Cassia and Ashley felt ‘dehumanized’ at the Re-Creation Retreat in Arizona, one of the many teen rehab facilities across the US. They knew they had to get out – but staff came after them

Two Christian programs are accused of forcing troubled teens to do heavy farm work. One man says he was branded with a cross. Three women say they were tied to a goat as a punishment.

Paris Hilton outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. Hilton has long pushed for legislation to rein in the troubled-teen industry.

On Tuesday, November 12, 2024, at about 3 p.m., a group of girls started a protest on the side of the road in front of the Re Creation Retreat (RCR) in Fredonia, Ariz. The girls of the group had “graduated” from the establishment, meaning they’d been residents previously.

Thirty officers have been accused of staging dozens of brutal “gladiator fights” at a beleaguered youth detention facility in Southern California.  

A former troubled teen revealed her harrowing account of her parent-hired kidnapping that brought her to a wilderness therapy camp where she was claimed to have been abused and forced to lay in an open grave.

The recent Netflix documentary Hell Camp details the beginnings and eventual court cases that shut down one such program. Founded by the late Steven Cartisano, a veteran and businessman, the Challenger Foundation was billed as a wilderness survival program meant to turn “out of control” kids and “master manipulators” into leaders by forcing them on a 500-mile hike in the Utah desert. 

“It was just so nasty,” she says. “They didn’t care. … (It was) just another form of dehumanizing you and taking away your dignity.” She was 16 when she first arrived with only a few items, all stuffed into a 40-pound backpack. The first activity? A grueling 3-mile hike.

“Thousands of children make the journey against their will to residential ‘troubled teen’ treatment programs in Utah. Not all will return, and those who do call themselves ‘survivors.’”

Marketed as a school that would help troubled teens, in reality, many Ivy Ridge attendees endured mental and physical abuse and were made to take part in cult-like activities.

This is the second time state officials have tried to shut down Maple Lake Academy after a girl died there in 2022. MLA management intend to appeal the decision.

As has been previously reported by Law Street, the so-called Troubled Teen Industry, residential mental healthcare facilities that cater to minors, usually teenagers, is the subject of much litigative controversy.

Elizabeth Ianelli sits by a tree near where the Family Foundation School school once operated. “Believe me, this was hell,” she writes in her powerful new memoir, “I See You Survivor.”

Coming soon