Something Was Wrong - S24 Ep15 Source Of Hope

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

*Content Warning: distressing themes, self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance use disorder, child sexual abuse, child abuse, verbal abuse, mental abuse, physical violence, cultic abuse, suicidal ideation, grooming, torture and death. *Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips:  somethingwaswrong.com/resources    Snag your ticket for the live Home for the Holidays event here: https://events.humanitix.com/swwxtgi  Check out our brand new SWW Sticker Shop!: https://brokencyclemedia.com/sticker-shop  *SWW S23 Theme Song & Artwork:  The S24 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com  IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me  IG: instagram.com/lookieboo *Sources  Dungan et al v. the Academy at Ivy Ridge et al 7:2006CV00908 | US District Court for the Northern District of New York | Justia, dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nyndce/7:2006cv00908/64507 Kubler, Katherine, creator and director. The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping. Netflix, 2024 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31183637/  Melee Keeps Spotlight on Hard Life at Academy (Published 2005), www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/nyregion/melee-keeps-spotlight-on-hard-life-at-academy.html Rutherford, Diane. “Nys Saw Serious Problems at Ivy Ridge in 2006, Says Letter Obtained by 7 News.” Https://Www.Wwnytv.Com, 12 Mar. 2024, www.wwnytv.com/2024/03/12/nys-saw-serious-problems-ivy-ridge-2006-says-letter-obtained-by-7-news/

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics. Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children, which may be triggering for some listeners. As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season. Something was wrong and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

Today we have the honor of hearing from survivor Julie. She attended Academy at Ivy Ridge from 2005 to 2006 between the ages of 13 and 13. By 2006, allegations against Ivy Ridge involving racketeering, diploma fraud, breach of contract, and abuse began surfacing. Then, December of 2006, Ivy Ridge was told by the New York State Education Department that it was denied diploma authorization, flagging health and safety deficiencies alongside academic concerns. However, knowledge of these issues were not wide-storesation. spread at the time, and enrollment continued until 2009 when Academy at Ivy Ridge finally shut down. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is something was wrong. Hi, my name is Julie. I grew up in New York

with immigrant parents from Uzbekistan, technically Russia back then. I came to America when I I was three months old, and my sister was five. Coming into a new country, as my parents did, they faced a lot of difficulties in knowing how to start over in a new place with no money, no sense of speaking the language here, and having two young children. My dad was a very loving, warm-hearted person. He was very much hands-on, played with us, hugs, kisses. but he worked three jobs because they truly came with nothing.

So their focus was, we need to make money for our family. And today my dad actually looks back on that and has said that he regrets having to work so much because he feels like he missed out a lot on our childhood. My mom was more of the leader in the house. So she was the one who was more the disciplinarian, managing the finances, managing our schedules. but she also had to work a lot.

Her personality was very different from my dad's. Not that she wasn't a loving mom, but the way she showed love was hugs and kisses. It was more so trying to have some kind of structure in our lives and build up our family to where we can be comfortable here. It was definitely difficult for them because they didn't know how to balance work life and home life. For them, it was work, work, work, we need to make money,

we need to have a stable household here. we'll come home and our children will figure it out. My sister and I were sort of raised by our grandparents for a while. And then babysitters, my sister, of course, being five years older, started going to school before me. We grew up in Brooklyn, and it wasn't really the best environment. The schools in Brooklyn were, not that they were bad schools, but there was not a whole lot of measures taken that should have been taken.

My sister was heavily bullied in school, and nobody ever. that. She was left to her own devices to deal with it, and so she got in with the wrong crowd. As a young child, I was seeing her friends partaking in smoking weed. She was staying out late. She was the cool older sister. By the time I got to 12 years old, and I started making new friends in my school. I gravitated a lot toward people who were similar to my sister's friends. On top of that, my sister's older friends knew me. So they would see me out in public and they would make me feel cool.

Like, oh, hey, Julie, or if you need anything, I have your back. As a young child, look at all these older, cool kids that are saying they're going to protect you. I want friends like that. When I was 12, I had some self-harm tendencies. Another student went to the counselor and told them, hey, I noticed these marks on Julie's arms. So the school had brought me in and my parents, being immigrants, not wanting to get in trouble or deal with anything bigger than they can understand, told me, well, I'll tell them it was an accident.

So that's what I did, even though it was pretty clear to everybody that it wasn't, and they let it go. And it was never talked about again. If I was skipping school and I will be honest and transparent in saying that I was a teenager that was rebelling. By the time I turned 13, I wanted to skip school and, I wasn't doing my homework. I was going out and staying out late with my friends. I was a teenager that needed some type of structure and guidance.

But nobody was letting my parents know I wasn't showing up to school. I would leave my classes and go to other classrooms, and nobody would really say anything. Or they would send you to the dean's office, and the dean would have me talk to him. There was no interventions of getting us to do what we're supposed to do. after school you just left. There's no buses, there's no activities,

there's nothing that's keeping us busy and grounded. It's just you go to school and you go home. And if you're not in school, eventually it will accumulate and they'll probably send somebody to your house. That's the kind of school system that I grew up with. The classes were fine, the teachers were fine. I was still getting an education when I was there, but the bigger issues that I was having were never being addressed.

My sister had told me quite a few times that if I started smoking pot or doing the thing she was doing, she would be upset with me. She tried really hard to make me not steer into the same path. But the first time I ever wanted to try smoking pot, my friends had come to me and said, we don't know how to do this, but we have this. I was 13 at that point. And my first thought was, if I go to my sister, we can do it together. And so that's what we did. My parents were at work, and I asked my sister, hey, can you show us how to use this?

She was stunned, but she was like, okay, sure, but I'm going to have some too. And that's where it all headed downhill because my sister's older now and we can be best friends and do this together. Even though she was doing a lot scarier things at that point, this was my entry into her world. that's what it was until adulthood until my sister unfortunately passed away a few years ago. Our relationship was very much this best friend partying type of relationship. In the area that we were living in, it was very typical that most kids were rebelling around that time. I think my sister was a little bit more extreme.

I think that's just being a teenager, though, at least in my friend group, nobody was doing anything that was necessarily abnormal. Did you know in advance that you were going to be placed at Ivy Ridge? I have a family friend who went away. We didn't know what happened to him. One day we saw him. The next day, he had disappeared off the face of the earth. My parents were very close friends with his parents.

They had spoken to them about what happened, where's your son? And they told my parents, well, we sent him to this place, and that's where my parents found out about Ivy Ridge. They got brochures. They looked into it. They talked to a few recruiters from the program. And they brought it to my attention. That's not typical for a lot of the survivors from Ivy Ridge or programs in general. A lot of times parents knew that their kids would be resistant to going so they wouldn't tell them. My parents presented it to me in the way that it was presented to them in a way that was this beautiful solution to all their problems. This is where you're friend is and he loves it. It's helping him so much, not that they even knew, but they showed me the brochure, which looked stunning, it had beautiful grounds, it had kids on horses, and it very much looked like this college campus, beautiful building, beautiful greenery. And they said, this program, it provides a lot of structure, but you'll finish school in time because I was in

danger of failing. So that was the biggest thing that my parents were concerned about. They said this will help you catch up with your school and look at all these programs they offer, but it sounded really nice. I was like, I have my friend there, I'll make new friends. It sounded like a break from the real world. They assured me it's only for one year. Once that year is up, we will come pick you up. No questions asked. I thought it sounded awesome.

The day came, it was April 12th. My parents drove me. I slept in the car the whole time. It was an eight-hour drive. And once we got there, the building looked really nice from the outside. There was the main building, and then there was dorms behind it. Well maintained for sure. Once we walked in, that's where things got weird. There were two locked doors where they had to have a key card to open it. And then they very quickly wanted to rush us into the director's room. But as we're walking in, I looked over to my side and I see a bunch of girls in uniforms. It was weird because you would expect that somebody would look at you,

smile, but this wasn't that. They were standing in very straight military style lines and not one person turned their head to look at the new girl that just walked through the door. That was the first sign of, I'm a little uncomfortable. My parents were very focused on the intake. A few years back, I had brought that up to them. Like, did you notice that something was wrong or did you really believe that this program was the best thing ever. And my mom had stuck to her guns for a very long time of, no, the program was everything that we needed. It was what saved your life. My dad, though, he was honest. And he said, no, I knew when I walked in and saw that, that this wasn't the place that we were told it was. And it surprised me because I hadn't heard that for my parents,

ever. He, to this day, apologizes for it. But he said, at the time, we thought that this was our best shot. And I think part of being immigrant parents played into that because my parents were raised very differently where they came from. It was normal for them when they were growing up to be smacked by their teacher. Once they got into the older grades, they were working in fields, collecting cotton. Their experience, it was very different.

So the American school system was already a huge change for them. My parents signed some papers and they gave me a hug and they said goodbye. As soon as they left, I was taken by one of the other staff members. She started walking me down the hall, wasn't really giving me much information about what to expect and told me, okay, we need to do a strip search. It was just one woman. I had my period. I was 13, so I had just started getting it.

And I was still very new to this. So I told her that. I can't really take off all my clothes because I'm bleeding. She said, you still have to. I was very uncomfortable, very scared. I've never had to get naked in front of anybody, including my parents. There was no sitting down making me comfortable first. This is what you have to do right now.

It was not just taking off my clothes. I had to lift up my breasts. I had to jump up and down. I had to bend down and cough. I don't remember that anybody text me or anything like that. They made me do all of it. Once my clothes were off, they took them. They took my jewelry that I had on, which I don't think my parents even knew that I couldn't wear it because they would have taken it with them.

So I was a little upset about that because they were supposed to return it and they never did. In the beginning, we have sweatsuits, but then eventually they give you your uniform. They gave me a gray sweatsuit. You said, put this on. Now we're going to the bathroom. You need to wash all your makeup off. When you're starting out in the program until you get to level four,

you can't wear makeup and you can't have your hair down. Your hair always has to be in a braid. I washed my face. I put my hair in my braids, and that's when they brought me over to who would be considered my quote-unquote family while I was there. You spend all your time with one family.

There were multiple families. They're all names, these inspirational type names, like serenity, faith, grace. They put me in grace before, switching over to integrity family after. But the girls that I was with were the same girls always. Once in a while, they would switch if they had too many kids and they needed to make a new family. Sometimes they would split families. Sometimes if they saw that girls were getting too close or comfortable, they would move us

around. But for the most part, once you're in a family, that's your family. We had a dorm mom and that person would switch off. I don't even remember how often, but it was a different person that rotated throughout the days. I was assigned a Hope Buddy. Your Hope Buddy is the person in your family that for the next three days, we'll explain to you the expectations and rules. Only for those three days, are you allowed to speak.

Once those three days are up, you cannot speak to anybody. It was to the extreme where even if somebody sneezed and you said, bless you, depending on who was in charge that day, you can get in trouble for that. Your hope buddy is a student that was not considered an upper level. She's still under level four and still within the family. Once you get to level four, you drift away from the family and get more responsibility, I guess, and freedom in some way. But when you're level three, you're still confined to one family and the same rules. My hope, buddy, she was awesome.

I love her. She started laying out all the rules. We're not allowed to talk. I didn't take it seriously at first because it was so out of the realm of normality. So she was like, no, we can't talk without permission. You have to stay in line at all times. Sometimes they'll call arm's track, so you have to make sure that you're within arm's length of the person in front of you.

We go to lunch, and I was not at that time told that you had to eat everything on your plate. there were some vegetables that I kind of just left there. So she turned and she was like, no, you have to eat everything. And I was like, but I don't like this. And she's like, it doesn't matter. You have to eat everything. So I tried to hide it under the tray. And another person in my family had stood up and she went to the staff member.

She's like, somebody needs to tell her that she needs to finish all her food. I quickly realized that just because you have people in your family doesn't mean everyone's going to have your back. It was very cutthroat. What was expected is that you are looking out for yourself. You have to have your eyes closed. I think it was by 9 o'clock at night. For the first week, every new person was put on suicide watch. So I had to sleep in the hallway.

And I wasn't given real shoes. I had rubber footflops that I had to wear because they needed to make it harder for you to run. I became very quickly distrustful. of the program because I'm hearing all these crazy rules and I'm getting very overwhelmed and I'm like, how am I going to live here for a year? I remember the first day, all of this is hitting me really fast and I started hysterically crying, having a panic attack. And one of the staff members took me out of the family, pulled me behind her desk. And she started off really calm and she was like,

why are you crying? I was like, because I can't do this. I want to go home. I want my parents. And she was like, that's not going to happen. You're stuck here. And I was like, no, I'm going to go home. They said I'm only here for a year, but they're going to bring me home. This woman was a very large, extremely intimidating, scary woman. I was very, very small at the time. I was maybe 100 pounds and five foot tall.

She hovered over me and screamed to my face, nobody's coming to get you. I still had it in the back in my head. No, no, my parents are not going to let me stay here. That's not going to happen. Those first three days, I saw many girls being carried out by large men, being tackled to the ground for being disrespectful, quote unquote, not even physically trying to run, just saying something they did it like and being restrained. I was already seeing that all around me. So I fully believed if I didn't listen to them, I would be in a lot worse of a situation that I was in already. By the third day, there is no more leniency.

there's no more understanding. You are now fully in the program and you need to get with it, whether you like it or not. Reality checks in very quickly. It's all based on a point system. When you're starting out, you don't have any points. And if you don't have points,

you are thrown into either worksheets where you have to write pages from the rulebook over and over for hours, or you're thrown into an isolation room, which they're called intervention. and you are just alone. There's no windows, there's no furniture, there's nothing. There's nobody coming to visit you.

You are just there. As a 13-year-old, even though I was rebellious in the things I was doing, my mentality was still very much a kid. And I was so scared for me that was terrifying that if I just said, no, or tried to advocate for myself, that was the punishment. My goal at that point was to just put my head down. and be quiet, try to get through it and go home. Unfortunately, that didn't work because the program doesn't allow you to just put your head down and be quiet.

You have to be heard. You have to be seen. And the only ways to do that is by getting other people in trouble. It was on us as the kids to hold each other, quote unquote, accountable for the smallest things. sometimes you looked out of line for a second and it was expected that we would tell the adult. Then it was, you're not calling out your peers enough. I felt horrible doing that to people,

especially these people who I'm living with every day. There were some girls that I was terrified of because they were so, I don't want to say mean because we were all going through the same thing, but they were so programmed at that point that they had to do this and they took it to the next level, where it was kids abusing kids, essentially, because it was so cutthroat.

So there were girls I was really afraid to call out, because if I called them out for something, I knew I would get it 10 times worse back. And then there were other girls that were just so awesome and sweet, and I couldn't imagine having to get them in trouble. But we had to do that. There were moments that we were able to talk to each other. We had gym class so we could talk not exactly freely, but there were small moments where we were able to speak to each other.

And so that's how you make some kind of bond with these people. At some point, we had to make sure like, hey, you have enough points to cover this. Yes, okay. So it was a safe person to call out and make it look like you're not in a click, but in a way that you're not upsetting anyone. And I think that's where a lot of my people pleasing tendencies came from after the program, because I was so afraid to hurt somebody. The girls who were the most vocal, the most authoritative towards the other girls,

those were the ones that staff idolized, and they would lift them up to be these perfect examples. And those were the ones that would soar in levels. Some people don't have that in them. I don't have that in me. It screwed me up so hard because I felt so bad that I had to hurt somebody to get somewhere.

I wanted less attention. And I still do that to this day. I still will walk around in spaces and make myself physically smaller. And it's because I felt like the girls who were getting attention were more likely to get physically hurt or scrutinized in some way.

That was the biggest mental challenge, not having anybody because we're all in the same boat. But we are so encouraged to be against each other that there's nobody who is truly in your corner that you can trust. I had it in the back of my head. I'm only here for a year. So I don't have to be so cutthroat.

I can maybe skirt by until about a month in when they had my parents write me a letter saying, I know we told you you're only there for a year, but actually you're going to be there until graduation. So you need to work your program. Is this the first you talked to them? In the beginning, we were allowed to. to send a letter once a week and get a letter twice a week. The first couple of letters were,

like, we miss you, we hope you're doing well, we love you. One of the first letters I was allowed to send home had to be a confession letter to my parents. And everybody had to do this their first week there. Essentially, it was confessing to all of the bad things that you did at home, taking accountability for it and stating how you were going to be better. So I had written a confession letter. They read it. They gave it back to me. And they said, you clearly didn't write everything that you've done. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, I was honest. I wrote that I smoked pot, that I was drinking alcohol.

I wrote that I was cutting school. I put everything in there. And they were like, no, you didn't. This isn't honest. We can't send it. You need to add more. But I don't know what to write. So I started just adding some extra details.

The second time, they were like, no, you're still not being honest. They started putting stuff in my head to, like, you must have done other drugs. I'm like, no, I really didn't. Eventually, the third draft was me writing that I did pills and that I had lost my virginity, both of which were not true. But that was the only way that they finally sent that letter home and were satisfied with it. So my parents were getting this confession letter, and it looks like the worst thing they could have possibly imagined.

And I can't tell them that half of it was over-exaggerated or just completely not real. The communication was not even just monitored, but it was so manipulated. Looking back and finding all of those documents made it so crazy to see because they did give our parents some letters where we were saying exactly what was happening. I'm seeing kids getting beaten up. I'm not being fed in this room today. And they would spin it in this way to work in their benefit. let's say in that moment I'm making progress. My parents just had a phone call and they heard good things.

We had a family rep who was the communications person between us and our parents. And now I write this letter stating that I'm miserable. They would use that letter to show my parents, even though she's making progress, we warned you that your child's going to manipulate you. And if she's still doing that, she's not taking this seriously. she's clearly not ready to come home yet. They had prepped our parents for this, especially parents who are so vulnerable

and so desperate to get their kids help. They're going to believe that these are professionals. There must be oversight because they're watching all these kids. It has to be that my kid is lying to come home. I actually have the email. The program wrote, you need to take your daughter's program seriously because she could end up.

dead, she could end up like your older daughter who's doing so much worse. And by that point, my sister was 18, so they couldn't send her anywhere. They were using that as their manipulation tactic to make my parents feel like things are so much worse than we thought. She has to stay there and graduate. What I didn't know was that my parents had always intended on pulling me after a year. But the program told them, your children can't know that because then they won't take their program seriously and nothing will change. So you have to tell her that she's staying until graduation. That felt like the ultimate betrayal. So I'm a little 13-year-old kid stuck in this place. Graduation can take up to four years for some people. It's either you graduate or you leave

when you're 18 if you want to. So I don't have a choice. Now I have to follow every rule because I'm stuck here otherwise. Were you seeing a therapist as part of your enrollment at the school? No. I didn't have a therapist at all. There was a therapist who came sometimes to talk to some of the kids, but I don't believe I ever once spoke with that person. When did you do your first seminar and did your parents participate in them?

We had separate seminars, so parents had their own and we had our own. seminars are a little bit foggy because that was a very intense experience. The first seminar for me was the orientation seminar. I believe I was about two or three months into the program by that time. I don't remember a whole lot about orientation because that one was pretty easy to get through. It was a very simplified version of the bigger seminars where they had you share some things. They had you do homework and introduce the concept of what seminars are. The second one I had was discovery, and that one was way more intense.

It was almost culty in some ways. I remember there was an activity where we had to go in a circle, and the scenario was that we were on a lifeboat. The boat was sinking, and we can save three people. So you had to go around in this circle with everybody in the seminar, look them in the eye, and say, you live or you die. the moral of it was like nobody saved themselves. It was just supposed to be this thing that we realized on our own.

Like, oh, look, you're so quick to save other people and kill other people, but you don't care enough about yourself to save yourself. So this is why you need more help. We had sessions where we had to talk about our traumas. At 13, I didn't really feel like I had traumas, but if you didn't break down crying, they would actually make you leave the seminar. I had to wait a few weeks to go to another one because once you're out, you're out. They want you to dig really, really deep and find something that's traumatic to share,

because if you're there, you must be super broken. At least that's how they make you feel in the seminars. Then when we get another chance to pass the seminars to get to higher levels, that encourages us to embellish a little bit. There were so many people making stuff up. And then there were other people who genuinely had trauma in their lives, were making stuff up and would be attacked for that too. There was one where they had given us rolled up towels,

and we had to scream at the bad things that happened to us. Somebody had been raped as a child. They would have to scream that out while slamming this rolled up towel on the ground to get it all out. For that person, a facilitator whispered in her ear, but it was your fault that that happened. So to kind of get her more angry. It was so awful.

because so many kids were told that their trauma was their fault, I have no idea what I shared, because I feel like all of that was so blocked out in my memory. I don't know what I even had at the time to be angry at 13 years old. I must have made it up, but I definitely remember hitting that towel on the ground as hard as I could because they would scream at you. You have to hit harder, you have to scream louder.

And I definitely remember people whispering in my ear. trying to make it worse. And I think that was their goal in the seminars was to wear us out physically and mentally so hard that whatever they told us, we would believe it. Because at that point, your brains are so open to suggestion. And you're sleep deprived, physically exhausted. That was another thing that we would have to stay up super late

to do these homeworks that they would give us. They were personal writing assignments. And then they would wake us up extremely, extremely early for the next day of the seminar. It wasn't just a one-day seminar. It was about three days long. And then they can go into molding you believing whatever they say. I don't think my parents had an orientation. Parents went directly to discovery. And that was to mold their brains into believing that the program was the only hope for their children. I had talked to my dad about it recently after the program documentary because I didn't know actually what they did at the parent seminars.

and he told me that they would talk about how the program affected their lives, what their kids were like, and when my parents would try to say that my daughter's there for a year, they got attacked for that. Other parents were yelling at them, saying, how could you only keep her there for a year? Your daughter has to graduate. She's going to die if she doesn't graduate.

She's going to destroy her life. My family friend, he was on the boy's side. I was on the girl's side. so we were not together like my parents had said we would be and we were not even allowed to look at each other. He was very rebellious on his side and he got physically abused almost his entire time there, unfortunately, and there's documentation of that as well.

But he ended up being in the seminars with me and those were the only times that we were able to actually see each other and communicate with each other. One of the staff members at a seminar found out that we knew each other from home And they decided to use that to their advantage. So they had called me up to the front and asked me, how do you know each other?

I said, oh, we're family friends. He was essentially steering me into saying that my friend was a bad influence on me at home. Like, oh, what did you do when you were together? We drank alcohol. We partied at his house. Was it your idea or was it his idea? They were very much trying to guide me into putting him, in the spotlight because he wasn't working his program.

I didn't know that at the time. I just thought they're putting me on the spot. They're asking me questions. I have to answer them. Now we joke about it that they had steered me into saying that he had encouraged me to do all these terrible things when realistically it really wasn't like that.

But because I was there with him, he thankfully did get through the seminar with me and we were able to do the other ones together as well. For me, that was truly a saving grace. Having somebody that you know from home, our bond is forever cemented. We were already close towards beforehand, but to go through something like that, even if you can't talk to them, it was a reality check for us. We're here right now, but we know home exists because we see each other.

Sometimes, you know, we'd pass each other in the halls and we couldn't really look at each other. But anytime I would hear his voice or just see him in passing in the hallway, it was a reminder that I'm not stuck here forever. At some point, we will be able to go back home. It was huge for us because they really tried to shut us out from the outside world. These are little things that you hold on to

when you go through something like that because you need something to bring you back to reality. The big dipper in the sky, that was what I would look to every single night when we walked to our dorms because that's one of the constellations you could see anywhere in the world. I ended up having a tattoo of it.

It's the one thing, the one connection I have to the program and a tattoo, because that was another source of hope. The female director had a high level of power. All the girls were terrified of her. There was no professionalism about her. She would walk around like she owns the place and that she could stomp you out like a bug if she wanted to. And I know this was referenced in the documentary.

She had her special girls that were given special treatment. She would always go to them and give them hugs, but then she would purposely one day not give one of those special girls a hug or purposely be colder. for no reason, but it would make that one girl wonder what she did wrong. You wanted to be in her good graces because that means you get extra privileges. It's sickening, especially knowing that there was sexual abuse happening. I did not know that there was sexual abuse happening while I was there.

The first time I had to interact with her was when I was trying to level up to level three, and she had to sign off on it, so I had to go to her office and I was shaking. She had been sitting on her desk, legs spread out wide. She made sure to be sitting in a position where she would look down on me. She wouldn't even look me in the face. She asked me some questions about why I thought I deserved to move up in levels. I had answered her questions, and then she told me no and kicked me out of her office. I had tried at least four times before they finally approved me to get to level three after nine months.

you're following the rules, you're not getting in trouble, you have the points, the people in your family are voting, saying that you can be voted up to this next level, but admin is telling you, no, you're not good enough, you're not doing enough. And then you see these other girls, and they did it, why can't I? That was hugely impactful for my mental health, because I felt like I did everything they asked me to do, and it's still not enough. The point behind that for them wasn't to motivate me. it was to show my parents who were telling them,

we're going to get her after a year, that they can't get me after that year. They have to keep me there longer. Because look, she can't even move up in levels. She's not ready to go home. It was to the point where my parents had been emailing back and forth, and they told them, we're moving. They moved from New York to New Jersey

while I was in the program to make sure I was going to a better environment. And they told them, we can't afford $50,000 for another year and our mortgage payment. And the program was telling them that money shouldn't be an issue when you're trying to save your child's life, real gilting them. What really pissed me off was Tammy's email on Thursday, February 9, 2006, 1.15 p.m. Talking about a response to you getting a red flag, which I'm gathering as like a punishment. And they're talking about trying to convince your parents to not tell you that you get to go and all this kind of stuff. in many of these emails.

As she says, your mom is definitely the typical Russian family, just like the blank, another family name. Which was my family friend from home? Quote, they do as they want and you cannot talk sense to them. So just blatant racism in this fucking work email that is addressed to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine people. So it shows you the kind of racist environment. they were working within if this is being casually thrown in a work email.

They had no shame talking about that. If they couldn't have a compliant parent, that was the worst thing. That's truly why I was given so much of a hard time in moving up in levels. And they were giving me a hard time about every tiny little thing I did that other people were getting away with because they were desperate to make my parents change their mind. I gained about 50 pounds The one year I was there They would give us very carb heavy food That was very fattening

We had to eat all the food That was hard for me I had a normal relationship with food before that And here I felt like I had to stuff myself And we also had limited time on top of it So you were almost speed eating And trying to get it all down And if you didn't finish it

You would get in trouble for not finishing your food Toward the end of my stay They started implementing a 50 or 100% rule. You can choose to get half portions of your food, but they made the half portions really small. After being there for months and months and months and being forced to eat 100% of your food, now that's your new appetite. Children just need such different things when it comes to nutrition. It's almost symbolic of what they were trying to do in general.

They were trying to, quote, treat all of these children by the siblings. same methods when you were individual human beings? 100%. My body went through such a level of stress that I had gone there, having gotten my period. That was probably the second time I ever had it to not having my period at all until about 11 months in. I had never had sex. They tried to tell my parents I was pregnant because I wasn't getting my period.

It was because of all the stress they put on my body that my body wasn't used to. everything was shutting down. I was about 10 months in. We had one seminar where I could see my parents in person. We were warned. You tried to manipulate your parents. You will not get through the seminar and we will drop you back to level one.

Zero points. And you will start from the beginning. You better believe we all put on the show of our lives. I had my uniform on and for the seminar we had to change. My parents were in the bathroom with me and I was changing out into new clothes and I had bright red stretch marks all over my legs. And my mom gasped so loud.

I had already gotten used to my body changing so much. But this was the first time she saw me in 10 months. And when I left, I was 100 pounds. And now I'm 150 pounds. She was like, how did that happen? And I'm like, I don't know. It just happened. There had to be a moment in her mind

that she had to have thought, this isn't okay. But we were so deep into it. she was seeing that I was making improvement behaviorally and academically that it's easy to ignore those little signs or even the big signs. Had it not been for my parents pulling me out,

I would have probably been there until I was 18 because they would have never let me move up. They told me up until the day I was pulled out of there that I wasn't going home. My parents felt like, okay, she caught up in school. I got the good grades that I needed to get. Come to find out afterwards, they weren't even accredited. So it didn't really matter.

But also, they could not afford another 50 grand. It's a lot of money. So on the one year mark, they pulled me out in the afternoon. I was taken into an office and said, okay, take your stuff, you're going home. My parents did not come there. It was a pretty long drive. So I was just put on a bus. I was giving a flip phone.

I don't remember what else they gave me. I'm still in my school uniform. It was really weird because I felt like I was finally free of that place. But now I'm all alone. I'm surrounded by strangers who are talking to each other freely. And I haven't been around a situation where people could talk freely in so long that I was afraid to speak. So I sat next to a window and I just looked out the window the whole time. Extremely tense and uncomfortable because I didn't know what to do.

It was so surreal. It was about a six-hour drive. My dad met me at the bus station. My parents bought a new house in New Jersey. So I came out of the program straight into a brand new town and a brand new house. So there was no immediate sense of normalcy. I couldn't initially talk to my friends from before. I had one friend that my parents liked a lot,

and they actually kept in touch with him while I was away. so I was able to talk to him. Other than that, everything was new. My sister had moved out at that time, too. It was just my parents. They brought me into my new bedroom, which looked like a little Barbie room because they still looked at me like a little kid.

So it was like pink walls and these light wood furniture. But I didn't care. I was like, I get my own room now. This is amazing. I took a shower for two hours. And then I turned on the TV and heard music for the first time in a year. And it was just the coolest experience of my life.

Because I felt like all these normal things that people were doing every day. To me, it was like the first time I ever got to do them. What was it like for you emotionally with your parents, reentering that relationship? And what were the conversations like that you're having when you're talking about your time in the program? I didn't want to talk about it. When I first came out, I did not want to say one word about it to my parents. I was very afraid that I would be set back if I did anything wrong. The first couple months, I was on my best behavior because the program did have this clause that if your child comes home, you can send them back for three months for free.

My parents had told me that, and I knew there was a very real chance if I messed up or I said something that they didn't like that I could be sent back. My mom enrolled me into school and the first day of school, I remember I didn't know how to act. basic things like if I need to go to the bathroom what should I do if I need a piece of paper like I didn't have any school supplies a year doesn't seem like that long of a time but when you're so young it really is not shaped the way that I acted when I came out I was afraid to do anything wrong for at least the first two months I felt like I had to ask permission to do anything high school after the program it was night and day there were no cliques there were no hierarchies I came into the class, I was brand new, but there was a lot of attention on me that I couldn't handle. It was very overwhelming. So I brought my teacher to the side and I explained like, hey, I just came from this boarding school. It was really strict. The teacher was like, do you mind sharing that with the rest of the class? Because that sounds crazy. So the teacher had me share with the class where I had just come from. And that was surprisingly a nice introduction. I don't think I got into everything because I didn't know I went through a trauma.

To me, it was I came out of a really strict school and look at the crazy things that they did. I thought this was all normal, just like my parents did. And then everybody wanted to talk to me and get to know me because it's the new girl. And she has a cool story to tell. The reactions were sometimes shock, disbelief. A lot of times people just wanted to ask questions and no more because it sounded like a movie. Like it was unreal in a lot of ways. But nobody really thought about it as this is a really bad thing that happened. Maybe you should report it.

Maybe you should talk to a therapist about it. It was taken as like a shocking thriller book. But with my parents, we didn't talk about it at all, not for many years. There was always something in the back of my mind that knew what I went through was traumatizing, but not enough that I could express it verbally. I had a box of letters and the journal that I had kept when I was there, my school uniform, just like random stuff. About six months after I was home, I ended up burning all of it.

I got really angry just knowing it was in my room, and I burned everything. I wish I didn't now as an adult knowing when I know now, but back then I needed to do it. Then I started drinking heavily. And I hit it for my parents. Now I was a little bit older. This was ninth grade. I was 15 about.

We were in a new school, a new town, different people, different friends, different rules. I was going to school consistently. So they saw that my grades were good. But I realized that I had extreme social anxiety. And any time I was around especially boys, because I just spent a year being told I couldn't even look at the boys. I felt extremely uncomfortable. and anxious. I didn't know what anxiety was, but I knew I didn't feel normal. And drinking made me feel like I could talk to people. So it got to the point where I would fill a water bottle with alcohol

before school or pour some bailies in my coffee and bring it to school. I didn't attribute it to the program, though. That was one of the things that took me a long time to connect, that I was acting like this and feeling like this because of what I went through at Ivy Ridge. Initially, I just thought that this was my personality. I don't know why, because I never felt like that prior to the program, but after I just felt like, oh, maybe I'm just an awkward person. They had made you so conscious of every single word you uttered. Yes.

It was hard to get out of that mentality. I was so hyper-focused on how I looked to others and how I sounded to others that I couldn't be a normal kid. anymore. It was hard, too, because my family friend had gone out of the program. He struggled a lot more when he came out. There is a document that details how he was sat on by three large staff members, and they physically assaulted him to the point that his eyes were bloodshot. He had scratches and bruises all over his body. He was so used to being regularly abused. that he came out and his mental health was in a very bad state.

So it was hard for me to see him struggling like that. We really didn't talk a lot about Ivy Ridge. We tried to forget that part of our lives. And then as we got older, he was feeling like the program saved his life because that's what we were told that we had to believe. Even though we had gotten into all this trouble after, I had gotten arrested for possession of marijuana. When I was 16, I was going out and drinking.

My parents at some point knew. They still were convinced that the program saved us. He internalized that. He felt that if he went through everything he went through, it must have saved him. We got into a lot of heavy conversations about how it doesn't matter, that you didn't follow their rules. You didn't deserve to be abused.

It was hard for him to finally get to the point of seeing it that way. Because if we justify it, it's a lot easier to live with that. I was only 13 at Ivy Ridge. I came out at 15. I went through way worse rebellious phases because my mental health was plummeting and nobody wanted to hear it. And then I grew out of it. At some point it was just, I don't want to live like this anymore. I don't want to drink.

I don't want to smoke. I don't want to party. I'm going to remove myself from these spaces. Be an adult. I want to be a teacher. And that's what I did. I went to school and I became a teacher. My sister had a daughter.

I wanted to be there for my niece. Then my sister passed away and I adopted my niece. So for me, life completely changed. I think had I not gone to the program, I may have actually gotten a lot more well-rounded, a lot sooner, because my mental health wouldn't have been what it was. I still have contact with a lot of the people that I knew back then who were in very similar, if not worse,

Mentalities, as I was, looking at these people now, there are people who have fallen into their addictions who are not with us anymore, who are struggling. But the vast majority of people I knew back then are very successful today. They have children. They have beautiful families. They are such well-rounded adults. For my family, it was very difficult for them to admit that the program was a negative place because we lost my sister and we lost my cousin to addiction. They see me as an adult now. I have a family and I'm doing well and I have a career.

And it's hard for them sometimes to not connect that to the program and say, well, look, you went there and now you have this great life. But your sister and your cousin didn't go and they're not here forgetting all of the negative that came after I left the program. Did you participate in the documentary, the program? I did not. I know that Catherine was working on it. for like 10 years. This was her baby. And I had gotten a message about it years before it ever came out.

Asking if I wanted to participate, I think everybody was given an opportunity at some point, but it was long before I had gotten my files back. I was still not in a place of fully understanding what I went through. At the time, I wasn't ready to be a part of it. But I was really happy that somebody was doing something, at least talking about it, because at that time, nobody knew anything about these programs. This was not a conversation. So the fact that somebody wanted to make a documentary,

even if it was just a personal project, I thought it was super cool, and I was excited to see what came out of it. Years later, when they said it was a Netflix documentary, it was mind-blowing because this was truly the first time that we felt people wanted to know what was happening and people were listening. When the documentary came out,

People I knew in my own life had no idea that I went to Ivy Ridge. And when they found out that I went to the place that they talked about in the program, the conversations that were brought out of that were incredible. I imagine it can bring on a lot of emotions at once. It was hard because there's definitely a lot of things that we block out. With trauma that our brains purposely try to protect us from remembering, and the documentary brought out a lot of those memories, the people who were involved in it, I was there with them.

So I knew them personally. And hearing their stories reminded me of the times that I was there and even saw some of the things that were happening. It was jarring initially because there were staff members that were shown in that documentary, who I had very bad experiences with. And it brought out those experiences that I hadn't thought about in 20 years.

Thankfully, I had a good group of support with me and my personal life to watch it with. but also in our survivor community, we have become really, really close in our bonds. I was really quiet for a few hours after. There were too many things that I hadn't thought about in too long. Like a lot of the seminar stuff was blocked out for me and seeing them recreate some of it

was re-traumatizing in some ways. But then I watched it a second time. I've only ever watched it twice. And I felt a sense of calm. I was able to open up new discussions with my mom, who until this point was still in extreme denial and thinking that the program did something amazing for me. After she watched the documentary, she actually had sent me a very long text. She said that she knew there was structure. She knew that it was strict, but she didn't know it was to that extent.

And I think hearing it from so many other people, not just from the documentary, but online too, it finally hit her. The things I have said throughout the years as an adult were true. And she was for the first time able to apologize and see it differently. And that was insanely healing for me because I never thought I would get that for my mom. She's become so much softer, especially with her grandchildren, she's very loving. And she listens a little bit better now. If I'm telling her something, she's not so quick to be like, no, no, no, that's not true.

Or you're wrong. There's always going to be things. But I feel like our relationship right now is in the best place that it's been ever. When I found all my documents, my family rep, I actually reached out to her. I wanted to see what she would say. I had messaged her on Facebook, and I said, I know it's been a very long time, but I just wanted to know from your perspective if you knew what the place was and how they treated us. We've all seen the documents of how family reps were made to manipulate parents

into keeping their kids in there as long as possible. So I was just feeling curious about hearing things from your side. I feel like she lied completely about her involvement and tried to downplay everything. She said, oh, I just heard that there were some former students that have been going into the building and looking at old files, including employee files with our private info on it, which I didn't see any of the staff files,

but I did see when I went in there, copies of birth certificates, social security cards, bank account information of students and families all over. They had just dumped it. So then she said they had proof the family reps were paid 10 grand if they kept a kid there past 18 with two question marks. There was actual documentation that they got stipends for keeping us there longer. She goes, as far as my side, I don't really have a side of the story.

I resigned from there because of something I witnessed before they closed. I reported what I saw to the appropriate chain of command and left soon after I, I filed the complaint. I don't know who you're sharing this with, but I would appreciate any of my private info not being shared or associated with Ivy Ridge. Of course, she didn't want her name associated with anything. And then I said, I haven't yet been in the building, but I know my personal files are in there and pretty much everyone who's ever associated with that place. Eventually, I would like to get those back to. She responded, if you ever go there, let me know. I'll go with you providing we don't get arrested for trespassing on private property. I'd like to get rid of my own files

as well as some of the people I worked with that I still keep in touch with. I honestly had no direct knowledge about any backdoor stuff that went on. I had heard things, and the only time I saw something was when I resigned afterwards. I've heard terrible stories from past students

that were there before I worked there, but then I've also heard from other people who may not have liked how it was structured, but that they didn't suffer any type of trauma or anything that stayed with them. So I honestly don't know what went on there. I was so annoyed with the way she was responding and trying to so blatantly remove accountability from herself.

Safe to say, I did go to the building to get my files. I did not let her know because I felt like that was a complete ploy. This woman still lives nearby. She could have gone and gotten her files if she wanted them. In the early stages, it was just like one or two former students going in, getting their files and leaving. then it became a big operation of everybody deserves to have their files back,

we're going to get it all out. And they did. All the staff members that were involved, there was never a consequence for them. Some of them are still working with children. Some of them are working in psychiatric centers, and I think that's terrifying because they were some of the worst offenders.

And now we need a conversation about the fact that this is still happening to children right now. Because at this point, it's not about us. Unfortunately, the laws don't work in our friends, favor. There are statutes of limitations for child abuse, but maybe there's something we can do for the kids that are still in programs like this. I do hope this brings out some awareness and parents especially take a lot of time in researching who they're leaving their kids with. And if their kids need help, because there's a lot of kids out there who are struggling and they need help,

there are ways to find that for them. There are better options out there. So I really hope that helps parents find better ways to help their kids that won't result in a bunch of traumatized humans. I could not agree more. I can't thank you enough for being willing to speak with me and share all of this so openly and with so much thoughtfulness. I know it's a huge topic to tackle and there's so many of us and so many stories. So thank you for taking this on. Next time, on something was wrong. When I turned 17, my biological mom's side of the family had me over for Christmas. All of the aunts and uncles staged an intervention for me and said,

we believe that you're being mistreated and abused at home. If you believe it to be true, you can stay here with your aunt. I think that scared them and made them realize that I could be speaking out against their abuse. And I think that's a big reason they sent me away. My behavior that they're trying to make seem really bad was just, smoke and mirrors for them to try to protect their own image. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production. Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese,

Associate producers Amy B. Chessler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High. Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist, and Marissa and Travis, from WME. Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and

listenership. In the episode notes, you will always find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Thank you so much for your support. Until next time, stay safe, friends.