Want More?


Thursday, March 24, 2016

10 Years Later, Yet Nothing has Changed

Today marks a decade gone by since my experience in this horrific and shady industry, you can read the whole story about my escape. This was the motive why I started this campaign to expose what the media has failed to report on, and to help lobby reformation for out-of-home placements and the safety of troubled youth.

Since this time, it has slowly woken more people up (My family unfortunately was not reached in time to save me from this ordeal). The real game-changer was Maia Szalavitz's book "Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids" that detailed the history of the abuse and death in youth treatment centers. This prompted a GAO investigation in 2007 to pass federal laws and oversight of these programs. A life-saving bill introduced called "Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008" was to put all of this to an end. Sadly, the bill did not become law, it died in the Senate after lobbyist from NATSAP, PSI, and other industry giants fought back. The bill has been reintroduced several times without success by now-retired representative George Miller. The head of the GAO who led the federal investigation Gregory Kutz, has since left the department.

So as a result, the hidden Holocaust has continued. Parents still sent their kids to these facilities despite the warnings. They continued to believe the lies these programs were boasting until it was too late, their children were already severely abused, raped, or even killed. There were a handful of parents that did head the warnings given by survivor groups and advocacy organizations (Such as CAFETY and ASTART, kudos to them) and were coerced by the education consultants, school districts, and Ph.D's to send their child to these programs with recorded death and abuse.