dead or come back in a box. Shit's fucked up. That should be a crime. Both these "schools" and parents should be charged.
@@birdsfly7199 Definitely. I know the argument can be made that the parents couldn’t know the full-extent of what was going on since Élan presented themselves as a reformatory school and downplayed many of their actions, but I think the fake-kidnapping scenario alone should’ve tipped off any parents that actually cared. I feel like shipping your kids off to some place that you *don’t* know the full-extent of should be counted as gross negligence at the very least.
My heart goes out to Brad. He escaped only to be shot while seeking help after being tortured. Not even the comments seem to make much note of it. May he rest in peace.
Yeah. And it's even more heartbreaking that he went there because he thought it would probably be a safe haven in some way or at least he would actually be given some help just to be shot. I'm glad you bring this up.
@@thesepticbossalduin8859 And he probably didn't even die instantly. Just laying there bleeding out completely baffled and shocked by all of the events that have transpired, feeling utterly betrayed by both his parents and the world. He expected to escape to let the world know what was truly happening to all of these kids, just for the world to kill him and the truth.
only 1 out of 3 successfully survived.. this all could've been prevented by the parents. its so scary to think that they escaped only to run into more corrupted people.
I'm from Maine, yet I've had friends go to camps regularly during the summer for behavioral issues.. it saddens me to think my peers went through something like this yearly.. I hope everyone affected gets real help and love from their families and peers
They were literally moved to other schools. They moved a staff member from Elan to Hyde, Bath. It's not even far away. I graduated from that hell hole in the late 2000s and it STILL EXISTS.
@@EEsUA-camChanel Did you even learn anything there? Like, if I understood correctly, these types of schools claim to be ending with a "high school diploma" or something (I'm from Europe, so idk exactly how it's across the pond). But Nexpo in the video explained that there's very little teaching being done (at least in Elon). So how would you describe your knowledge after graduating compared to an average person with a high school diploma in the US?
it’s so.. disgusting how easy it is for parents to give away their children. it makes me so angry that ANY parent would be comfortable handing their child over to ANYONE, especially complete strangers.
Weird take. So you want them with the abusive neglectful drug addicts who need mental help? We just need to take childcare more seriously and provide better alternatives for kids.
@@melodym2910 Did you watch the video AND read the comment? As someone with adopted family members i don't understand thinking "parents shouldn't be allowed to hand their children over to strangers!" As the key take away. It makes zero sense. Tons of people do it all the time and everyday when they send them to school, daycare or summer camp as an example. Instead of attacking the parents we should be focusing on keeping these institutions above board and being positive for the children. It takes a village after all.
its such an awful thing to think about. hey take my child because i cant handle them, why the fuck would u ever do that? these parents shouldve never had children
@@josephmatthews7698 taking the example of adoption to prove that your point of giving your kid away is definitely not valid when you think about the amount of kids that land into the hands of abusive adopting parents (which eventually resulted in the adoption process to be insanely difficult for adults who really want to have children). Plus adoption is not comparable to giving ur kids away to literal boarding schools or camps. You also cannot compare those to schools and daycare, because after schools and daycare the kids return to their parents, unlike the other alternatives, which includes your kids to be taken away for several days, weeks, months or even years. Your excuse of „do you want them with abusive neglectful drug addicts“ is also not really true, because parents that give their kids away that easily to camps & boarding schools for such a long time are mostly not even drug addicts or in need of severe mental health care, they’re parents that just don’t give enough fucks to put more effort into their troublesome kids who mostly aren’t even troublesome, but just need to be listened to. There’s absolutely 0 excuse and understanding for any parent that chooses to give away their kid to strangers for such a long duration, stop trying to justify shitty parents that just don’t care enough about their kids that make it so easy for themselves to just get rid of them. THAT is neglect, and THAT is the root of these issues. If parents were more cautious and actually, yk, just wouldn’t give up on their kids, cult-like boarding schools such as Élan wouldn’t have a single chance to become as popular and damaging as they became.
Pregnant women and mentally ill kids were beaten to, in some cases, death. This video made me so angry, but Nexpo's execution is, as always, fantastic. Keep up the good work, man. Keep bringing the light to situations like these. The public deserves to have more information regarding these things, and these victims deserve closure that many of them are probably never going to receive.
Sadly, when cases of child abuse like these surface, people only ever pay attention to the most extreme, physical forms of abuse, like violence and sexual abuse, or in this case, the Ring. But nobody ever considers the more subtle forms of control and abuse present. All the "forbidden actions" rules and incredibly tight scheduling, The complete absence of privacy and supervision over every aspect of these kid's lives, All of these things are no less abusive than hitting a kid, but everyone fails to consider them abusive when there is no visible, immediate harm to the child. The sad truth is, when you're a parent or some other authority figure in a child's life, you can get away with a lot of abuse as long as it doesn't spill into physical territory.
My dads friend was sent to a place like this and when he got out he never really spoke to his parents again and didnt go their funerals. His parents tried to say they didnt know it qas like that and his take on it was basically that ignorance is not an excuse. He wasnt even that bad of a kid. My dad said he was respectful but he was sent there for smoking pot and skipping class.
I would have done the same. Doing dumb stuff as a kid is a part of figuring out who you are. Getting sent to some facility filled with other kids who does more dumb stuff then the avrage prob won't make me do less dumb stuff. And that facility is ran by people i do not know or care for, beeing "experts" who can fix everyones personal problems with a program? Nope, they would be dead to me for sure if they did that.
I was in a similar situation. You can't blame the parents entirely. In the early 90s, the Internet didn't exist. Scared parents relied on school counselors and interventionists and believed they had the kids' best interests in mind. How were they to know everybody involved got kickbacks? I'm 46 now and the amount of damage that was done is something I'll never recover from. I hated my parents for years but forgave them in time. They were scared and didn't know what to do. Their once-perfect little girl was hanging out with bad kids and staying away from home for weeks at a time and skipping school. No drugs, still a virgin...never been in legal trouble. But they were brainwashed and gaslit by the people getting paid for each person admitted. In my case, there was a class action lawsuit and I was still so hurt and traumatized that I wouldn't have anything to do with it. I regret THAT more than anything. Last I looked, the "doctor" in charge of my case was still practicing psychiatry, too. One of the other doctors involved in the scheme here in Texas committed suicide. I was friends with his son.
Dawn's story bothers me so much... After all that suffering at Elan, she manages to escape only to be brutally assaulted and murdered by somebody who lied to her. My heart breaks for her, you will forever be missed
It’s all heartbreaking, one man so scarred that he chooses not to share his identity to this day; another, who thought he was finally safe at the house of a friend, only to be gunned down and treated like a criminal; and, of course, the story of Dawn herself. The whole mental process that these people must’ve gone through is truly terrifying to even conceptualize, much more so to attempt and empathize with; being kidnapped, thinking you’re going to to be raped or killed, being told your parents betrayed you and signed your life away to an adolescence in hell, only to escape with the feeling of relief that hell is with you no longer, only to face the grim fate that befell 2 of the 3 escapees. It’s horrifying, in addition, to know that out of the thousands of people that have come and from Élan, only 1 escaped alive.
when you spoke about how they would bust into the CHILDS room and kidnap the kids it reminded me heavily of paris hilton’s experience of her being kidnapped one night just for her to find that her parents “sold” her to a behavioral camp similar to this one. she was constantly abused (sexually and physically) and was told to be quiet about it
I thought of that too! Her describing the night it happened haunts me to this day. I think she has a campaign to shut the place and others that abused her.
Every single one of these so called ''parents'' should have been arrested for paying STRANGERS!! to kidnap their children so they could have a easier life themselves,knowingly their children were abused on a daily basis....none of them should have seen a single day of sun ever again....
@@carlost856 if hockey sticks were for attempting their best and failing then clearly they had low standards as parents and would be terrifying to see what them at their worst would be.
@@carlost856 also any adult that thinks a child should be beaten with a hockey stick should be beaten themselves with one just so they can see how much of an brutal form of physical assault that is.
@@nareshujjesha5558 I hate how the word "therapy" is attached to conversion therapy. Those emotional abuse factories should be wiped off the fucking planet
I was kidnapped as a “troubled youth” by the state of Michigan. I spent my entire teen years in their custody. I’m now 55 years old and the damage caused by my time there continues to this day.
so y’all probably aren’t aware but paris hilton actually suffered through a school exactly like this. she’s now trying to raise awareness of the brutality and provide counseling for the former “students”
Dawn's escape story breaks my heart. She escaped hell only to meet an absolute slime of a human being, I am infuriated and hope that monster suffers every day of his life.
I always joke that because my parents sent me away when I started causing them problems, I'm sending them straight to the retirement home when they start causing me problems.
At this point you could've told me that the trucker who raped and murdered the poor girl was actually an Elan agent sent out with that specific task and I'd believe you.
David Sedaris' sister, Tiffany Sedaris, was sent there during her childhood. The way she apparently spoke of it sounds like the experience never truly left her, and the rest of the family almost seems to resent her for that. Frankly, its disgusting nobody ever saw her suffering for what it was until she took her life in 2013. RIP Tiffany.
@Elliott K Yeah, okay. I blame it on the parents, sure. But she’s the controller of her destiny. She could’ve chosen a higher path. I know some have tougher times overcoming adversity than some of us, but come on.
@@zaynes5094 Maybe if yall Bible belivers were busy sending people to help the troubled teens instead of abusing them at camps they wouldn't kill thsmelves so much.
I’ve actually revisited this schools history just recently and unfortunately I’ve learned that Elan has rebranded. It’s not done. It’s rebranded into Ironwood and it’s still open and operating and accepting attendees. The nightmare still lives.
ironwood isnt related to elan, its related to turn about ranch (which is no better, its where Dr Phil likes to send kids, knowing how theyre run). theyre both in Maine but its not Elan
I actually have a friend who is only 20 years old. He was going through a lot, got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and his parents sent him away to a "wilderness retreat". The stories he told me, were... almost too hard to hear. The camp has since been shut down, but I'll always remember this story in particular. He said he was accused of 'not sleeping' and was drug out from his bed (this all took place somewhere in Washington's many forests). It was around 1AM in the morning when this happened and three other kids were brought into the same shed with him. Their hands were tied off above them, and were stripped nearly naked. The employee's would then spray them with freezing cold water, leaving them there throughout the night. It fucked him up completely, and he has since been battling addiction.
my friend got sent to a 'wilderness retreat' AND to a 'boarding school' around 2016 and was never the same after it. i was her best friend at the time and one of the few people looking out for her & she said they convinced her i was bad somehow. ever since then we were off and on with talking. now we dont speak at all cuz she got into drugs and ended up being really flaky and saying i was toxic for being indecisive on our friendship:)
WAIT- jesus christ... the boarding school my friend went to was in Utah but the wilderness retreat was in Washington. I bet it was the same one! She didn't mention much about it but it was in the forest and I know that she suffered A LOT. Again, didn't give me much detail but at one or both of these places she did say they would try to humilate her in front of everyone. i vaguely remember something about water or it being cold but this happened to her likeee 5 years ago? maybe 6... god... is the retreat in washington still there? I don't know what it's called/if there's multiple but that's really upsetting. it really destroyed my relationship with her and im so so sorry to hear about what your friend went through :(
I feel sad for your friend i hope he is feeling better.Just say that if your son or daughter is not behaving well just give them something like do chores or sweep the floor not tell them to fight or abuse them.
The problem children’s parents are more of a problem themselves, they are literally sending their children to prison. Hell, prison doesn’t have cults or discipline 24/7.
My only problem with this argument is that the parents really didn't know about the camp's true nature. The camp made itself look like a place that would magically transform their kids into a better person. So the parent's had absolutely no idea about the mess the camp actually was.
@@crabohato4954 No, as a parent you are the guardian of your child. "Problem child" or not, if you send your child to a place you have not looked into, and sign away their rights to strangers who may or may not have their best interest in mind, you are just as guilty as they are, if not moreso.
@@ralsei7170 i hope not... Cancer is not kind. I hope he felt at least a horrible pain before pass. I normally avoid to make such "edgy" comments but this man deserves it.
I went to a school eerily similar to this. It's called The Valley View School located in rural and isolated North Brookfield Massachusetts. It was all boys. We were patted down and stripped when we got there, watched at night. If we acted up we were screamed at and put on "the hip". Youd be watched at all times, day, night, shower, bathroom, getting dressed, in school. Teachers turned a blind eye to rule breakers and bullies if they were senior student or "in" with the staff. People would dissappear and no one would know where they went and they would give us vague answers. The feeling of being trapped there, the way they teased me for being depressed, hanging my stuffed bear from the ceiling with a noose, the way they locked me in a room all day to do my schoolwork because I missed 3 assignments because I needed more help. The screams of new students. I still have nightmares. Three or four times a month...for the past 12 years. I am 29 now. I am severely traumatized. DO NOT SEND YOUR KIDS HERE OR THERE OR ANYWHERE. This video was triggering but I needed to see it. Thank you for making this
Let's not forget that Paris Hilton was sent to a place like this, her parents don't acknowledge it or apologize for it. And people really like to forget it happened to her. She attributes a lot of issues to what went on while she was there.
no one is safe from these places. i can't imagine her case is all that unique. i bet that lots of celebrity teens and children have been sent to these "treatment" facilities on top of the abuse they suffer in the entertainment industry
Amy and David Sedaris had a sister Tiffany that went to this school for two years. They said she was traumatized for the rest of her life, died by suicide in 2013, and was still so angry at her family that she said in her will she didn't want them to claim her body or go to her funeral.
Wow I've read his books for years I never realized that's why she ended up the way she did. Very sad, not the siblings fault but I could see why she'd choose not to talk to any of them out of anger
I worked as a Uber driver. So usually I’d drive people who are either intoxicated or extremely exhausted. This woman wanted me to drive her to her hotel because she drank too much. We were in the car for 50mins. The bar and the hotel were pretty far apart. During the drive I remember her just crying and breaking down. When I asked her if she needs any water or something to help calm her. She told me that she use to go to a boarding school that treated her so badly that she was affected mentally. She explained in full detail about the horrors they did to the children. Including her. At first I thought she was just intoxicated and just drunk. After I dropped her off and offered to help Her walk back inside the hotel I started to wonder what boarding school she was taking about. The details she explained was terrifying close to this video. I’m so sorry that I didn’t believe her at first and I hope that woman is Doing okay
I agree that the alcohol caused her to get emotional, but I do not believe that it was the trigger. More likely, the trigger was the taxi due to the way that they were transported to the school
![The Darkest Lost Media [Vol. 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KZbzIf_C6Y4/mqdefault.jpg)
“You want to act like a baby, you get screamed at”
Pretty sure you aren’t supposed to scream at babies.
Yea you kick them wtf
Obviously you punt them.
You eat them
Both of you good responses, tho if you punt them they go too far and if you eat them (unless alive, where it is just as good, or better sometimes, better) you don’t get the screams of pain, far better than crying
@@bdorsey19 Classical thought tells us to shake the baby.
“Gee, our son we beat with a hockey stick acts out aggressively and has mental health issues, I can’t imagine why!”
“Harder daddy”
I guess i should hit harder too
@@WeldersFSC You shouldn't hit your kids... Instead you should talk to them about what they did, the situation of it and why not to do it. And maybe you can ground your kids for a week of not seeing your friends. Also, hitting is actually concidered abuse.
@YungPatrick Don’t hit kids. Period.
@YungPatrick still wrong. there's no reason to ever hit a kid.
Hey guys! Fun fact! The "troubled teen" industry still exists and kids are still legally kidnapped to attend these camps just in case anyone was wondering.
As someone who was labeled a troubled kid. I went to something very similar to this. Describing these as death camps is very closed minded
@@caz8577 sorry I didn't mean it like the literal meaning, meant as an expression.
@@caz8577 edited to remove it
@@dabawanico5841 thanks.
Yup, and sometimes the camps are not even in the US
"And some students sent in the ring were even pregnant."
Considering students were restricted from any physical contact, and that the adult abusers could punish the children however they wanted... That alone is extremely horrifying despite how understated it is.
oh my god didnt even catch this...wow that is sickening
Oh my god that’s fucking horrifying
Christ...
Given that’s it a place for troubled teens I would presume those people were pregnant before they arrived. At least I sure hope so cuz the alternative is horrific to think about
@@quickman1047 judging by the fact people were there for up to 3 years i feel like that wouldnt be the case. absolutely disgusting what probably happened :(
Imagine escaping what could only be called a horrifically inhumane and cult-like prison, crying out to the first truck you see for salvation, only to be raped and murdered and left in a ditch on the side of the road, that's one of the bleakest most depressing things I've ever heard
I really fucking hate humanity
Truckers are typically human garbage. Unless they're in a fleet or expediters.
That and the kid that just got shot for all his trouble. Those two were the saddest part of this video, honestly. All of that pain and effort to survive to end up...not.
@@ElysetheEevee Yeah but her story is still worse. I think the guy got shot because he was mistook for a burglar or something. The girl was assaulted and killed with intent. People like that make me sick to my stomach.
@@Malphas38th this is not humanity, but monstrosity
It is so incredibly fucked up that that poor girl managed to escape from Elan and the first person she found, coming straight from hell, abused and killed her immediately. My god. May she rest in peace.
my stomach literally dropped when he explained what happened to her i think i need to take a break from this for my own mental healths sake
It's disturbingly common. It's as if they see a broken person and think "oh well, they're already fucked up, might as well." Rapists really are the scum of the Earth.
I completely agree. To an extent, the trucker did something even worse thank what Elan did to that poor girl.
@@peanutbuttermotherchucker
agreed! it's absolutely demented to even think of doing something like that, i believe in rehabilitation but there are some people too far gone
At the very least
Unbelievable that this school only closed in 2011. 41 years of torturing teens. What's even worse is that "troubled teens" are still abused today and sent to these shitty camps.
"You are being sent to a camp in Poland."
Uh oh...
"Poland, Maine."
Ohhhhh.
Yea
Show me.
@@scottcantdance804 there’s a Norway, Maine... there’s a Mexico, Maine... and I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure there’s a Washington D.C., Maine
@@scottcantdance804 it’s almost worse
I went to this school. It’s been 25 years, I still can’t just sit down and watch this, but I scrubbed through it and read the transcript - your presentation looks very good and thorough and accurate, and you seem to have a very gentle and thoughtful way of presenting it. Thank you for sharing our story with others. These schools cause long term, complicated harm.
Hey, I hope your doing well now. ❤
Bless your soul I hope you’re finding peace!
This made me cry, i hope you got the support you needed
I hope your doing well now. Your strong for surviving such a hellscape. Proud of you stranger.
I’m so sorry that you had to go
There :( it sounds horrible
“We’re an equal rights facility.”
Well, everyone’s got equal rights if nobody has them to begin with.
@@jaydenstrash8907 …? What the fuck.
@@jennnnn911 sorry i deleted that did not mean for anyone to take offensive to that like again sorry
China be like
had me laughing when he said that
@@jennnnn911 what did he say?
Holy shit, to escape that hell hole only to run immediately into a disgusting monster. That poor girl.
For real, this whole video was bummer after bummer but that explanation of what happened to her made my heart hurt.
@Calmor25 Right? I'm broken... 💔💔💔🥺
Hell has a special place for the people in Elan and that trucker...
The 1979’s was filled with murderers and it was legal
@@好吧-h6k have you ever went on foot to a place that is new to you and try to find a way through without knowing where you are or where you are going, one minute feels like an hour, nervous, afraid, confused, tired, and frustrated, even when you have a sane mind it's hard and not to mention she was only a lost child.
It's fun to believe we can do better but the truth is most of us would do the same.
The fact that this place closed down only 10 years ago.
Is frankly scary.
I was going into this video expecting to be creeped out or spooked but I ended up coming out of it fucking angry. Everyone involved in running this school deserve a life of punishment and to rot in hell.
even more scary when you realize that places like this still exist and kids are still legally kidnapped to go to these camps
@@bucklinspring the ex students some strong individuals for not doing whats on my mind after they were free
@@jurgenkk i am fucking impressed that it hasn't happened an mass killing by one of the students
@@jurgenkk even if you are mentally the strongest person in the world I don’t think you’d be able to come out of an experience like this without trauma that will affect you for the rest of your life. This isn’t simply a few days of mistreatment, but years of unending torture.
I was in one similar to this. Was forced to strip naked and lay on a cold hard floor for hours in a tiny 8x8 square room that was padlocked. There was a tiny window where staff would watch me. And it was cold. No blanket, nothing. No underwear or socks either. First time I got put in there, I got a cold because of it. The reason? I was feeling suicidal (which was completely valid considering the circumstances), and they encourage you to talk to staff when you feel that way so they can "talk you down". Turns out that actually means throwing you butt naked into a cold room with concrete floors.
Girls would frequently be stripped naked by or under the eye of male staff. I was 15. Others were much younger. Some were adults under 21 that were wards of the state.
They made us wear plain blue shirt and pants, unless you were a "runner", then you were stuck in a bright yellow jumpsuit. Those sucked really bad during the summer because it was long sleeved.
There were community showers and toilets like prison with scheduled use times, we walked in a line to and from the cafeteria and to the on-site school building, got locked into our rooms multiple times a day for hours with nothing in there but a Bible and our beds, were forced to be active outside for hours in the heat of summer with no consistent source of water. It was hidden way out in the middle of the woods in Rural Missouri where it was sure to go unseen by the outside world.
We were allowed one 10-minute phone call per week, so we could choose to either call our caseworkers and beg for another placement, or spend 10 minutes talking with a loved one. The woman who decided everything for us was the most heartless person I've ever met. She was abusive to everyone, even staff members. She would smile when something bad happened to a child in front of her. I saw it
If a kid had a breakdown, they called in the "crisis van", which was a van full of strong men who would physically subdue the resident, often painfully for the resident.
I am severely traumatized and was physically injured more than once, as well as psychologically abused. I have been unable to find a therapist or drug yet that can help me.
The reason I was there? I was a foster kid with depression, and they didn't want to take the time to find me a foster family. Sadly this was the case for many other children I met there. And I went to multiple facilities like it, but this was by far the worst. Valley Springs Youth Ranch in Black/Lesterville, Missouri. They paint themselves as a "treatment facility" for troubled youth, but it's really just legal child trafficking. Don't send your kids away. Become foster parents for teens if you can. And most importantly, hold these people and facilities accountable.
This was heartbreaking to read. I am so sorry for whatever you had to go through. I know a "sorry" won't help much. I am a teen and I can't imagine a life where my basic human rights were just snatched from me. I really hope you recovered and that your traumatic experiences don't haunt you as much today.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. A major reason I specifically want to foster and adopt teen children, despite many people saying it would be very difficult is because of this. Foster children in general are overlooked enough as it is, and teenagers hardly ever even get a second glance because so many people are just looking for a child they can mold into something they want.
Thanks for sharing the name of the facility.
I went through the same things. Amazing how similar the programming is in every one of these places, no matter where in the US they are. There are many similarities to prison procedures, including the self-harm protocol. But these schools likely have even less regulation, as they're private institutions. Willow Springs in Reno/Sparks, NV; Thunder Road in Oakland, CA; Heritage Oaks "Hospital" in Sacramento, CA. WS and HO both had pediatric wings, and WS frequently placed small children in solitary confinement. We could hear them screaming from the adolescent wing.
People with addictions and behavioral/mental health issues (real or perceived) are heavily stigmatized and given a degraded social status in the US, despite the progress we've made as a society in terms of acceptance and treatment. We need twice the amount of hard evidence proving abuses like these for anyone to even consider taking us seriously. In addition, few people are even concerned about what goes on in these facilities because of the kinds of people that are affected. It's the same belief that keeps our jails and prisons as inhumane as possible. It's based on a self-righteous narrative of "individual responsibility" that's contributed to the decay or disappearance of most of America's social services, public and private. "They must have done something to get themselves put in Elan, so they deserve whatever punishment they get." And that continues to be the dominant narrative in the US despite all evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of punitive behavioral treatments.
This just makes me blood-boilingly angry to read, the horrors you were forced to endure. I was already familiar with these types of facilities, and reading this, I feel a strong sense of vengeance (for lack of a better word) for these horrible programs and the immense social, emotional, and psychological damage they do to innocent children and to society. These flagrant constitutional and human rights abuses need to be fucking stopped, and it's disgusting they still operate to this day in the United States. I'm so sorry you had to go through all this. ❤️ May future generations avenge you legally, and get these places shut down forever.
It’s disturbing how children’s human rights can basically be signed away by a parent.
fr, children's consent must be taken before the parents signing them off anywhere
@@catsarerude you think they knew that it would be prison and not school?
@@Baitrix1 in many european countries it is legal to beat child as a punishment
@@jamkat7785 it's a sick world.. one may not even want to be here if they knew the truth that goes on behind the scenes every day
@@jamkat7785 The people should know, the more horrific it is the greater it's effect on people and it having that disgusted effect on people is a good thing, increases chances of change too.
terrifying to think parents paid thousands of dollars for years just for their children to be tortured.
They are still doing it, we just call it the Education system. (XD)
@truly nobody 🤡
@@gummyneighborino7217 what is that emoji for
@@user-sc9ht2tb7u himself
@truly nobody
You calling the people that lived through the worst financial crisis in modern history *Twice* lazy? With your pensions, 401ks, social security, etc?
You're talking about people who will be paying their college debt into their 40s lesser than old people who sit on their mountains of wealth, detached from the modern world while running almost every facet of the government and economy.
This ‘troubled teen’ industry is absolutely still alive and there are probably thousands of teens who are facing similar treatment today. Advocating against this industry is just as important as ever.
I haven’t looked into it yet, but I imagine this place wasn’t the first and like you said, it definitely wasn’t the last... but it does seems like this one place had a whole lot of influence on the spread of traumatic abuse under the guise of discipline
It happens in mental health clinics too I’ve been to 3 in my life time and all have been the same demoralization 0 help and nothing but fear.
I was one of them, i was gone for three years and it was SO crazy that he made a video about this and this topic is finally making some light
@@josephang9927 ?
@@josephang9927 Aren't you gross.
Charges not even being _filed_ against the school for the death of the kid shows how complicit the parents are in this: they didn't even care.
Those weren’t parents. They were just some people who gave birth to the kid. They didn’t care.
The place I was at a kid actually died, it was under adolescent DOC star academy Custer SD look it up. No one got sued and the staff write on their LinkedIn profiles about how fulfilling it was as a job. It’s a fucked world, man. Unfortunately you can’t sue in every case and expect it to bring back a dead child
Parents like that are the definition of a Judas.
@@woofwuf have you given birth to a kid?
@@DaisyChaine No, I’m a male
This school was so horrible a policeman refused to send a kid back, and gave him instruction on how to hitchhike back home.
That's wholesome
@@MASTEROFEVIL true that.
I’m not the biggest fan of the police but that…. I felt pretty happy about that.
@@darkmomokocore3919 police is generally good, yes there's a LOT of media posts against it in america but they're good people, i respect them with all of my heart...
@Plsh P0n true
They’re expected to meet quotas, those quotas happen to involve trampling on people’s rights.
The parents are at fault for this still existing, if your kid is acting inappropriately, then take him to therapy, not a "camp"
Or maybe try to be a parent, yeah lest trust this camp to make our kid better with a bunch of promises
I agree with both of you to a degree. Some have tried all things possible and trust the wrong people. I had my oldest at 15, effectively ruining his and my childhood. I had a very angry child on my hands and was in no condition to help him as I became mentally disabled. My mom talked me into enrolling him into a Christian school for a couple months. He lived there with a nuclear family and structure. We thought he thrived 🤷🏻♀️ He's 27 now. He recently told me that the only thing the school did was introduce him to gangs. He continued being a lost, angry child until I grew up and bonded with him. He doesn't act out anymore and is a loving respectful son. I don't know why I'm saying this, I've never told anyone. I guess I'm trying to say that every decent parent wants the best for their child. Sometimes circumstances don't allow the best unfortunately. One Love 💛
P. S. It wasn't my decision to get pregnant at 14. It was a 26 yo mans. I had no parents around. So please don't say I should have thought about this before I got pregnant. I was forced into SA. I kept my beautiful baby 💞 Thank you 🌹
To be fair, even as someone sent to one of these places, the parents are often lied to and defrauded and never know. Communication is censored, there's no phone to call for help, and parents are instructed to believe the child is being "manipulative" if they ever complain.
Sometimes you have to basically lie to get out and the parents have no idea. However, once they actually go on campus and experience one of the "seminars" and aren't horrified, then I'm truly concerned about their critical thinking skills. Within hours of that seminar a parent should be leaving and taking their child with them.
In WWASP facilities these were performed under the group Resource Realizations by David Gilcrease. The T.A.S.K.S. trainings. There were some that even included r*pe re-enactments as attack therapy. These places were gulags.
Also many children sent there do not realize they are being abused until years later. It's taken some 20 years to fully understand. I understood quickly and tried to inform others that I attended with and was actually attacked and criticized for doing so. That was in 2009. I attended one of these places in 1999-2002.
@@atroubledmaker6091 this is true and it scares me to find out more from my son in the future.
"you're gonna act like a baby, you should be treated like a baby"
Babies don't get spanked or screamed at. They're babies. They should be calmed down. They won't understand why they are being yelled at or hurt. Babies are just babies.
It was the 1980s, parents were still spanking their kids back then.
@@ggkproductions1632 parents still spank their kids
@@just_fork much worse than that my man, and spankingcan be a good thing...mindless beating, no
@@rowenlampe7426 Id rather get a spanking and a itchy butt for 30 minutes than torture and abuse
@@tiktok_content9505 and getting KKK’d
It's insane that parents are so comfortable with not being able to contact their kids. I went to a boarding school which was the polar opposite of this (voluntary, fun, a place to explore who you are and break rules with other kids for a year) and the only reason my parents let me go was because they had seen it with their own eyes, could communicate with me all they wanted, and got to go home every few weeks. How could any parent just send their kid across state lines and let them stay there for years with limited communication? Makes me sick.
The parents didn’t care about their kids. They sent them off to be trained like dogs instead of doing their duty and raising them. Simple as that.
Please name the place
I was just thinking about this. I watched this with my mum and the first thing she commented, after her initial shock was "How on earth does any parent handle being unable to check on their child???" It's really a stark difference that's made me wonder if the US parent-child culture is this cold and distant everywhere. It's pretty unthinkable here in Greece.
@@ElvenAngel I live in the United States. My mom has made it clear more than once that, even after I leave home for good as an adult, she wants to be in frequent contact with me. She absolutely would not consider sending me to a boarding school... period, probably, but definitely not one that wouldn't let her talk to me often. Frankly, she'd probably assume that a boarding school that doesn't allow its students to contact their parents very often is a major red flag for abuse. And she'd be right.
@@ElvenAngel wow, I'm not the first Greek to be watching this and I was thinking the same thing! Maybe our culture is a bit different though..
“Joe Ricci was diagnosed with lung cancer.”
That’s good!
“He only suffered with it for six months.”
That’s bad.
he's the subject of that eternal "General Meeting" down below
I was genuinely pissed when I found out he died and didn't get his ass kicked by the legal system (or fuck any thing really)
I wish i personally could have helped him leave this plane of existence, slowly. So many kids suffering through the damage he inflicted until their eventual deaths. People like that are the worst.
This reminds me of when Homer Simpson bought that crazy haunted Krusty the Clown Doll! hahaha
@@seabreeze9296 i really fucking hope so
It’s so disgusting to hear that even after all that abuse, even after managing to escape, two of the three students were murdered. It’s heartbreaking.
Yeah that part is heartbreaking like much of this video. But for that girl to escape hell only to be greeted by an even worse form of hell is so sad. She was brave for sure.
this comment right here will teach me not to read the comments before finishing the video lol
@@juanamaral7134 I too have learnt
i couldn’t help but tear up when hearing about dawn. i can’t even imagine how much courage it must have taken to escape and then to be assaulted and have your life be so cruelly taken away by someone who you thought was going to be your savior? just unbelievably horrible
I wonder where that John Doe is.. I hope he is doing fine.
Even disregarding the fact that tragically he was essentially beaten to death, the excuse that he had “regularly faked headaches” when a student had died of a brain aneurysm is patently absurd. Like nobody outside of the school when hearing this considered that maybe he _wasn’t_ faking and was just neglected.
the comment i was looking for, that pissed me off
It made my heart ache 😖 then I got pissed 🤬💪🏽
That's Americans for you
if I was the parent of the dead student I would go hunting for them.
@@Onche518
Just Americans?
Huh.
Phil’s story is absolutely heartbreaking. The kid didn’t go down without a fight, and with that alone he deserves a ton of respect. Ricci and the rest of the Elan staff have a spot reserved for them in Hell.
If there’s no afterlife, they will never be held accountable for their crimes, just like many other criminals. They will happily live the rest of their lives, spending millions they’ve made of their prison camp for underaged. This world sucks.
Agreed @@olm8829
Well he still had to suffer lung cancer for those gruelling six months, so that's at least something @@olm8829
It makes me beyond angry that a man who turned child abuse into a profitable business managed to escape justice. I can’t imagine how sick your mind has to be in order to rationalise treating children that way.
Because he did not care. The only thing he wanted was the parents' wallet. When you're money hungry you'd do anything to get that sweet, wonderful cash.
Money and power will always and forever be a double-edged sword, and as much as I hope I am incorrect, might eventually be the downfall of humanity.
@@bashartz I guess you could say money has been and still is fucking up humanity. Its been our downfall for years, we just haven't reached the inevitable end yet.
I think the Elan school psychotherapist went on to be a faculty member of a University in California.
@@emmalouie1663 what makes you think that? I couldn’t find any mention of it online.
The punishments for these programs, and people involved with it, should be test subjects to radiation poisoning.
Like legit, this would be the most beneficial punishments to the scientific community and the general public
I had a friend in high school who was sent here for a short time. He never talked about what went on there, but his story of being kidnapped at night is something I’ll never forget. The worst part is he was not a bad kid, he had shitty parents who didn’t want to be parents
Wait why didn't his parents do something about his kidnaping?
@Rusty Howe Wtf??? these scums really exist?? Dear god I'm really pissed off
How come they LITTERALY consent to the kidnapping of their children? Sick bastards
@Rusty Howe it's really true when they say, every kid deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a kid
I know a kid who has the same experience. Kidnapped at night. Her parents should have been sterilized. I’m so sorry for you pain. So so so sorry. There are better people out there. Just sadly not a lot
i hope his parents rot wherever they are...monsters
Any parent who signs their kid up for something where the first step is openly kidnapping them at night is pathetic and weak. Sorry you were too much of a failure to raise your kid properly, but don't put them through this because you failed.
True. I mean if they are shitty parents. They should instead put them in a TRUSTED and not a suspicious orphanage but still.
Weak and pathetic, no. Criminally negligent, horrible human beings, deserve to be jailed for their entire lives -- yes.
@@newvocabulary why bother knocking the weak and pathetic part off, they're all of the above really
@@thefunkyrolo sure, i'll go with that. All of the above.
There was a case where the would-be kidnap victim killed one of the kidnappers who came for them in the middle of the night. It was ruled self-defence and they faced no punishment for it.
That needs to happen more often, in my opinion.
parents who send their kids to shit like this don’t deserve kids. saddest part is the majority of those kids probably had “behavioral issues” because of how their parents treat them. nauseating.
Yeah, like a said before, they are basically a Judas
They're dropping 17-50k to send their kids here instead of taking reasonable approaches lol. Suburban America is a mf nightmare
@@FyerBear That's because they are worthless mfs. Imagine taking that much money out of your retirement savings or bank account you earned from a office job that earns you a slightly higher salary than a McDonald's worker just to send your kid to somewhere worse than juvenile because you couldn't bother to raise your kid and parent them.
@@FyerBearyou've aimed at the wrong place, but right point
Also the 70s were strange times with strange convinctions and beliefs
Knowing psychology, being attacked and hurt only makes someone more aggressive when they’re older. So it’s kinda making the students worse
@Faith it’s a combination of both. The profit incentive makes it so you want to spend the least amount of money and resources as possible.
That means you make more money, but the staff you hire will be deranged and hungry for suffering at worst or indifferent to the suffering at best.
kinda? I wouldn't be surprised if half of these kids are now serial killers or rapists
Not always, I was beat and beat badly, beat so bad I've been put into the hospital multiple times. As youth I got into fights and lashed out, but as a father I have never beat my kids or even had the slightest thought of beating my kids if they mouth off. My beatings only have strengthen my need to protect my kids so I'd say for me it's had the complete opposite effect
KINDA is an understatement lmao
dont want to discredit your knowledge, but I guess this is just common sense .. how being aggressive to someone would make him/her better?
He came home. In a box.
This sent chills down my spine. I honestly hate parents that thinks sending their child away to some facility they heard about and not even see him face to face once a week is a good idea.
no he didnt
@@MrEquusQuagga you must not be there yet... or just dim.
@King Pistachion nah. He came home in an URN!!!! OHHHHH
My parents did that twice already
@@MrEquusQuagga you’re the parent that sent him eh?
"if you act like a baby you get screamed at like a baby"
Who the hell screams at babies?
i mean the people who run these type of things seem like the type to scream at babies so
These things apparently, yes, things, these people have lost all humanity and don't deserve anything other than spite and exile
Ikr
@Chelsea aren’t Psychiatrists mainly meant for prescribing medication? Not actual mental health help? At least from my experience.
@@DraperStan23 Psychiatrists are mainly meant for diagnosis and advice, but I have a strong feeling these quacks forged their PHDs
My bf was born in the early 70s and went to something exactly like this. He still can't describe his experience without crying his eyes out and he's one tough dude.
@@pupsap7714🙄 and then you cry over how feminists or women laugh at men...
@@marir.s3620 I'm a woman who laughs at msn
@@pupsap7714Those kids are brave and strong to survive such a torturement and you're just a little baby who think he’s tough stfu. srsly
@@marir.s3620feminists have always been horrible to men, so no surprise there
@@pupsap7714 commenting this under a video like that, really? you're disgusting
The absolute hatred for children in this place is astounding. Worse even so when you realize that more often than not, kids who act out are doing so for a valid reason, mostly trauma and mental illness. These kids didn’t need to be beaten and screamed at. They needed to be held and cared for and given the proper time and dedication that it takes to raise any child right.
love and comfort does more for someone in pain than anything else every could
💔💔💔💔
Exactly, childrens are flawed and its normal for a child or a teenager to act irrationally, they don't know shit about the world yet, extreme punishments and expecting perfection from them isn't a way to "fix" them to be a better person, i personally think its up to those children's to better themselves just be there to guide them, not this, and i hate how i used to think this is normal as a child. I see it every time when i was in elementary school.
They knew what the kids needed. But they were getting what they wanted out of them
As a father of 2 (nearly 2nd one due in 2 weeks) I absolutely whole heartedly agree with this, well said
Let's be fair, any parent who signs their child away knowing they will be kidnapped at night is a pretty shitty parent to begin with.
Thank fucking god you said that, I also keep a knife under my pillow all the time so if that’d happened to me someone may have died. An it’d all to be blamed on the parents, I’m sure there’s others who do the same
@@lilorin1516 I'm gonna start putting brass knuckles under my pillow.
@@lilorin1516 yep keep a knife with you at all times.
@@birdsamora9925 yeeeeaaah boi.
@@lilorin1516 I always had this chilhood fantasy of escaping a really strict, prison like boarding school like this one, just to be able to say ''f u, i finally did it'' to the people in charge. After seeing this im just glad i was never really put into such a situation. Like you, i also sleep with a knife within arms reach.
The worst part is: If you managed to contact any authorities, they would likely assume you were an "unruly teen" that needed "tough love."
Tough love is a bullshit lie created to justify abuse.
@@dibkle thank you tough love is hitting your kid that isn't love that is abuse
Abusers join arms with abusers
@@maximuffin6395 Damn, I never thought of that.
@@dibkle I think the term refers to telling people that they're not going a good way in life and calling out bullshit, more than outright abuse.
Out of all of these horrible series of events, that poor girl Dawn's story hit the hardest. She was thrown into a hell by her oblivious parents, and after enduring months of torture, she finally managed to escape, running for her life, only to run into a monster on the road and die a horribly agonizing death. I can't even imagine the kind of despair and hopelessness she had felt. :(((
The fact that this camp was designed by a psychologist is appalling. Even back in the 70s we knew how ineffective punishment is for behaviour change, how psychologically damaging verbal abuse is and how problematic power imbalances are within groups of peers.
Yeah, it really is sickening. Like, your a professional, did you not read the books? Did you not listen during lectures??
And the fact that people just eat that shit up because it's from a professional, like it's just so goddamn disgusting.
You say that like mental health professionals have the best interests of their patients in mind.
@@benjaminbrockway5998 a lot of them actually do.
@@benjaminbrockway5998 lmao yeah all mental health professionals are bad and you definitely proved it. case closed.
More like a psychopath
>"If you're gonna act like a baby, you're gonna be treated like a baby."
I really hope someone looked into this guy if he thinks that this is how you treat a baby - by screaming at them and hitting them.
Hey, abuse breeds monstrous behavior. Abuse is the only way places like this stay in business, those abused people vent on their own children and others, creating more "problem children" to fuel the Abuse Industry. The gear keeps turning and the beast is fed.
As someone with autism that has frequent autistic meltdowns, I was horrified at that part. I'm sure some students there had autism and had meltdowns as well, and in turn were reprimanded, having more meltdowns and the loop continues. It's horrifying.
I think God did when he merc'd the fuck out of the psychopath back in 2001
@@oddeyesies It was designed for you to fail and then you would be punished for failing
@@oddeyesies I feel you so had. I have severe anxiety that caused me to have meltdowns when I was younger (and still today less frequently) and my dad employed almost the exact ame punishment. All it taught me was to hide y emotions as much as pssible.
So, one of my former best friends was actually a graduate of this. She used to tell me that they'd make her relive her sexual abuse. There were a bunch of kids, male and female, who were raped on campus. She found out that one of the people who came forward with this actually killed himself. It's a common outcome from this kind of abuse.
Over the years, I met a bunch of people who were from this industry. Most of them have very serious drug issues and none talk to their parents. I haven't seen one that has been okay since then. I'd put this on par with human trafficking, if I can be blunt.
Yeah I was honestly surprised at the lack of sexual abuse from this. Least nobody is talking about it. But this kind of environment seems like it'd be able to almost make it ritualistic.
My theory on why this is the case is that there's just too many people complicit there would be dozens of students that would have been involved considering that they liked making the students part of these rituals. if there was any punitive sexual abuse nobody is gonna talk about it. the victims aren't gonna wanna bring in a small army upon themselves and the ones who would have done the abuse even though they were victims themselves of this culture aren't gonna wanna bring down more chaos into their lives so they're just gonna keep this bottled up forever. they're gonna take it to their graves but the lack of any mention of it in a place you had teenagers monitored 24/7, no shower privacy.... speaks volumes to me. something has to give and they engineered it so that energy was placed somewhere.
This is plain torture.
@Rusty Howe I think the pregnant students were pregnant before admitted to the school. Remember, some of them are troubled teenagers
Wtf what kind of monster would you have to be to force teenagers to verbally abuse another pregnant teenagers
The fact that there are probably a lot of boarding schools similar to Elan that have not been found is terrifying
There are 100%. Apparently the staff of Elan moved on to ironwood school which remained open until 2023
The worst mistake a parent can make is thinking a child will act and think like an adult. Kids are dumb as hell; they're kids. It's the responsibility of parents to help them grow up, not expect it to happen naturally.
Edit: I can't believe I still have to say this but I used the word "dumb" here as a figure of speech.
Another mistake is treating them like children while at the same time expecting them to act like adults
@@r3born206 exactly, usually it’s the parent that decides arbitrarily depending on how they can best avoid responsibility, either by saying their kid should have acted more mature or that they can’t control their child’s childish behaviour :/
@@r3born206 children are like the new ones and they need to be taught right and not immediately put stress or pressure on to them.They would eventually learn about life and become and act like an adult ONCE they become an adult.
Kid's are not ''dumb as hell'', the assertion that children are inherently stupid has been used as justification for the ''troubled teen industry'' for centuries.
@@anxietywave8735 Apology for the vague hyperbole. What I meant was that kids behaving irrationally every now and then isn't an irregularity that the parents need to worry about. It's part of their growth and development to eventually become impressionable and rebellious. It is the duty of parents to guide them during this stage of development, but do so in a way that it doesn't violate children's rights with too much restrictions, or spoil the children by giving them too much either.
I don't mean to say that kids being stupid is a justification for these junior concentration camps. I'm just saying that it's perfectly normal for children to behave that way, and parents need to accept that.
English is not my native language so be patient with my wording please.
The audacity of them for making one of the rules "Don't be manipulative" is absolutely insane
Yeah and the whole ass school is being manipulative by itself. I meant the one who created the school and the rules. And the other rule that "cant look at the opposite gender" how are they supposed to do when walking past eachother? Look down or closed their eyes? And also the audacity to the parents to PAY 50K DOLLARS just to fucking send them at a "school" like this.
They breaking their own rules fr
i think there might've been a couple worse things happening rather than being hypocritical@@ESUIS7sg
''Friendly Fire'' is the only way to describe it
I wouldn't want any competition either if I were them.
I was never a fan of Paris Hilton, but I ended up watching her latest documentary out of curiosity. Discovering she had been sent to one of these children labor camps, even kidnapped in the middle of the night, has caused her such extreme PTSD that she's still having trouble sleeping or living her life each day was heartbreaking. Not only because of Paris, but because of all the children that are imprisoned and tortured in these facilities who still don't have a voice.
This isn't even tragic. This is pure evil. It's pure evil.
i didnt know that! i feel so bad for her and all other kids :(
She’s been an advocate for exposing these institutions since that documentary’s release. The doc was a way for her to address it publicly ahead of appearing in court against the program that she was apart of. People are more and more aware of this now, but they do still exist.
I immediately thought of her when they said they kidnapped them in the middle of the night
@Johana Struve I watched that documentary also and had the same feeling
I was thinking about Paris' story too. Wasnt a big fan of her in general but what happened wasnt ok
there’s a phineas and ferb episode that heavily references elan.
candace has a dream about her actually managing to get her mother to find out what phineas and ferb were doing and she sends them to this reformatory school that marketed themselves as a good place that will help their students improve, when in reality they were brainwashed and candace had to go back and save them because she misses them
in the episode, the thing i remember most is the two boys having to clean the bathrooms with a single toothbrush
I vividly remember that episode. It was terrifying
Theres a part where the brothers are at a table with tools on it. Whenever Phineas tries to grab a tool and say "Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!" they get sprayed with cold water. This repeats until the the brothers no longer have the desire to build anything, and do not pick up the tools.
The ending of that episode is pretty weird for me
Yes I thought of that episode whilst watching this video! As a kid I thought it was a wholesome episode about sibling relationships and appreciating them but now knowing about stuff like Elan, elements of the episode (such as the prison Phineas and Ferb were sent to) actually makes it pretty dark.
And to think Elan was still open when the show first aired
@@ThatReallyIsNotOdd do you have any idea of the episode name?
That policeman was an absolute angel for what he did to get that boy home, normally the protocol would be to take him back to the school
Exactly, god i wish we could at least know who he was.
This was the only good thing to happen in the video, specially when considering the following stories right after :(
It’s especially lucky for that kid considering the fact that Joe Ricci had the right connections with the right people to be able to basically intimidate the police into looking the other way/keeping their mouth shut if they came across something suspicious involving the school.
@@idontknowmyname.1200 stay ignorant
I wish the other two escapees got people just like that cop to save them.
@@Wtf_Noodles says the ignorant one
The fact that Elan managed to exist even well in the 2000s is frightening. And the fact that it's not unlikely that even more "schools" like this are active right now even more so.
Thank goodness the internet came to the rescue, it's disgusting how Joe and that other head person tried so hard to keep their 'school' alive
Did the police even investigate this?
Like the FBI?? Nobody???
I was in a "group home" for troubled kids in the 2000s.
The staff there basically has no credentials. You only needed a high school diploma.
Their resumes included retail work, etc. But most shocking, a lot of them were former _bouncers._
The amount of abuse there was crazy. I saw some shit...
I kept my mouth shut, followed the program, and stuck to myself.
I _"graduated"_ after 8 months and was sent home to my mother, who sent me back to another boarding school.
The trauma from those didnt _reform_ or help me. I ended up a drug addict and alcohol from 15 until my early/mid 20s. Periods of homelessness, etc.
I'm doing better now. I got cleaned up, went back to school, have a good job, etc.
But I still have a therapist.
I still struggle. I deal with depression, anxiety, PTSD, nightmares, etc.
These abusive places didnt help kids. They need psychological help, guidance, and positive role models.
I can't imagine how many of these kids grew up to be, just, fucked up.
I do volunteer work now.
Because I get it.
I've been there.
@@sourbrothers73 how is your relationship with yo mom now
capitalism
When he said 50,000 to pay for this my jaw dropped. To pay that much for your kid to get assaulted is awful. Imagine the amount of real help and guidance you could get for your child with that. The parents just want to hand them off like a bad pet to get trained instead raising them.
All children deserve parents, but not all parents deserve children
Well the average is $17.00 but yes I completely agree with you!
@@Judo_Master you act like the parents knew what was happening
@@Judo_Masterwell no some children are like these parents o think about 13000 children are like that even then dont send them here
@@catsdogswoof3968 who taught the kids to act like that?
Every child deserves parents but not all parents deserve children
Rightly said! It's sickening (i'm out of words to explain the amount of disgust) to see how parents themselves ruin their children, themselves, and the entire household.
the fact that this stayed open for so long and closed because of bad pr and not because of the law is a insane testament to how our society treats kids as objects or animals more than people
Society and right and wrong are just smokescreens for our true cruel natures
@@SamuelBlack84 woah bro so deeeeep. Don't cut yourself with all that edge man.
@@NeoAstrisk Do all of you read from a script to say the exact same phrases over and over again? It's incredibly dull and boring
@@SamuelBlack84 bro, go listen to your hawthorne heights album and cry yourself asleep. Bet you were the weird smelly goth kid nobody liked.
@@NeoAstrisk bro, who hurt you?
This is despicable. "Troubled teens" are troubled for a _reason,_ often due to parents not understanding how to parent their child properly. I, for one, was heavily medicated by an overzealous psychiatrist because I wasn't behaving the way my mother expected and she refused to accept any blame, pushing for answers where there were none. I suffered two seizures from taking a couple medications which are _explicitly not supposed to be combined._ Once I realized this, I made the decision to stop taking those meds and confront the quack about it. Do you know what he said to me? He offered to add on _yet another,_ seizure medication! I never went back there, and I worked on my issues with a proper therapist, without medication.
Bad parents will look for any solution except the one in the mirror, and youths don't always get the chance to even have someone listen to them about _why_ they're upset. My mother was prideful, stubborn, and a drunk, and this video makes me highly uncomfortable, because it brings back my own nightmares from childhood through the teen years.
Facts.
I’m sorry you had to suffer through that. You’re right though, some parents outright refuse to even acknowledge any faults within them and blame their child for problems that they caused. It’s horrible.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. Holding space for you❤
I feel your pain... Been through very similar stuff and now 38 still trying to have a normal life. Through out this video, I wanted to reach out to this poor souls and somehow help them. 😥
"...and this video makes me highly uncomfortable, because it brings back my own nightmares from childhood through the teen years.".......same
Behind almost every "troubled teen" is actually a troubled household. Maybe there is something wrong with the parent's marriage, their finances, their family relationships, their mental health, etc.
Fix the problem at the root. And nearly always, the root is almost never the teenager.
This 👏👏👏
agreed. but also a “troubled teen” can choose their own path. they aren’t dumb, and can differentiate from right and wrong. they just choose to ignore the consequences
@@jocelyn-nk9es Most of the time their circumstances forces them to choose the "easy way out" which is most of the time "wrong way"... Without proper guidance mistakes will be inevitable and before you know it a simple mistake can lead to bigger ones..
@@vivid8979 well said.
"nearly always... almost never"
see, you and @jocelyn are right - some of the kids are just bad and so are partially to blame for getting treated like this
This is especially horrifying for me to watch as someone who went to a "therapeutic" boarding school for my depression that was somewhat similar. We were neglected there and I dropped 22 pounds from malnourishment. I was 117lbs going in, and 95lbs coming out. The school was shut down for neglect and tax evasion soon after I was kicked out. The "therapy" there was very cult-like and similar to brainwashing. Once I went back home and was finally able to tell my mom what it was like, she was horrified.
Parents, don't do this to your kids. The people running the schools can lie to you, and say that your child is lying when they try to tell you how they're treated. Don't let them end up like me.
I almost got sent to a “troubled teen” camp. My mom convinced my dad they would do more harm then good for me. She spent about a month talking him out of it. I’m so glad she was in my corner for that occasion.
Praise your mom. Thank goodness she was able to do that for and stayed by your side
Your mother is a saint compared to your father, glad you're ok.
@The Beardless 1 oh no it most certainly was not. I was being sent away cause my dad thought I was on drugs. Turns out I just had type one diabetes and was dying. Once I got hospitalized and diagnosed they realized why I lost so much weight, my skin was grey, and my hair was falling out. I was also moody all the time because I was sick.
@@Shy-xm4kn My goodness, I hope you're doing better now! Bless your mother for standing up for you! :)
@Beardless 1 type one is a life long disease but thank you know that we know what was wrong with me I’m definitely much better :)
The fact that this ''school'' was operating all the way until 2010 is actually fucking disgusting.
Exactly my thoughts.
I kept thinking to myself "when would this place get exposed and shut down?" once I watched 3/4 of the video only to be shocked and sick to learn that this was very recent.
these camps still exist today. with similar treatments and deaths. Called the troubled teen industry.
So in my calculations that is to much for a "school"
2011
I've been to one of these camps in 2019 little has changed since then everything matches up except the fight circle.
I remember talking to a homeless man on a bridge, who told me about this program. he said that he was forced to go through it when he was a teen and it ruined him mentally. I thought he was full of it. Sorry for ever doubting you Joe.
That’s so sad:(
Sometimes it's important to really listen to people. From being homeless, which started age 17 when my abusive adoptive parents just decided to kick me out cuz I wouldnt attend their cult church anymore, I found out how many homeless shelters were structured on the abuses Elan is based on.
Especially Salvation Army.
People in so many settings are being made to accept being 'guilty'
Oof Joe is On God's side bless him
The top comment says that there’s a Webtoon called “Joe vs. Elan school”
@@Petrichoredits1 wonder if it's the same Joe. Or if "joe" is just a acronym for the people who attended these places.
As someone who was “threatened” with military/boarding school when misbehaving, this is horrifying. My heart breaks for these children and anyone who is undergoing this in secret.
43:47 "Today, he walks a free man." When the punishment for a crime is a fee, crime is free for the wealthy.
absolutely. the system is so broken.
When you don’t know what a bond is
@@yesnt8907 1.2M is free money for wealthy people
@@yesnt8907 Money is no equality for retribution of crimes committed.
@@Reinhard96 however, if you get a good lawyer you might just escape it... The judge is pretty much constrained to the merits of the argument in the adversarial model of justice system followed in the US.
Unfortunately, parents who send their kids to places like this are usually too dumb to realize that their child’s behavior is often a product of the parent’s actions and behavior. It disgusts me how many kids had to experience this literal torture just because their parents were too lazy to actually talk to their child and work on the underlying issues.
Or they refuse to accept it
@@lottiecharman6946 Idiots. It reminds me of my parents and they only listen now that one of them is dying
@@bmona7550 I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you're okay
It must be really hard to accept that you're the problem and you're the one who needs to change, especially as a parent
And I know a lot of parents assume that kids just get over things 😢
When I was in therapy my therapist low-key begged my family to do proper family therapy and they refused, because they didn't want to admit to themselves that they were at fault for some things
But then again, having a kid is a huge commitment and some people don't see that 😅
I need to thank my parents for taking me to a good school or even better, a hug.
Totes benny totes 100
My friend was abducted just like this in the middle of the night by youth mental facility people, and it wasn't 1970; it was 1990. He wasn't even the slightest bit "troubled" or any of the things his parents claimed, he was just into skating and punk music, not a corderoy-wearing, grace-saying Christian like they were. A solid month he was IMPRISONED for being an absolutely normal healthy 16 year old.
Lol God really doesn’t care what music you listen to
@John Spöner what the fuck thats awful
I hope he disowned his parents afterwards.
@@sandwichmonster7067 Them AND any trace of faith he had left.
@@audreymuzingo933 good on him for cutting those bastards out of his life. I hope he's doing okay now.
one thing brought up in this is that the kids were not allowed to talk poorly of the school but what isn't to say that the parents wouldn't just not believe them. if i was being mistreated by an adult my parents would have 100% sided with the adult because why would an adult lie about abusing me. so glad i never went to this school.
Forbidden Actions at Elan:
-talking too loudly
-talking too softly
-talking too much
-not talking enough
my brain is melting just trying to comprehend this, I can't imagine how it was like for the kids
they were meant to be broken
Then I'd say 'stop screaming, you're talking too loudly. That's not allowed PLUS I can't understand you to respond appropriately'. Tough crap for them, they shouldn't break their own rules that they set, they have no reason to have exception to. Don't care if they're staff. Lead by example and all that.
They'd probably kill me for being disabled though lol. Never let me have my 'aid, hate me for not being able to hear, not responding to their screaming, never talking other than to say 'can't understand you'.
Nevermind the autism (which I didn't know I had at the time, that's new for me) which makes me a stickler for rules which is dumb with conflicts like this. -_-
Oh and this IS me being broken, thanks middle school. They would hate me breaking and just turning into what they're trying to change people out of.
Rules are meant to be broken.
Literally the worst thing for a growing kid is inconsistency. Getting yelled at whatever you do breaks a person. It's so so harmful and I'm so sorry for all these victims
It is just sickening to find none of the faculties was actually held responsible for such cruelty. They profited from these kids' suffering and eventually got away with it. Unbelievable.
Public schools get away with a lot as well. Granted they aren't this bad, but they still get away with too much.
Everyone looks at Guantanamo now like it's an exception for the torture of US citizens. Nobody looks at children. It's a general phenomenon. Even parents themselves can torture and manipulate their children and they will never have the strength to speak out, because they might just be sent back and tortured even worse. Child abuse is the central reason for why there's so many troubled adults out there who do crimes. Childhood trauma is almost impossible to overcome later. If we want a healthy and empathic society, we have to look at the children and not look away for comfort.
The past we may not be able to save, but we can certainly rectify it now by learning from it rather then honoring it. By making sure we don’t let a repeat of what happen by going after those that got away with it and prevent future monsters and demons like them from doing it again.
It’s pretty easy to believe. Rich people never face legal consequences.
Most got away with it, Joseph Ricci got some much needed karma in the form of cancer at 50
Since the parents allowed their kids to go to this prison, they also deserve to be sued for negligence in the crimes aginst their children's dignity, physiscal integrity and probably their lives.
True!
Those parents should have been put to death and be forced to drink the kool aid cynide just like Jonestown went through around the same time this was happening int he 70s and 80s.
Good luck getting _that_ legalised
I might be wrong but aren't they sent mails of how they're treated very equally and they'll go as far as to fabricate the original work so it looks like they were having a normal life inside the camp. I don't think they would be blamed for that though since they thought this was for the better and that they'll be well behaved.
The parents thought this place was going to change their kids for the better. Remember- they didnt know about the cruel methods up until the end.
The parents were manipulated aswell.
“It’s not a boxing ring, it’s a ring of human people.” Sir?! And?! That makes it better?!
A guy who was nearly a victim of one of these kidnappings called into a podcast I listen to. He apparently shⱺt one or both of the kidnappers (I believe one fatally) as they entered his room and was stuck in legal limbo for a long time as a result. As I recall, his parents were mad at him too.
What’s the podcast?
I'm curious of the fatality rate of the kidnappers were. I'd imagine people would fight back with lethal force.
Every single one should meet the same fate.
@@ethanpant If someone is trying to kill you then you try to kill them in return
Very fair reaction
The scariest part is that many former "graduates" have publicly denounced this place decades ago and people probably brushed them off saying things like, "damn, that's crazy. Want another beer?" or just been, "well, that's all in the past. What's important is you're safe now. Want another beer?" and not investigating it any further. What's more is that these kids were usually already disturbed people before this all happened to them, so they normally have a pre-existing credibility problem. Unbelievers, and especially school staff, could say, "you're really going to believe what (s)he has to say? They're delinquent". They experience the same stigma former inmates face.
Its awful. We're just "bad kids" and we "lie all the time". I'm not a thug, I was a clinically depressed child. I tell the same stories I hear from survivors old enough to be my parents. They refuse to see the patterns in our testimonies.
@@pumpkin_cat792 Yeah man, it seems like it's human nature, unfortunately. Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry, and you will cry alone, it's fucked up.
Awful. at least the police today respond to even the smallest calls or reports just in case, but back then, you report being tortured constantly verbally, physically, and sexually? bullshit you’re making it up! haha! ah.. yeah fuck that shit
@@frankcastle6591 I’m happy things are changing for the better atleast
Thats what happened with Bhad Babie. She spoke out about the abuse and neglect people go through at that camp that dr.phil endorces and because of her past history of being a brat people ignored her and nothing was done about it regardless of the fact that she was one of dozens of people whove spoken out about the camp
Paris Hilton got sent to one of these places and speaks out about it to this day. I really feel for these kids. Many of them told their parents they were being abused, including sexually, and 9/10 times they didn't believe them and kept them there. I don't care how bad your child is acting out, if they ever tell you they are being abused, you need to take it seriously and investigate the claim at the least.
I remember watching Filthy Rich (netflix Epstein docuseries) and the victims were talking about their experiences. A lot of them described how they started acting out and getting into things like drugs after they were assaulted. Just something to keep in mind about these kids being shipped off to these schools
Cedu graduate here, 1996-1998. Yeah Paris was there. Not for long, she didn't get to have the full experience, like us lucky survivors...
@@swimmerkat3965 That's called using unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to "deal" with the trauma from the horrendous abuse one was the victim of. That's why the medical community is finally re-evaluating how they perceive and treat addicts. Throwing them in prison for several years or a 30-day stint in rehab and tossing them back out on the street doesn't fix the underlying issue. Prison is inhumane and is not meant to help addicts, and rehab is a band-aid solution. They need therapy in order to get to the underlying issue and to help them work towards recovery and a sense of "normalcy"-- whatever that looks like to them. It's also why activists are trying to get the government to subsidize mental healthcare, because often those who need it most cannot afford to pay for the therapy, transportation, and medication out of pocket or copays because their insurance won't pay for one or all three or doesn't cover enough.
If society truly wants to help, it needs to actually care for and about our poor, our sick, and our hungry. Instead of demonizing them and treating them as a burden.
@@swimmerkat3965 what exactly are you wanting people to keep in mind here? How does a person's drug use relate to being legally tortured?
Yeah, I went to one of these programs. The first thing they tell your parents is that you’ll lie to go home. They’ll say your accusations of abuse are merely attention seeking behavior. I was in the system for a year and a half and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover
I attended a “boarding” school for troubled teens and kids as well. A “Christian” one no less. They beat kids with paddles, “jailed” kids in the attics of the dorm rooms, there were numerous SA incidents, a girl lost her arm due to the circulation being cut off by the admin, and the counselors and owners all lived on property. A teacher once stabbed the top of my head with a red pen and the other adults smiled and told me how absurd it was that I could say she would ever do such a thing. They are still open. Not sure who is there now or what’s happening anymore, but I can’t imagine they’ve strayed too far from their path years ago.
Wow still watching the video, but the place I was at also had a big brother program. They used to bully my brother and I and claim our stuff was theirs and the staff would take their side
man this is the first video my stomach has ever really dropped while watching, never been this close to the subject matter
Few things are scarier than having delusional sociopaths in control who have convinced themselves they have God on their side. It makes anything they do "good" by virtue of them being the ones doing it.
name of the school?
I work with a guy who was at Elan for almost a year.
Apparently, they sent people to his house and they "kidnapped" him - brought him up to the school. He said that it was extremely far in to the wilderness. The only thing that he disclosed was the "Ring", and how they would zip-tie kids' wrists and make them fight. He made allusions to darker happenings as well (definite sexual violations), and it seemed like the school was part of a huge cover-up years later. He is absolutely...without a doubt, deeply affected by these memories and shows scars in his psyche that won't ever heal. Poor guy is always on edge and displays hyper-vigilant behavior. I thank God that the worst place I have seen was my local high-school.
Thanks Nexpo. You give these people a voice well after they vanished in to obscurity by the winds of change. I will speak to the guy tomorrow. I'll be back to report my findings.
Super curious about this. Hope he's good.
Hope the guy gets some good therapy!
aw man. i hope he's gonna be okay
@@oliviasayshi7517 That is, of course, if he is even capable of trusting therapeutic institutions after his experiences.
Do you think thats a great idea? Dredging up his unpleasant memories to satisfy *your* curiosity? Seems kinda cruel to me. Just let the guy live.
The thought of escaping this insane, abusive, and downright evil cult, thinking you’re finally about to get home, only to be raped and murdered on the side of a highway is one of the most tragic things I’ve heard. This video is amazingly informative and well-put-together, but it’s been really difficult to get through.
This story made me really mad. I'll never get why parents don't hold themselves accountable for their children. God damn me if I choose to send my child away to "correct" them, and they end up dead or come back in a box. Shit's fucked up. That should be a crime. Both these "schools" and parents should be charged.
@@birdsfly7199 Definitely. I know the argument can be made that the parents couldn’t know the full-extent of what was going on since Élan presented themselves as a reformatory school and downplayed many of their actions, but I think the fake-kidnapping scenario alone should’ve tipped off any parents that actually cared. I feel like shipping your kids off to some place that you *don’t* know the full-extent of should be counted as gross negligence at the very least.
@@Crimson_Knight004 Well said. I agree.
My heart goes out to Brad. He escaped only to be shot while seeking help after being tortured. Not even the comments seem to make much note of it. May he rest in peace.
May brads and dawns soul rest in piece!
Yeah. And it's even more heartbreaking that he went there because he thought it would probably be a safe haven in some way or at least he would actually be given some help just to be shot. I'm glad you bring this up.
@@thesepticbossalduin8859 And he probably didn't even die instantly. Just laying there bleeding out completely baffled and shocked by all of the events that have transpired, feeling utterly betrayed by both his parents and the world. He expected to escape to let the world know what was truly happening to all of these kids, just for the world to kill him and the truth.
only 1 out of 3 successfully survived.. this all could've been prevented by the parents. its so scary to think that they escaped only to run into more corrupted people.
2 amendment at it's best
I'm from Maine, yet I've had friends go to camps regularly during the summer for behavioral issues.. it saddens me to think my peers went through something like this yearly.. I hope everyone affected gets real help and love from their families and peers
Do any of your friends know a worker from the Elon boarding school named Bambi Skula?
what makes my blood boil is all the staff and people involved in this never faced any consequences.
I'd like to think some of them are dead now :) probably killed or whatsoever
@@frost3193 if they aren't, they should be.
They were literally moved to other schools. They moved a staff member from Elan to Hyde, Bath. It's not even far away. I graduated from that hell hole in the late 2000s and it STILL EXISTS.
@@frost3193 i like to imagine that those people are the victims in gore videos
@@EEsUA-camChanel Did you even learn anything there? Like, if I understood correctly, these types of schools claim to be ending with a "high school diploma" or something (I'm from Europe, so idk exactly how it's across the pond). But Nexpo in the video explained that there's very little teaching being done (at least in Elon). So how would you describe your knowledge after graduating compared to an average person with a high school diploma in the US?
it’s so.. disgusting how easy it is for parents to give away their children. it makes me so angry that ANY parent would be comfortable handing their child over to ANYONE, especially complete strangers.
Weird take. So you want them with the abusive neglectful drug addicts who need mental help?
We just need to take childcare more seriously and provide better alternatives for kids.
@@josephmatthews7698 did you even watch the video☠️☠️
@@melodym2910 Did you watch the video AND read the comment? As someone with adopted family members i don't understand thinking "parents shouldn't be allowed to hand their children over to strangers!" As the key take away. It makes zero sense.
Tons of people do it all the time and everyday when they send them to school, daycare or summer camp as an example.
Instead of attacking the parents we should be focusing on keeping these institutions above board and being positive for the children. It takes a village after all.
its such an awful thing to think about. hey take my child because i cant handle them, why the fuck would u ever do that? these parents shouldve never had children
@@josephmatthews7698 taking the example of adoption to prove that your point of giving your kid away is definitely not valid when you think about the amount of kids that land into the hands of abusive adopting parents (which eventually resulted in the adoption process to be insanely difficult for adults who really want to have children).
Plus adoption is not comparable to giving ur kids away to literal boarding schools or camps. You also cannot compare those to schools and daycare, because after schools and daycare the kids return to their parents, unlike the other alternatives, which includes your kids to be taken away for several days, weeks, months or even years. Your excuse of „do you want them with abusive neglectful drug addicts“ is also not really true, because parents that give their kids away that easily to camps & boarding schools for such a long time are mostly not even drug addicts or in need of severe mental health care, they’re parents that just don’t give enough fucks to put more effort into their troublesome kids who mostly aren’t even troublesome, but just need to be listened to.
There’s absolutely 0 excuse and understanding for any parent that chooses to give away their kid to strangers for such a long duration, stop trying to justify shitty parents that just don’t care enough about their kids that make it so easy for themselves to just get rid of them.
THAT is neglect, and THAT is the root of these issues. If parents were more cautious and actually, yk, just wouldn’t give up on their kids, cult-like boarding schools such as Élan wouldn’t have a single chance to become as popular and damaging as they became.
Pregnant women and mentally ill kids were beaten to, in some cases, death. This video made me so angry, but Nexpo's execution is, as always, fantastic. Keep up the good work, man. Keep bringing the light to situations like these. The public deserves to have more information regarding these things, and these victims deserve closure that many of them are probably never going to receive.
It makes me sick to my stomach.
Is anyone who worked at these places still alive? They deserve to be hunted down like ex-Nazis, live the rest of their lives watching their backs.
not even pregnant women, pregnant girls. my heart breaks for them.
@@Colddirector agreed.
@@Colddirector completely agree
Sadly, when cases of child abuse like these surface, people only ever pay attention to the most extreme, physical forms of abuse, like violence and sexual abuse, or in this case, the Ring.
But nobody ever considers the more subtle forms of control and abuse present. All the "forbidden actions" rules and incredibly tight scheduling, The complete absence of privacy and supervision over every aspect of these kid's lives, All of these things are no less abusive than hitting a kid, but everyone fails to consider them abusive when there is no visible, immediate harm to the child.
The sad truth is, when you're a parent or some other authority figure in a child's life, you can get away with a lot of abuse as long as it doesn't spill into physical territory.
Underrated perspective
Upvote. Truth. Psychological abuse is shown in many studies to be equally as harmful to the brain and psyche as physical abuse. EQUAL.
Nexpo: “I can make an entire hour long video on Synanon”
Me: is that a promise?
@emes bro the guy was just saying he wanted a video on synanon, whats your problem?
@emes Ironically, In saying that you've also not posted anything meaningful about the video.
@emes Damn why so negative? Fuck did OP do to you?
@emes :(
@emes who hurt you my man? wanna drink some water and breathe a bit?
My dads friend was sent to a place like this and when he got out he never really spoke to his parents again and didnt go their funerals. His parents tried to say they didnt know it qas like that and his take on it was basically that ignorance is not an excuse. He wasnt even that bad of a kid. My dad said he was respectful but he was sent there for smoking pot and skipping class.
I would have done the same. Doing dumb stuff as a kid is a part of figuring out who you are.
Getting sent to some facility filled with other kids who does more dumb stuff then the avrage prob won't make me do less dumb stuff.
And that facility is ran by people i do not know or care for, beeing "experts" who can fix everyones personal problems with a program?
Nope, they would be dead to me for sure if they did that.
@Chris Webb No we're Canadian. Southern Ontario.
I was in a similar situation. You can't blame the parents entirely. In the early 90s, the Internet didn't exist. Scared parents relied on school counselors and interventionists and believed they had the kids' best interests in mind. How were they to know everybody involved got kickbacks? I'm 46 now and the amount of damage that was done is something I'll never recover from. I hated my parents for years but forgave them in time. They were scared and didn't know what to do. Their once-perfect little girl was hanging out with bad kids and staying away from home for weeks at a time and skipping school. No drugs, still a virgin...never been in legal trouble. But they were brainwashed and gaslit by the people getting paid for each person admitted. In my case, there was a class action lawsuit and I was still so hurt and traumatized that I wouldn't have anything to do with it. I regret THAT more than anything. Last I looked, the "doctor" in charge of my case was still practicing psychiatry, too. One of the other doctors involved in the scheme here in Texas committed suicide. I was friends with his son.
@@Littlemissdirtbag Threw his parents away for nothing? No. He can feel how he feels about it.
@@galacticguardian2783 Maybe youre salty because your children abandoned you because of your actions
Dawn's story bothers me so much... After all that suffering at Elan, she manages to escape only to be brutally assaulted and murdered by somebody who lied to her. My heart breaks for her, you will forever be missed
It’s all heartbreaking, one man so scarred that he chooses not to share his identity to this day; another, who thought he was finally safe at the house of a friend, only to be gunned down and treated like a criminal; and, of course, the story of Dawn herself. The whole mental process that these people must’ve gone through is truly terrifying to even conceptualize, much more so to attempt and empathize with; being kidnapped, thinking you’re going to to be raped or killed, being told your parents betrayed you and signed your life away to an adolescence in hell, only to escape with the feeling of relief that hell is with you no longer, only to face the grim fate that befell 2 of the 3 escapees. It’s horrifying, in addition, to know that out of the thousands of people that have come and from Élan, only 1 escaped alive.
😊😊
@@bigbo1764 It truely is horrifying. The owners of Elan had everyone there wrapped around their fingers, such fear.
@charlie-h1v3dh lol 27 mins ago thats crazy i came
love your content, and your dedication to these well made videos.
when you spoke about how they would bust into the CHILDS room and kidnap the kids it reminded me heavily of paris hilton’s experience of her being kidnapped one night just for her to find that her parents “sold” her to a behavioral camp similar to this one. she was constantly abused (sexually and physically) and was told to be quiet about it
I thought of that too! Her describing the night it happened haunts me to this day. I think she has a campaign to shut the place and others that abused her.
How old was she ?
@@bexproctor360 in her teens. Minor.
The sopranos has a scene like that
Every single one of these so called ''parents'' should have been arrested for paying STRANGERS!! to kidnap their children so they could have a easier life themselves,knowingly their children were abused on a daily basis....none of them should have seen a single day of sun ever again....
Parents: "Parenting? Eew. Here's money, take care of it."
I call them PAYrents
They already tried their best, their best was lacking hence the hockey stick beatings.
@@carlost856 if hockey sticks were for attempting their best and failing then clearly they had low standards as parents and would be terrifying to see what them at their worst would be.
@@carlost856 also any adult that thinks a child should be beaten with a hockey stick should be beaten themselves with one just so they can see how much of an brutal form of physical assault that is.
@@alexillescas8521 I don't. The problem is that too much abuse gets passed up as parenting.
The 70s were a weird time. I could understand a "school" like that existing back then. But that it was still open until 2011 just blows my mind.
they still do now and conversion therapy is still very much a thing
The troubled teen industry is still very much a thing unfortunately
@@nareshujjesha5558 I hate how the word "therapy" is attached to conversion therapy.
Those emotional abuse factories should be wiped off the fucking planet
@@The_Horse-leafs_Cabbage facts it's more ironic when you remember the fact that the inventor of conversion therapy HIMSELF came out as gay
That's exactly my tought.
And to know that it still happening somewher else just melts my brain 😖
I was kidnapped as a “troubled youth” by the state of Michigan. I spent my entire teen years in their custody. I’m now 55 years old and the damage caused by my time there continues to this day.
I hope you're able to heal. just so u know this stranger loves you and genuinely hopes you live an amazing and fulfilling life 💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
I think it's actually frightening how this industry still exists to this day
exactly
Comment guy found
It’s heartbreaking and is physically sickening….. also i see you everywhere
even here, wth
@@lallal He comments on a lot of videos
so y’all probably aren’t aware but paris hilton actually suffered through a school exactly like this. she’s now trying to raise awareness of the brutality and provide counseling for the former “students”
That's great. Props to her for helping these kids out.
@@birdsfly7199 right ?? and you never would’ve guessed either
wow that makes me feel a lot of respect for her and explains the "party years" a lot
Huh.
That explains some stuff.
Queen shit right there
Dawn's escape story breaks my heart. She escaped hell only to meet an absolute slime of a human being, I am infuriated and hope that monster suffers every day of his life.
whats wrong with slimes tho.
@@Shortestcoment don't
i didnt quite get why the second person was shot.
@@sentientsid07 probably mistaken as a burglar or attacker by the shooter since it was at night. very tragic
@@straits9260 true it was tragic
what a good way for a parent to be disowned and never talked to ever again
I always joke that because my parents sent me away when I started causing them problems, I'm sending them straight to the retirement home when they start causing me problems.
At this point you could've told me that the trucker who raped and murdered the poor girl was actually an Elan agent sent out with that specific task and I'd believe you.
I was half expecting him to say that ngl
@@halfjack2758 who knows? It might actually b true.
@@anubisrapture992 I wouldn't put it above the fascists that make up the former staff of Elan to do such a thing.
You know what...
He was probably going out at night to go kidnap some new students. That's probs why he was in a truck, at night.
David Sedaris' sister, Tiffany Sedaris, was sent there during her childhood. The way she apparently spoke of it sounds like the experience never truly left her, and the rest of the family almost seems to resent her for that. Frankly, its disgusting nobody ever saw her suffering for what it was until she took her life in 2013. RIP Tiffany.
@Elliott K Yeah, okay. I blame it on the parents, sure. But she’s the controller of her destiny. She could’ve chosen a higher path. I know some have tougher times overcoming adversity than some of us, but come on.
@@zaynes5094 You have no idea what you're talking about. Feel lucky that you don't know what you're talking about.
@@zaynes5094 What is your problem?
@@zaynes5094 FU
@@zaynes5094 Maybe if yall Bible belivers were busy sending people to help the troubled teens instead of abusing them at camps they wouldn't kill thsmelves so much.
I’ve actually revisited this schools history just recently and unfortunately I’ve learned that Elan has rebranded. It’s not done. It’s rebranded into Ironwood and it’s still open and operating and accepting attendees. The nightmare still lives.
Is this real? This comment had me goosebumps..
are you fucking serious?? please tell me you’re not
ironwood isnt related to elan, its related to turn about ranch (which is no better, its where Dr Phil likes to send kids, knowing how theyre run). theyre both in Maine but its not Elan
EST is the same way, now rebranded as Landmark Education.
fuck that and we need to get these places of hell closed forever
That young girl who managed to escape the school only to run into the truck of a rapist is the saddest thing I've ever seen. The poor girl.
I actually have a friend who is only 20 years old. He was going through a lot, got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and his parents sent him away to a "wilderness retreat". The stories he told me, were... almost too hard to hear. The camp has since been shut down, but I'll always remember this story in particular.
He said he was accused of 'not sleeping' and was drug out from his bed (this all took place somewhere in Washington's many forests). It was around 1AM in the morning when this happened and three other kids were brought into the same shed with him. Their hands were tied off above them, and were stripped nearly naked. The employee's would then spray them with freezing cold water, leaving them there throughout the night.
It fucked him up completely, and he has since been battling addiction.
my friend got sent to a 'wilderness retreat' AND to a 'boarding school' around 2016 and was never the same after it. i was her best friend at the time and one of the few people looking out for her & she said they convinced her i was bad somehow. ever since then we were off and on with talking. now we dont speak at all cuz she got into drugs and ended up being really flaky and saying i was toxic for being indecisive on our friendship:)
WAIT- jesus christ... the boarding school my friend went to was in Utah but the wilderness retreat was in Washington. I bet it was the same one! She didn't mention much about it but it was in the forest and I know that she suffered A LOT. Again, didn't give me much detail but at one or both of these places she did say they would try to humilate her in front of everyone. i vaguely remember something about water or it being cold but this happened to her likeee 5 years ago? maybe 6... god... is the retreat in washington still there? I don't know what it's called/if there's multiple but that's really upsetting. it really destroyed my relationship with her and im so so sorry to hear about what your friend went through :(
@@purrsuasively It so terrible what your friend went through and caused your friendship. I hope OP, you, and your friends get help soon.
God bless them
I feel sad for your friend i hope he is feeling better.Just say that if your son or daughter is not behaving well just give them something like do chores or sweep the floor not tell them to fight or abuse them.
The problem children’s parents are more of a problem themselves, they are literally sending their children to prison. Hell, prison doesn’t have cults or discipline 24/7.
My only problem with this argument is that the parents really didn't know about the camp's true nature. The camp made itself look like a place that would magically transform their kids into a better person. So the parent's had absolutely no idea about the mess the camp actually was.
@@crabohato4954 that makes them idiots then
@@crabohato4954 No, as a parent you are the guardian of your child. "Problem child" or not, if you send your child to a place you have not looked into, and sign away their rights to strangers who may or may not have their best interest in mind, you are just as guilty as they are, if not moreso.
I've been both to a school modeled directly on Elan and prison.... prison was literally a cakewalk compared to the school
@@WeldersFSC physical abuse creates problem children.
"I may run a camp solely for the purpose of abusing children, but at least it's an equal opportunity child abuse camp."
-Joe Richhi
That man dies a peaceful death for what he did
@@ralsei7170 i hope not... Cancer is not kind. I hope he felt at least a horrible pain before pass. I normally avoid to make such "edgy" comments but this man deserves it.
@@CeloHunter Oh he does, I felt vindictive too when I heard about cancer
I hope it was some type of bone cancer
I went to a school eerily similar to this. It's called The Valley View School located in rural and isolated North Brookfield Massachusetts. It was all boys. We were patted down and stripped when we got there, watched at night. If we acted up we were screamed at and put on "the hip". Youd be watched at all times, day, night, shower, bathroom, getting dressed, in school.
Teachers turned a blind eye to rule breakers and bullies if they were senior student or "in" with the staff. People would dissappear and no one would know where they went and they would give us vague answers.
The feeling of being trapped there, the way they teased me for being depressed, hanging my stuffed bear from the ceiling with a noose, the way they locked me in a room all day to do my schoolwork because I missed 3 assignments because I needed more help. The screams of new students. I still have nightmares. Three or four times a month...for the past 12 years. I am 29 now. I am severely traumatized. DO NOT SEND YOUR KIDS HERE OR THERE OR ANYWHERE.
This video was triggering but I needed to see it. Thank you for making this
Let's not forget that Paris Hilton was sent to a place like this, her parents don't acknowledge it or apologize for it. And people really like to forget it happened to her. She attributes a lot of issues to what went on while she was there.
that's horrible
What the fuck
Oh my god, really? I never knew this about Paris
no one is safe from these places. i can't imagine her case is all that unique. i bet that lots of celebrity teens and children have been sent to these "treatment" facilities on top of the abuse they suffer in the entertainment industry
And her mom doens't believe her
Amy and David Sedaris had a sister Tiffany that went to this school for two years. They said she was traumatized for the rest of her life, died by suicide in 2013, and was still so angry at her family that she said in her will she didn't want them to claim her body or go to her funeral.
Wow
One of their “glowing reviews” I’m sure 😒
i don't blame her for shunning her family, its a miracle she made it out of such hell.
Wow I've read his books for years I never realized that's why she ended up the way she did. Very sad, not the siblings fault but I could see why she'd choose not to talk to any of them out of anger
I worked as a Uber driver. So usually I’d drive people who are either intoxicated or extremely exhausted. This woman wanted me to drive her to her hotel because she drank too much.
We were in the car for 50mins. The bar and the hotel were pretty far apart. During the drive I remember her just crying and breaking down. When I asked her if she needs any water or something to help calm her. She told me that she use to go to a boarding school that treated her so badly that she was affected mentally. She explained in full detail about the horrors they did to the children. Including her.
At first I thought she was just intoxicated and just drunk. After I dropped her off and offered to help
Her walk back inside the hotel I started to wonder what boarding school she was taking about.
The details she explained was terrifying close to this video. I’m so sorry that I didn’t believe her at first and I hope that woman is Doing okay
Alcohol is a Depressant that's why she got Emotional.. Something triggered her.. Possibly Alcohol is her trigger🤔🤷
thank everyone
I agree that the alcohol caused her to get emotional, but I do not believe that it was the trigger. More likely, the trigger was the taxi due to the way that they were transported to the school
Alcohol doesn’t make u babble bs. It can actually make ppl spit sum’ personal and traumatic.
@@tanyamcghee3922 What?