Something Was Wrong - S24 Ep2 Unsilenced

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Hi friends. For this episode, I'm honored to interview survivor, advocate, author, and non-profit founder, Meg Applegate. In the early 2000s, Meg spent three and a half years at two different residential programs. The first one she was sent to was Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho. After that, Meg went to the therapeutic boarding school, Chrysalis School, Montana. Chrysalis in Eureka, Montana, was founded in 1998 as an independently owned program by married couple, Kenny Panell, and Mary Alexine. And it is still in operation. In 2013, Chrysler School, Montana was sold to Interchange. Later in 2018, Interchange became part of the youth behavioral health provider, Embark Behavioral Health, which owns 30 programs across 20 states.

Starting point is 00:01:45 In 2023, Embark Behavioral Health received a significant investment from the private equity firm Consonance Capital Partners. As part of the deal, Consonance Capital Partners took a controlling stake in the company. After years of Meg processing her lived experiences at both facilities, she turned her trauma into action. In an attempt to bring awareness, she wrote her memoir, Becoming Unsilensed, Surviving and Fighting the Troubled Teen Industry, and founded a leading nonprofit in the child rights advocacy space Unsilensed. Today, you'll hear about Meg's inspiring journey, which led to her healing and supporting other survivors and families within this troubling industry. Please note, Kenny and Mary, the original owners of Chrysalis, have never publicly responded to allegations against them. They appear to no longer be involved with Chrysalis in Eureka, Montana, since its sale to Embark Behavioral Health.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Chrysalis originally opened in 1998. However, the exact year when Kenny and Mary exactly left is not readily available information. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is something was wrong. My name is Meg Applegate. I'm the founder and CEO of Unsilenced, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to stop institutional child abuse, especially within the troubled teen industry. The reason why I care so much about tackling this industry is really because when I was 15,

Starting point is 00:03:42 I was abducted in the middle of the night by two strangers that told me that we can do this the easy way or the hard way. They forced me into the back of an SUV, drove off, and I subsequently spent the next three and a half years in two different facilities in Idaho and Montana. I was diagnosed with ADHD probably at age four. My mom back in the early 90s, she was fighting to figure out answers for me and to find me the best kind of care. She was with one of the world-renowned ADHD experts back then and was able to get a diagnosis.

Starting point is 00:04:17 And once I was on medication for ADHD, it helped a lot. But the doctors never thought that they were able to target everything. I saw a neuropsychiatrist. I've had spec scans done. My mom went to like the best of the best. and they always acknowledge that there's something else going on that isn't being addressed, but they couldn't figure it out. And back then, autism was highly stigmatized. It was portrayed to the public that autism looks like those with higher support needs. And that's the only

Starting point is 00:04:49 presentation that you can have with autism. And so if you're a high masking female, especially, it was extremely ignored. I was not diagnosed with autism until two years ago. go. Do you know what led to your parents sending you to Intermountain Children's Hospital, how they heard about it? It's a pretty common bucket of parents to fall into this category. Our kid is going through all these changes. They're showing behavioral changes and changes in mood and who they hanging out with and pushing back against authority. It's scary to have a teen going through that. And they fell into the trap that many parents do, which is hiring a educational consultant. Educational consultants, they sound great by name. But really what they are is one of the biggest

Starting point is 00:05:37 pipelines of children into this industry. And they claim to be experts in alternative placements for youth. But what that means is many times they get kickbacks from these facilities that they send kids to. And the more kids you send, the more kickbacks. These parents spend $10,000, is on an educational consultant and feel like they're going to get answers. And that's the most sad thing about this is that parents think they're getting help. And in reality, they're actually on a fast track to putting their kids in harmful situations. So that's what happened with me. My parents hired a educational consultant.

Starting point is 00:06:13 I believe I met with her once. I had absolutely no idea that I would be going to any place at all, let alone being kidnapped. That's kind of the point is to catch the kid off. so that they can't plan to run away beforehand. I knew that they weren't happy with a lot of my behaviors and how I was doing in school and things like that, but I had zero understanding of what was really to come. Something I appreciate so much about your memoir, becoming unsilenced, is how well you tragically articulate the impact of the transport services that parents sometimes use. Could you talk a little bit about the impact it had on you? The experience, it was extremely

Starting point is 00:06:53 traumatic, more so as time went on, versus in the moment it was just scary. Ever since then, I always wake up with a racing heartbeat. I feel like something bad is going to happen. And that's for the past 20 years. My parents, I believe, were told that they were like off-duty police officers, but I don't think they actually identified themselves to me. They weren't friendly or like, hey, this is what's going to happen. It felt like I was in a dangerous situation and where my mom and They're supposed to help me. Once I saw my parents standing there and watching, that's when I just didn't understand. And it was this huge betrayal feeling.

Starting point is 00:07:35 My mom was there saying, we're not abandoning you. And I remember thinking, yeah, you are. There was that emotional aspect there of something harmful happening. But then there was the really scary aspect of where am I going? Like, who are these people? The first place that I went to Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho, right after arriving, I knew that I didn't belong there. And it was because I was seeing all these things I've never seen before, like extreme mood dysregulation and kids being thrown into quiet rooms that were padded and strapped beds and seeing kids with eating disorders, kids screaming at the top of their lungs and getting restrained. I had never even imagined this stuff in my life.

Starting point is 00:08:21 It was like watching a movie. I immediately pushed back. Because I did that when I first got there, they thought I was all about control. And that's the one thing I remember them preaching is you don't have control. And so all of their treatment plan, if you will, for me was to break me down so that I realized I have no control over my life. That's interesting because it was a lot like what autistics feel in the normal world going

Starting point is 00:08:46 about our everyday life, only it was like 50 times worse. So it's a perfect. microcosm of ableism, breaking you down and causing trauma. They really focused on making sure you know that you're not okay the way that you are. And if you want to function in this world, really, if you want anyone to like you or be accepted, you need to let go of control. What are some of the ways that control was asserted over you? One of the biggest ones that was really tremendous, was it was like a two-part program that they put me on called desk space and random draw. I'd get up for the morning and I'd have to start sitting at the desk, writing two-page papers

Starting point is 00:09:34 on every one of the 36 thinking errors. We had something called programming, and programming is where the kids go to art and then they go to the cafeteria and then they go to therapy and they move around as a group. So if I wanted to be able to program, I had to pick from this like biohazard bag that had 10 pieces of paper in it. And there were nine noes and one yes. And every time the other kids would program, I'd reach in and pick out one piece of paper. If it had yes, I could go. And if it was no, I had to stay and continue writing on desk space. That reinforcement schedule caused me to sit at a desk a lot. That was basically trying to teach me that I have no control and I need to just give it up and stop expecting things to happen. I was on it for like,

Starting point is 00:10:20 a month and a half. So it was a long time. It was pretty traumatic. My memory is really bad from the time I arrived because I was on so much medication. But I do know I never got to speak to my parents without a therapist in the room. And I don't think it happened very often. I believe letters were allowed. I did get to see them. They came to see me as much as they said that they were allowed. And I think there were two visits in six months. I don't remember my therapist name because that's how like insignificant it was to my time there. I don't even remember if it was a female or male, to be honest. I think they did have a very high load of cases per therapist, as most of these places do. I think if I was lucky, I saw them once a week for 30 minutes or something, but I don't

Starting point is 00:11:11 remember any therapy that I got at all, except for the session where I was told that, that I was going to be going to Chrysalis. I remember I was in a family call during this time with my therapist. And they just said, you know, you're not going to come home. You're going to go to this place called Chrysalis, and there's a mom and a dad. It's like a family, and they have horses and tried to, like, entice me. It was about a month before I thought I was going to go home. I remember being really upset.

Starting point is 00:11:40 But I had given up so much control at this point. Like, my life isn't my own. Other people decide it. So I reached a place of life. learned helplessness. I was upset, but also I knew I couldn't be upset. What they did to get me to kind of flip and be excited about it is my level would go up and down, so I'd lose privileges and gain privileges, lose privileges, gain privileges. If you don't have your level two or one, when you leave, you're not going to be able to go to Chrysalis. And so they started framing it in a

Starting point is 00:12:07 different way, making me have a goal of going to Chrysalis. Because it was used as a tool, I guess I kind of got excited about it, but that melted away as soon as I got there. Something that is really clear to me in hearing you describe the environment is that they were creating the true definition of trauma bonding. A lot of times, especially on social media, people use the term trauma bonding as like, we're bonded together because we went through trauma together. The more traditional clinical definition of trauma bonding is in the domestic violence setting or an abuse setting, meaning they create the harm and then they're the ones to save you. Can you talk a little bit about how you saw that pattern within your own experience there? Yeah, I mean, I give this example in my book of what I envision a trauma bond to be, because it's hard to understand. I like to think about it as you get bitten by a snake, and it's extremely

Starting point is 00:13:15 poisonous. And instead of going to the doctor and getting anti-venom immediately so that you can save yourself, you turn around and you try to convince the snake that it never should have bit you. You're a good person and they need to treat you better. That's the effect of trauma bond and that's what Chrysalis did to us. They break you down to a point where you need them, but they're abusing you. So you're needing the abuse. And what that creates is this vicious cycle. Their form of group therapy, which is called circle, was extremely abusive in my opinion, which is basically where you sit in a circle and one person will be in the hot spot and they'll hear everything that they did wrong that week and everyone's holding you accountable. So you'll sit there and you'll hear for hours sometimes

Starting point is 00:14:01 everything that you've done wrong and you'll just break down inside and you can't do anything. You can't respond really because you'll be called defensive. You can't roll your eyes. That's defensive. You just have to sit there and take it. And what that does to your morale and your psyche is absolutely crazy. So that's one of the ways that they make sure that you don't have too much confidence. There were girls that had a lot of confidence and they got more circles about them. That was me. I had many, many, many circles about me. You'd sit there and the people who say that they love you are hurting you and in order to get better, you go to them and then it rebuilds itself. So it's the cyclical love bombing, then it shifts into abuse, and then there's

Starting point is 00:14:51 the feeling of everything's going to be okay, and then it just goes round and round and round. So it's very complicated. I'm also a survivor of domestic violence, and it's also hard to describe that. The survivors of DV out there will understand that when people say, like, why didn't you leave? It's hard because of that trauma bond. It sounds like Chrysalis had this cult-like abuse and deliberate control. Can you talk about how listeners might relate to the abuse that you experienced to cultic abuse that they may have heard of in the past? When you talk about cult, one of the first things you have to do is be able to

Starting point is 00:15:31 break down their internal structures that they have to be able to acquiesce, to the group think, to the good of the group, the morality of the leader. One of the ways that they do that is through a circle. Another really common tactic is using forced labor, making sure that as a consequence for things, you work your butt off, whether that's hauling wheelbarrows full of gravel just from one side of the parking lot all the way over to the other for no reason, or washing logs or mowing all the lawn or cutting wood, you name it. We were put to work constantly. we cooked all the meals. We did all the chores. We washed all the cars. We mowed the lawn. We did the

Starting point is 00:16:18 bailing of the hay. We fed the animals. We cleaned the entire house. We did everything. That was one of their values is work hard. But it also took time away from our school and things like that. If you were to compare and contrast the prison industrial complex to the TTI, they have more rights than we did. I'm pretty sure that if you're in prison, you have a right to use the phone and contact people or yard time. Many times it's mandated that you have to have certain outside time. Many of these programs don't have that. There were many times that my nutritional needs weren't met, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was extremely picky eater, and I was forced to eat food that I textually hated.

Starting point is 00:17:04 I can't help that. a lot of the nutrition was not up to par. There were quite a few kids with eating disorders that came in to Chrysalis. Let's say you were struggling with anorexia, they would force you to have seconds, which is super traumatic. It's alarming how much attack therapy and forced labor is mentioned by survivors that we've spoken with and the horrific impact it has on them. It makes me wonder who was running these programs. Can you talk about the owners of Chrysillus, Kenny, and Mary?

Starting point is 00:17:38 Mary and Kenny were my therapists, and they told us they loved us all the time and did stuff that therapists should never do. We thought about them as like mom and dad, and we called each other Chrysalis family. So your whole world becomes these people. And you want to please them so bad. You want them to just be happy. That's your biggest calling while you're there, is to make them proud and be Kenny's favorite. And everyone else to be Kenny's favorite girl and get the attention of Kenny.

Starting point is 00:18:13 It was very toxic to be around that. Kenny was very outwardly confident, big presence in the room. Mary was a very strong woman. She's more quiet, but there's a lot going on in the brain. She wasn't as extremely direct. I have very complicated feelings about Mary. She was my number one therapist, so she was the one that did the most amount of work with me. On one hand, she was supportive in the times when I was really broken down.

Starting point is 00:18:45 But I was also broken down from the stuff mostly from her husband doing it to me or enabling peers to do it to me. I was telling her about abuse I was experiencing from Kenny. I would say, like, Kenny called me a pig and she wouldn't address it. A lot of the relationship dynamics between me and her were inappropriate. We had to write in a journal every single day. And so she would read my journal, everyone's, for that matter, and would respond to your thoughts and your journal. Some kind of joke I made was like in bad taste and it hurt her feelings.

Starting point is 00:19:19 And I remember apologizing in my journal and she responded, I don't feel like you see me. And I read back that and I'm like, it's not my job to see you. I should not be apologizing to my therapist and having you make me feel more shameful. That's ridiculous. A lot of stuff that you would expect in an actual family, but you're not a family. So it should not be happening in a therapeutic relationship. So that line was definitely crossed. I just remember very toxic dynamics.

Starting point is 00:19:50 Kenny used to wrestle us. It was so weird. Like we used to have wrestling competitions and you would just watch. I didn't even like look at that back then and think, hmm, red flag. And then all of a sudden we couldn't wrestle anymore. I think one of the girls asked Kenny about it, like, why can't we wrestle anymore? And I believe his response was so-and-so had to go and ruin fun or something like that. And I remember he was very angry about the topic.

Starting point is 00:20:17 There is not a compliant bone in my body. I have always been very authentic. And I think that that can come off as they said that. that I was prickly and abrasive because I'm direct. And I say what I feel and I show my emotions on my sleeve. That was an issue, especially for Kenny. He did not like that. It was very hard for me to move up the levels.

Starting point is 00:20:43 People would come after me and they'd get their level two way before I did. And it's because I just had a hard time learning how to mask. I wasn't changing. I think it took like six or nine months to be able to get level two. I had to build a personality that they would approve of. It took a while to figure out which move I had to make that wouldn't get consequences. What face do I make during confrontations and how do I confront people so I'm not too abrasive? I just had to learn how to act.

Starting point is 00:21:14 I wasn't being myself. They allowed us to have these video cameras back when the handheld video cameras were big. And I have videos of myself and I'm acting in a way. I'm like, that's not me. It's strange to look at. I mean, they told me this all the time. who I was was not okay. And I would never be loved or accepted in society unless I changed. When you hear that when you're 16 years old, 15 years old, it's scary. And you also are being

Starting point is 00:21:40 told that your parents think that too, because they put you here. It's amazing what that can influence. Do you know if your parents' medical insurance covered any of this? I've actually never asked them. Back then, I'm not sure if it was covered or not. Before the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of these were private pay. And then it kind of moved to finding new structures, like through school districts more often and through insurance companies. What did communication with your parents look like while you were at Chrysalis? Once I got to level three, I could talk to them without the therapist. They're being told, I'm doing great, I'm progressing. They didn't get told any of the stuff that was actually

Starting point is 00:22:21 like happening unless it was about forward movement in my quote treatment plan. So, they never knew that I was not being taken to the doctor when I needed to go to the doctor. It was encouraged to be strong and not be affected by things. So, like, if I got hurt, I would pretend I wasn't. I viewed that as a strength. All the girls experienced it. So it wasn't something that was just me. Otherwise, I would have seen it as not fair.

Starting point is 00:22:47 My parents only found out about it once I woke up when I was, like, 33, 34. How in your mind did you see Chrysalis before that awakening? How effective was the brainwashing, basically? I have to actively not be brainwashed even today. Mary and Kenny were invited to my wedding. I viewed them as a second mom and dad. And thank God, Chrysalis came into my life or otherwise I wouldn't have been successful.

Starting point is 00:23:21 And that's how it's phrased. Your parents and everyone view Chrysalis as the place that helped them, but they don't know what your life would have looked like if Chrysalis hadn't have happened. So it's then put on a pedestal as the reason for your success if you succeed. The fact that I love Chrysalis, I graduated honors in college, and then get into nonprofit work, an entrepreneur owned a franchise, I'm doing all this stuff. Thanks to Chrysalis.

Starting point is 00:23:48 No one would have known if I would have been capable of that had I not gone to Chrysalis. And I would have. But it's credited for all of your success, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's a lot of the reasons why a lot of survivors' parents have a hard time seeing it as trauma. The wake-up period came in like multiple stages. The first phase was when one of my Chrysler sisters passed away. And when I found out that she was really dealing with trauma, it was like trauma.

Starting point is 00:24:18 Wait, what? And then I found out she had the same chronic illnesses that I did too. Then I spoke to one of my good friends from Chrysalis. And I was like, do you think Chryslerus was like abusive? And she was like, yep. And I was like, why didn't you tell me? And she was like, you weren't ready. And so that was like the first one.

Starting point is 00:24:37 But even though I was able to say abusive stuff happened, it had not settled in my body yet. I wouldn't have said at that point, I was abused and childhood. Or I went to abusive programs. It hadn't gotten to that level. And then the second wake-up period was when Paris Hilton's documentary came out. This is Paris. I was pregnant with my youngest. and we were sitting there, my husband and I, in the pandemic, very pregnant, watching this,

Starting point is 00:25:05 this is Paris documentary. And I remember bawling my eyes out. I was so small-minded at that point that I thought, Chrysalis existed and that's it. And then I found out, oh, my gosh, it's an industry. This is a huge network of facilities doing this to kids all over the world. And my brain kind of exploded. I remember like hyperventilating, crying with this trauma spiral. I didn't know what was going on. And then the last one was when my husband had to go to an inpatient treatment for his recovery. He called me and he was like, I'm being abused. I got in the car. I sped to the facility. And during that time period of 30 minutes in the drive, I remember thinking I was at a facility. I needed help. I didn't get to make this kind of phone call.

Starting point is 00:25:54 This is how I would have wanted someone to respond to me. And that's when I realized that I wanted to do what I do. I wanted to be the person that would have saved me when I was 15. And that's when I truly, truly woke up. I don't think I ever would have fully woken up if I wouldn't have had kids and became a mom. Because that allowed me a new lens to look at things. If this was happening to one of my kids, how would I feel? It's so alarming that there's still so many children being put into these programs today.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Can you talk about unsilenced and how that came about? Yeah, I mean, reporting makes it really hard to count, but we estimate about 120,000 to 200,000 youth are funneled in these programs. And I think that that's really what caused me to be like, all right, I need to do something about this back in the end of 2021 after I did an extensive amount of EMDR therapy and biofeedback and things I needed to do to regulate my emotions and being able to handle triggers and being at a place where I knew that if I heard about abuse all day, that I'd be able to handle it. That's when unsilence was born. It's really born out of a grassroots movement. Hashtag

Starting point is 00:27:14 breaking code silence started many years ago at this point, but we took it a step further to we are unsilenced and it's grown pretty big. And we've really focused a lot on a few core principles. Our main mission is to stop institutional child abuse. But the way that we do that has kind of shifted. One thing we believe in heavily is transparency. And we think transparency is almost impossible within this industry. We believe it's our job to make sure that information makes it back into the decision makers' hands. People in school districts, therapists, parents, caregivers, foster care facilitators, juvenile justice, court systems, you name it. So what we do is on our program archive, which is on our website,

Starting point is 00:27:58 we've got over 100,000 documents and information on over 3,500 different programs. We make sure that lawsuits, abuse allegations, DCHS reports are on there so that people can see them. Otherwise, every single person out there would have to do record requests to all the states, all the agencies to see a lot of this information. What you're doing is incredible. Even the website, the way it's all put together, everything is so organized, you have so much program information in there.

Starting point is 00:28:30 Thank you. I have to give it to Katie McNamara. She did so much work on that. It's changing lives. We're really thankful to have that. And that led into realizing where we shine, which is in our legal advocacy. About two years ago,

Starting point is 00:28:46 there was a death in a facility Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah. Taylor Goodridge passed away. She was 17 years old. And after that happened, a couple really unique things happened. I did a TikTok and it ended up going viral. By now, I'm sure you all have heard about the recent death of Taylor Goodridge. And we've really heard a lot of details that are pretty upsetting. So I wanted to take a second to talk about who she is. Taylor Goodrich was a native kid from Washington. And she was part of the still-a-gris. Guamish tribe and was actually the first girl born in 50 years. She loved doing makeup and hair and nails. And she loved animals, especially her dogs. And reaching Taylor's family, they reached out and they

Starting point is 00:29:34 said, can we get your help? We don't know what to do. And at that point, I connected them with Senator McKell in Utah and subsequently went to Alan Mortensen, which ended up being their attorney, through our work in the Taylor Goodrich case, we were able to find whistleblowers and witnesses for what happened. We got incredible amounts of information and we realized that our work within these legal cases is instrumental. And also being like a safe place for whistleblowers and former staff to come to and say, I think I might have more information or even an anonymous tip. being able to get information and make sure it's facilitated and disseminated to those who can use it, whether it's investigations going on or lawsuits. Through that, we have taken off. We now have an

Starting point is 00:30:25 attorney directory on our website, and we have law firms across the country that we have partnered with, that we trust. So it allows survivors to go to our website when they feel like they have been mistreated in these facilities and choose an attorney that we know are going to be able to handle institutional abuse cases. Through that work in probably the last year, we've had a hand in 135 cases. So we believe that making justice more accessible for survivors is not just important for survivors' healing and being able to change the narrative and validate the fact that they were mistreated, but it also changes the systems. The accountability that you can bring through a lawsuit can close a program faster than through abuse allegations and DCHS and law enforcement.

Starting point is 00:31:20 I'm curious what your relationship and healing journey has been like with your parents in adulthood. I've always been really close with my parents. There was a period of time where they'd get a little defensive, but then all I did was just let them know more about the facts and said, look, these are the reasons why I'm comfortable with saying it was abusive, and these are the things that they did, and they were astonished. They just had no idea. And that's not their fault. They weren't told all this information. And so they had to go through their own wake-up period. When I first announced I was going to rewriting a book, they were like, oh, shit. They would never, for a second, tell me no or anything. But I think that there was a feeling of, let's do this wake-up period

Starting point is 00:32:01 a little at a time. Give us some time to adjust. I was understanding in that. They had a different time frame of healing than I did. And that's totally fine. And by the time the book was released, they were ready. And they thought it was amazing. They're huge supporters of Unsilenced. My dad is the chair of the board. They're donors.

Starting point is 00:32:21 They are really, really big activists now, which is really cool. Like my dad will bring up stuff and random board meetings for stuff that has nothing to do with child rights. He'll talk about the Trouble Teen industry. And it goes to show that the people, that are out there that potentially have that cognitive dissonance or have yet to be able to own that you sent your kid to a place. One of the ways to really help heal that is by being activist, trying to make sure other kids don't have to go through that. The thought process around parenting has changed a lot too. The parenting of boomers is a lot different than that of millennials.

Starting point is 00:32:59 I believe that millennials are doing a lot of work to get rid of that generational trauma in general, we have more informed parenting techniques. The war on drugs, dare. This led into, let's fix your teen. Trouble teen, we'll fix them. They use that deceptive marketing to apply to all of these different issues that teens are having, but they failed to tell the parents that those are super expected behaviors and actually really normal when you're a teenager.

Starting point is 00:33:30 And I think something that people don't understand is these are not just small businesses, they're big businesses, like $23 billion of public funds go toward this industry. So chances are that if you're invested in a publicly traded company, you might find one of these private equity-backed companies that is supporting one of these facilities. And they make a lot of money. It really does affect everyone. Chrysalis didn't used to be like that. They're owned by NBARC behavioral health now. But back then, it was just a little private. Mary and Kenny program. But they sold it to interchange, and interchange became embarked behavioral health. During this season, we're also speaking with survivors of wilderness programs.

Starting point is 00:34:17 What would you say is unique about those experiences versus therapeutic boarding schools? Wilderness is especially egregious because there's really no home base. There's no feeling like you have true shelter. Even if it's Chrysalis, at least it's a roof over your head. many wilderness programs that I've come in contact with have repeated allegations of not having clean water, having bugs and food, extreme over-exertion and exercise to a point of losing too much weight, being malnourished, getting parasites. You know, at Trails Carolina, they do the burrito, which is where they would wrap the kid really tight into a sleeping bag, and then they'd put like a tarp over them and wrap it, and then a staff member would lay on top of it.

Starting point is 00:35:04 so that they couldn't move. Almost every survivor I've spoken to has said that they just feel like they can't breathe all night. They had to do it the first three nights so you don't run away. There's those kind of techniques that I've heard of. Most wilderness programs, in my head, look like the wilderness programs that you're going to expect. But as you get out of the country, especially, there aren't regulations. I think that in general it's more traumatic because you're dealing with all the same things that other programs are where you're like feeling abandoned and you're feeling unsafe, but then you add in that you're out in the cold or in the heat and you don't feel like you have enough water or food. It's just way more extreme. In my opinion, that I've seen,

Starting point is 00:35:44 there is no legitimate research to show that wilderness therapy is effective. Between therapeutic boarding school and residential treatment center, sometimes they can look similar in terms of space, but residential treatment centers many times are going to be more lockdown, so more restrictions. and more enforcement over certain things. Like you might not be able to have things that could potentially be used to self-harm or something like that. Whereas as therapeutic boarding schools,

Starting point is 00:36:14 they might have doors that you can open and you could go outside if you wanted to. I'd say in general, they might look more lax. Some of these places go by these names, like the word academy, but they are not like that at all. Usually here in the United States, many of the states make you be a licensed facility. In order to get licensing, there's different forms and categories of licensing, and that is going to be based on your name. So if you have

Starting point is 00:36:44 therapeutic boarding school, you are likely going to be in a therapeutic residential facility type of licensure. And it's common to try to skirt that. That's what we try to figure out, is this the wrong license? Are they doing this? But in other countries, whether or not they regulate or have to have licensure is one thing I'm not certain of, Passed by the Sea, which was in Mexico. If a program's being shut down by the Federalis, that shows that there were some pretty egregious things going on. And that's why they go to other countries.

Starting point is 00:37:16 There have been tragically so many cases in the news lately. What are some that stand out to you for those who are following the legislative path and victories for survivors? The tragic one that I'm working on right now is Baruch-Silver. who died at Discovery Ranch in Utah. I work with his parents very closely. I've helped since the very beginning and trying to raise awareness.

Starting point is 00:37:48 I can't even tell you how frustrating it is that his parents and I are trying to fight to get into the news. It's beyond wild to me that this isn't breaking news nationally. In May of 2025, the parents of 17-year-old Baruch Silvers sued Discovery Ranch Academy,

Starting point is 00:38:07 a Utah Teen Treatment Center after he died by suicide there in November 2024. The lawsuit alleges that staff members ignored his mental health warnings, left him unsupervised with means to harm himself, and failed to follow safety protocols. State licensers confirmed multiple violations on Discovery Ranch's behalf, including improper supervision and neglect of his care plan. These are facilities that school district,

Starting point is 00:38:39 are paying for to send kids to. I don't think people understand this. This isn't just, oh, maybe it's the parents that made this decision. Like, no, we're talking about juvenile justice paying money. We're talking about foster care paying money, public funds as well. So we need to highlight the cases of death and abuse and neglect and get to the decision makers that are in charge of regulations and reporting and policy. That's how we get to change is by creating awareness. Luckily, Baruch's mom and dad

Starting point is 00:39:14 works so hard to put his name out there and fight against this industry. They lost their son. And they're using that pain to make sure no other kids can have that happen to them and no more parents hopefully have to go through

Starting point is 00:39:28 what they're going through. That's one of the best things you can do is engage with our accounts who are constantly lifting up these kids and these families and spread awareness. If you could help design a bill to get passed to address some of these issues, what would that include from your perspective?

Starting point is 00:39:48 If we're a perfect world talking about legislation, there would be federal legislation that gives kids a bill of rights, mandating that children or youth that go into any facilities are given a literal handout of all of their rights. The fact that they're taking away the ability to communicate with the outside world is a huge red flag. So mandating that communication is not cut off from the world.

Starting point is 00:40:14 And that goes for communication with parents, being able to speak to your parents on a regular basis, and being able to speak to an advocate anytime. I get contacted by kids that are still in facilities. Every kid in a facility should be able to be like, I want to call Meg Applegate. She's an advocate for youth. They should be able to contact an attorney.

Starting point is 00:40:33 Communication is a big thing. being able to be free and contacting whoever you want, not only whenever you want, but to do so without any kind of recorded line or anyone listening in is extremely important for being able to report abuse. On top of that, unannounced visits from whatever agency is overseeing it in that state. In my perfect world, we're talking about like eight a year. And you can have some that are planned, but I would say three quarters of them should be unannounced because the planned ones are always rehearsed and I've seen it happen. On top of that, really defining what abuse is. And by defining it, we're talking about no restraints, not laying your hands on kids.

Starting point is 00:41:15 I do not believe that locked doors should be allowed. I also think that all staff should not only be background checked, but should have relevant education. Let's say there's a place that has licensed therapists. That's wonderful. But what they don't realize, is that those therapists spend maximum one hour a week with the kids. The majority, the 24-7 supervision is by the everyday staff. Those people are usually like 18 to 25 years old and many times don't have college degrees and certainly not experts in kids with behavioral issues. So mandating the qualifications that you would need to have to be able to work in a everyday capacity and that includes making sure they're not on the sex offenders list. That's so common how many sexual

Starting point is 00:42:10 predators end up in these programs, female and male. Also, information sharing and information availability. I think that there needs to be a national database. It has to be available where every state has all of the facilities that operate in the state. And if there are any 911 calls, any allegations of abuse, it shows up on there. Lawsuits are tracked on there. Anybody who's looking to suppress real data, I feel like that's a huge red flag. Yep. I can't tell you how frustrating it is,

Starting point is 00:42:43 especially with Baruch-Silvers case. I'll make a post about Baruch-Silvers, and so many people are commenting saying, it's the parent's fault, or it's a great program. Information would also help that to show all of the different abuse allegations that have been going on. If we had a database, we'd be able to say,

Starting point is 00:43:00 look at all of this that's happened. then it wouldn't be about survivors versus other people. Some people are just not understanding that multiple things can be true at once. One kid could go to a program and think it was amazing. And another kid could go to the same program at the same time and be absolutely traumatized. Those two can exist at the same time. Until we can make sure that every single person coming out of a health facility is not traumatized, it's not regulated enough.

Starting point is 00:43:28 The troubled dean isry, even though it is part of health care, It's being covered by health insurances, but it is not driven by data. It seems like survivors of institutional child abuse have higher rates of chronic health conditions, addiction, and suicide. Can you share some data that reflects these trends? I do know that the best data that we have has to do with ACEs or adverse childhood experiences. Aces are potentially traumatic experiences that happen before a child reaches the age of 18 that can have detrimental effects on the rest of their life. The more aces you have, the more likely you are to be in a domestic violence situation. This is not just institutional abuse. We're talking about

Starting point is 00:44:11 all trauma. If trauma goes unaddressed, especially if it's not responded to by a caregiver, it leads to toxic stress. And toxic stress is what can lead toward this happening. According to a landmark CDC Kaiser Permanente ACE study, people with four or more adverse childhood experiences, things such as childhood abuse, neglect, or household challenges are four to 12 times greater increased risk for substance use disorder, depression, and suicidal ideation. In another ACE study conducted by Cornelius Van Neeland and his colleagues, they found compared with persons with an ACE score of zero, those with an ACE score of four or more

Starting point is 00:44:59 were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, and 7 to 10% more likely to have a substance use disorder. Is there anything else that you feel like would be important for listeners to keep in mind when they're listening to survivors' stories? I think just understand that just because someone has a completely different experience, even if at the same facility,

Starting point is 00:45:28 does not negate the other experiences and vice versa. I think that's really important to be able to hold space for the people who have trauma and the people that may not have trauma, or maybe they haven't decided that it is trauma yet. Listen with compassion. Most of the survivors that I talk to are very open to telling more about it.

Starting point is 00:45:49 So asking more questions is something they're usually pretty willing to do because they know how important awareness is. And if you're listening to this and you're not around a survivor, use their narrative, talk about it in the community or talk about the podcast with someone else in your family and discuss it because awareness is key. And I'd say that every survivor I've talked to, their number one goal is to make sure no other kids get hurt. I can tell you're so passion. I can hear it in your voice. And I think after living through what you've gone through, it has to, I imagine, be healing in a way to do this work. how can we support the work that you're doing? We need donations. We're a nonprofit, 501c3. We rely on our generous donors to be able to do all this work that we do.

Starting point is 00:46:37 We need more attorneys on our attorney directory. We rely on attorneys that are usually personal injury. Another part of what we do is teaching. We really like to educate professionals on the Trouble Teen Industry, how these cases are different, how working with survivors of institutions, abuse are different. Beyond that, you can download the unsilenced impact app and be a part of our community of over a thousand survivors, following us on our social media and really trying to highlight and help us raise awareness about this industry. Go out today and tell someone about the

Starting point is 00:47:16 Trouble Teen industry. Because chances are with how common this is, with how many kids are going into these facilities, they'll know someone that has been to it. That validation. that can come from it and the awareness that can stem from it is extremely important in bringing these issues to the forefront. We will definitely link to unsilenced.org and Meg's incredible book becoming unsilenced. It is not only available in print, but in audio format, we'll make sure to link to both. I hope you'll join us in donating to Unsilensed. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Next time, on Something Was Wrong. She made it sound tolerable, like I would come out of this program a stronger and healthier, productive kid.

Starting point is 00:48:09 She sold me on a lie. I didn't know that until I got there, though. 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.

Starting point is 00:48:47 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. The theme song this season is You Think You by Glass. from their album Wonder Under. To hear more music from them, follow the link in our episode notes or search for them on your favorite music streaming app. Speaking of episode notes, there you'll always find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Thank you so much for your support. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong - S24 Ep2 Unsilenced

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