February 2, 2022 • 40 mins
Arriving at Provo Canyon School, survivors are subjected to an invasive intake procedure as they begin to question if this is even a school at all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care. Welcome back to Trapped in Treatment. I'm your
host Caroline Cole, and I'm Abacamelinger. Here we are now
in week three. If you've been following along so far,
(00:23):
you know that we have started to unearth some of
these really horrific stories of abuse around pro Vo Canyon School,
but we haven't really taken a peek inside just yet.
So in last week's episode, we heard a lot about
the transport industry, which, in our opinion, is an extremely
traumatic way to enter into a process that is supposed
(00:44):
to provide you with a healing journey. And in this
week's episode, we're going to hear about what it's like
to enter into the doors of pro Vo Canyon School.
Even the thought of that is honestly giving me flashbacks
recalling the time when I first arrived at the facility
that I went to, and I think for most survivors,
(01:05):
it gives us that visceral memory, right that like stomach tightening, fear, anxiety.
Are you guys ready for this episode? I think they're ready,
let's go intake investment solitary confinement, or OBS as they
(01:39):
call it, a school that sounds more like a prison.
In today's episode, we arrive at Provocanyon School, walking through
the doors of one of the most notorious residential treatment
facilities in North America. We'll hear stories from survivors about
what the first few days are like and explore the
seductive marketing techniques of the industry at large. What exactly
(02:00):
makes a school a school? Because pro Vocanian school, it's
not a school, not by a long shot. Victoria Lane
(02:21):
was not a particularly bad kid. She grew up in
Seattle with her family, but moved to Southwest Washington to
live with her mother and brother after a tumultuous divorce.
A city kid, Victoria was used to the hustle and
bustle of a metropolis, so the new environment was unfamiliar,
to say the least. We had been raised in towntown Seattle.
(02:41):
We didn't even know there were trees and seattle in
the state. We were like, Wow, this is crazy. Her
parents seemed preoccupied. She shared that her mother was a
flight attendant who traveled constantly. My mom flew constantly. Um
when I was about eleven, she started leaving the country
with us at home a loan and I was I'm
(03:03):
um eighteen months older than my brother, so it was
predominantly UM, you know, just kind of take care of yourselves.
You're safe, you're in the country, whatever. And of course
we started getting into trouble not going to school. Um,
the school would contact my mom and I was in
public school because I just didn't go. Parents aren't there.
(03:24):
I was like, I'm not gonna go. We don't have
to go. And I didn't do anything bad. I mean
I maybe smoked pot maybe like it didn't do anything.
But I would lie and my brother lied to for attention.
For attention. Um, there was no parent at home. We
would just be like boisterous about our lives. Oh, we're
doing this and that. You know, we weren't doing anything.
(03:45):
We were living in We were nobody and um. Instead
of helping us or giving us the attention, my mom
immediately listened to some people who said, you know, there's
this place in Utah you could send her. Her mom
told her it was a boarding school. Victoria had spent
summers away at summer camp, so she really didn't think
(04:06):
anything of it. She even looked at a brochure. I
remember packing kind of and I remember telling my brother
I was going to boarding school. I think I remember
even like looking at pictures or videos like a brochure,
like I remember bringing things. I remember there were things
you couldn't bring or something. And I never thought that
was weird because I just thought it was like camp,
(04:26):
you know. I never thought it was that weird. And
because my mom was a flight attendant most of my life,
I had already been very comfortable flying. So I went myself.
I flew myself. She dropped me off at Sea Tech,
and I didn't see her again. Nestled on an unassuming
residential block, Provo Canyon School doesn't look out of place.
Flanked by a soccer field and a tennis court, one
(04:48):
might walk by it without taking a second look, but
something stands out. An eerie calm permeates the boys and
girls campus. The pool is empty of children, the fields
are the same for being called to school, it sure
doesn't feel like one. But when Victoria arrived at the
(05:08):
girls campus, she kind of liked the place at first.
So I flew into Salt Lake City. Um, I felt
kind of cool because someone was picking me up, like,
I mean, this is the nineties. This isn't like you know,
there's not phones. You know, people don't know what's going on.
Like to me, like somebody picking me up with my
name on a sign. That sounds cool. You know, I
(05:30):
didn't think it was weird. It was pretty. It was
grein Utah is a pretty place. It's real clean. You
drive up, it looks like a boarding school. It's um.
It was surrounded by these beautiful it was springtime. Um,
these cherry blossoms were all in bloom around it. So
it was pretty pretty picturesque. Even Provo's website paints the
(05:57):
picture of a behavioral health center that will for even
the most rebellious child. But behind the heavy metal doors,
a very different scenario plays out. You know, I went
inside and it looked like your therapist office or like
a doctor's office when you were waiting, heavy oak furniture,
you know, big and transway. There wasn't anybody standing there,
(06:20):
you know though, like if you walk into a hotel,
there's not like a person. There was never anybody in
the front office ever, and that should have been a
I guess assigned me. Immediately after arrival. You go through
intake the equivalent of being processed in prison. Rather than
a quaint office with an oversized armchair, you're taken into
(06:41):
a cold, cinder block room with no tables or chairs.
This is where it begins. They so they take everything
and they say they're going to go through everything and
label everything. So you're like, okay, they're gonna label everything.
Maybe they do that for you know, purpose whatever, And
then they give you somebody else's clothes and then you're
immediately like, you this is gross because they're not like
(07:02):
nice clothes, they're like very used stained. Holy You're like,
this is gross. I don't know where the heck I am.
And I was thirteen, of course I was allowed to
think that way. And then I um, I had to
squat I remember that to check you, you know, as
a woman, like if you were getting checked it like
(07:23):
security or some kind of situation where they make huge squat, right.
I remember myself going. So I showed up in the
middle of the night, it was like three am, and
they brought me to this very institutional looking dormitory where
(07:43):
everything was like cinder blocks and very barren. And I
remember I was also around the age that you were.
You were thirteen years old. I was had just turned fourteen,
uh the month before, and and at that age I
had never really been naked in front of anyone. Yeah,
hardly even my own mom. Nonetheless, these complete strangers, and uh,
(08:09):
I feel like during these kinds of strip searches, because they,
you know, asked me to get completely naked. Um, and
then I think they made me do jumping jack's. They
make you do the jumping jacks and then they make
you squat and cough. And I specifically remember because I
didn't know what they were getting at, Like I didn't
know why they were making me do this, and so
(08:29):
I remember looking at them and like going and then
being like was that enough? Like do you want me
to cough harder? I just truly wasn't understanding what the
purpose was of me doing this. But it was the
first real realization that, like, I've never been to a
summer camp that made me do this before, Maybe this
is not what I think it is. I think immediately
(08:52):
I was like it hit me probably because yeah, you're right,
I've never had that experience in my life. And I
honestly I had never done really, I had never done drugs.
I had never really even partied. So to me, the
idea that I was holding something in my private parts
was just like I didn't I old people do that,
(09:14):
Like I was just totally totally not into that. And
that's how it was pretty much twenty four hours a days,
seven days a week for like the first, you know,
a few months I was there. I mean I remember
seeing people in straight jackets. Immediately you go in, You
go in, and then you go up to this elevator
(09:34):
and it goes you up to the top of the
only top floor, and then you walk past the doctor's
offices and you go past their like little school area,
and to the right is investment, and then past that
is where you go when you're first there. So you
have to go through investment just when you first get there.
So when you first get there, you have to experience
(09:57):
girls screaming, locked uh peeing themselves in the hallway sleeping,
and you're like, where am I? Holy heck, this is
not what I expected. For Courtney Knapastick, the entire experience
(10:30):
was surreal. She had a different upbringing growing up in Carrie, Illinois.
Her parents were loving married for over thirty years. Nonetheless,
she struggled with depression and bullying. She would get in fights.
She admits she was rebellious sent to two wilderness programs
before arriving at Provoe. She was looking forward to having
(10:52):
a normal experience for once. I remember like a really
cool ride they're I was super excited to like take
showers and like use a toilet and just be human again. Um.
But when we got there, the staff's atted tubes changed
very quickly once the door is locked behind me. So
(11:14):
you get there, and then they bring you into this
like concrete cell and they tell you to like strip
and hand over each piece of clothing like slowly to them,
and then there's like a mirror in the corner that
you're facing um, and your back is towards staff, and
(11:34):
then they can watch you through the mirror up in
the corner as well. So you're handing them each piece
of clothing. Like eventually you're naked, and they tell you
to squat and cough, and then eventually, like a minute,
they'll throw close back at you. I didn't cough hard
enough the first time, so they made me do it twice,
which was already really humiliating. Then you get this surprise
(12:03):
vaginal exam that is not optional. Um. I was a
fifteen year old kid. I've never had sex before, and
I remember kind of crying and be like, do I
have to do this? And she told me if I
didn't cooperate that she could get the staff from Investment,
(12:23):
which is the unit that the kids who are in
trouble go to, so she could get the staff from
that unit to come restrain me, so she could perform
this exam. And so I just complied and let that happen.
(12:44):
The stories seem unreal, like something out of her prison novel.
Girls in straight jackets, squatt and cough, internal pelvic exams,
children who should have been at a normal school, with
desks in recess rather than els. The environment is tense, unhappy,
(13:04):
screams ring out. It's hard to comprehend how PCs could
be called a school. Typical schools in our country don't
subject students to cavity searches. We don't ask our sixth
graders to sit alone in a room for six hours
at a time staring at the wall. What Victoria and
Courtney witnessed on their first days inside was a sure
(13:25):
indicator that they were not in for a traditional experience.
They thought they were heading to boarding school, even if
it was one for bad kids. Instead, they ended up
in an institution made to strip down and assigned a number,
stripped of their clothing, their dignity in any sense of
being in control of their surroundings. At Provo, this wasn't
(13:47):
just a safety measure, but an intentional assertion of power
that didn't end with intake, because the next hurdle, the
never ending task, was avoiding. The investment unit, which is
to mind in the parent handbook, is a period in
which a student has to prove their willingness to cooperate
in their treatment. The period of time locked away in
(14:09):
this unit could range from days two months. So wait
a second, before we get too far into the story,
Let's let the audience in on the structure of the
program at profile. Please let's do that, because I think
this can be one of the most twisted and oppressive
aspects of PCs and facilities like it. So the entire
program is built off of gaining levels, and as you
(14:32):
gain levels, you gain privileges like getting to go to
class or live with your peers, and each level has
a name like Orientation, Achievement, Senior, and so forth. The
investment unit is essentially the punishment unit, the lowest of below.
We have a letter from PCs to a parent that
claims it only takes approximately two weeks to move through
(14:55):
each phase of the program. So why is it that
some kids are staying at Provo for years on top
of having to stay off of investment and probation. Every
status advancement had to be voted on by staff in
their weekly treatment team. In most cases, children were denied
from moving up in levels too quickly for arbitrary reasons
(15:16):
such as it's too soon, or worries about the child
faking it, stretching out their stay for many months two years.
Here's Victoria on her experience. Investment was what happens when
you So there was class systems and that was part
of it. Um they pin you up, they put you
(15:37):
against each other, that's part of it. There everybody's in
different levels and you get in struggle, you get written up.
You're getting written up enough, they take everything from you.
You move your unit and you live in Investment. So
but Investment was then ten rooms, maybe eight and a
big central room and too quiet rooms is how they
(16:01):
put on. But they were just completely stone, raw rooms
with a UM a a like a shower in the center,
a shower hole in the center. Why just stone two
of them, and a bathroom in the middle and everything.
All the bathrooms were like super super medical, Like if
you were going to like a medical place that was
(16:24):
like super sano medically. It's the whole place looked like
a like a medical hospital or that kind of situation.
I have the parent handbook in front of me, and
this is how they describe this unit. The investment unit
is a secured area where patients receive more intense supervision,
depending on the infraction assignment to the unit, maybe for
(16:44):
a number of hours or days. The word investment indicates
that it's the patient's responsibility to contribute time and effort
to regain lost privileges or status. That sounds a lot
different than what the survivors describe locked in investment made
to prove their willingness to comply, youth would be forced
to work off points by standing or sitting for hours
(17:07):
at a time, staring at the wall in front of them.
We asked Katherine McNamara about her experience. If you remember
we spoke to her last episode. Now an activist herself
and part of the breaking code silence movement. We wanted
to know what her experience with Investment was. Yeah, Like,
so I'm sitting there on a chair and like crying
and like really upset, and like the staff member comes
(17:27):
over and I forgot like what why she wanted me
to get off the chair, but like I pretty much
was like fuck, you know, and um and uh, she
just looked at me and she was like, oh, You're
gonna get off the chair if I want you to.
And I was like no, no, I'm staying here, like
f you and UM I said something like make me
(17:48):
I think, and um, you know, at the time I
was sitting on chair, I'm I'm at fourteen years old,
I'm really scrawnly, scrawny. I'm like I remember being like
I was underweight, I believe, and I was hardly intimidating.
And uh, all I remember is her picking up her
radio because they all carried radios and going dial nine
to Investment and I didn't know what dial nine was,
(18:12):
but I figured out, like, and she's like getting to
Obbs or else or else, and you know, she pointed
the way towards the door, and um, I didn't know
what a dial nine was. As I said, But I
realized really quickly it was something bad when I started
hearing like boomoomook up the stairs because it sounded like
a like a stampede was coming. So I got my
butt up and went into Obbs before the stampede showed up.
(18:35):
But basically all this the staff like showed up and um,
they're basically like you gotta handled okay, cool, and they
like ended up leaving. But what would have happened if
I had refused and stayed on that chair is basically
all these staff would have tackled me and dragged me
in there. So I went into Obbs, and Obbs was
this like, uh, you know, this weirdly shaped cement room.
(18:57):
If you've seen the Parasilain documentary that that like, uh
drawing of it is scary accurate. It's this weird shaped
cement room. It's always cold, and there was like a
skylight above where you could see just like the glimmer
of maybe like light up there. It was always cold,
like they were running that a c in there on
(19:19):
purpose to like sixty something degrees. And when once you
get in there, uh, they make you stripped down because
they their claim is that they don't want you to
commit suicide. So they take away your bra your panties.
They give you like these really thin tiny shorts that
you put on and this really thin like shirt and
with the a C running at like sixty degrees plus
(19:40):
uh plus like cement everything and nothing to keep you warm,
you just freeze in there. So I was in and
they call it observation or OBS, and the staff like
sits there. They might close the door. If they close
the door, there's no no um uh door knob inside,
so pretty much screwed if you're in there, like until
(20:02):
they let you out. There's just one little like window.
But they didn't close the door on me. They just
kind of left me in there, and I remember crying
in there and just being cold like so called like
I remember pulling like the shirt over my legs trying
to stay warm. And the idea of it is like
obviously to keep you like cool, you chill you off
and like make you like want to come out so
(20:23):
badly that you're just going to comply. And um OBBS
was like you know, like in a in a classic
like psychiatric facility, something like a calming room would be
used like is supposed to be used if you're a
danger to yourself or a danger to others, and it's
only for like you should be you know, in a
real facility like the Standard of Cares, you should be
(20:44):
UH talk down to, like you know, talk down from
whatever crisis you're in, by a licensed professional and stuff
like that. I was not in a crisis. I was,
and and you also should be let out as quickly
as possible, as soon as you're escalated. There's no therapists
who came to speak to me in there. I was
there for hours, I was freezing my butt off, and
(21:05):
I was not a danger to myself for others. What
would have happened if I just stayed on that chair
and they came back to me like an hour later, nothing,
Nothing would have happened, No danger to myself for others.
But that was how kind of PCs was. They had
these elements of things that you might see in a
psychiatric hospital, but they were used by people who were
not really trained to understand when when the proper use
(21:28):
were was. I was at probo for like a little
under a year my first time there, and I spent
more than like like six months of that time there
at UH in Investment or in obs. The investment unit
is filled with resive desks. In order to earn points,
the children would have to sit in perfect chair structure
(21:49):
without looking up or communicating for hours. Occasionally, thin bear
mattresses would line the halls at night. If a student
was deemed to be at risk of harming themselves, running away,
or potentially having same sex attraction, what kinds of things
would cause someone to be sent to this unit. You
might assume only the worst of behaviors, violent outbursts or
(22:11):
self harming, but you would assume wrong small minor infractions
could lead to investment. Um, you know, I was fourteen
years old and I was an I was a kid
with a d h D for sure, and um, there
are certain things I couldn't control, like about a d
h D or just maturity wise. Like I was a kid,
(22:31):
I would get a goofer out and then get in
trouble for it. But like these natural things that are
part of teenagehood, you were punished for. As an adult,
I think we like know how to kind of control
ourselves and control our physical reactions, but as a child,
it's a lot harder, especially like a child with a
d h D or if a child's there with like
bipolar disorder or like any other mental illness. Um having
(22:52):
to control like every reaction you do, like if anything
happens surrounding you can't look at it, having to like
make sure your breathing quietly, you're not fidgeting, like having
to be hyper aware of every little thing. That was
what like investment was was like if you aren't that strong,
high strong in that stress, you are not doing investment right.
And you could be there for much longer. We had
(23:14):
these things an investment called investment points IPS. You you'll
probably hear that a lot um and you turn off
like to every hour by sitting on your button. Investment
you would have like thousands of IP points to turn off.
So that would be months and months and months and
months of investment. And you could, like if you sit wrong,
(23:35):
or if you fidget too much, or if you like
make noise during investment, you get you know, you can
get more points at it. You could get your points
durrowed out. So obviously all of this discipline and structure
is nothing that any of us would experience in a
typical school. In all honesty, it doesn't really sound much
like a school at all. How can they even call
(23:57):
themselves one. This has always been an issue with pro
Volcanian School from the beginning when they opened in the
town pushed back on the zoning regulations. They argued that
although PCs would have school in its name, that it
was actually a juvenile detention facility. It's a hard point
to argue, as pro Vocanians seems less like a school
(24:18):
every moment you're inside. Would parents really send their children
here if they knew what was behind the wall, if
they knew that so much of it was just good
marketing with very little to back it up. We talked
to Dr Reamer about their marketing techniques and the psychology
behind it. When you look at their website, it looks
really good. When you look at their programmed descriptions, it
(24:41):
looks really good. It's very seductive, and I use that
word very deliberately. It's very seductive. I think one of
the biggest mistakes parents make. And I'm not being critical
of parents. I understand if they have a teenager who,
in their judgment, is spinning out of control old and
the local therapist has it worked, and the local school
(25:03):
has it worked, and they don't know what to do
and they start googling, which is what some people do.
I get it, I'm not being critical, and they come
across some of these websites that are very skillfully constructed.
And when you look at the website and you look
(25:23):
at the videos and you look at the testimonials, it
sounds and looks great. Sign me up. And then there's
the phenomenon of what we call potent in villages. Some
of you may know what a potent in village is,
where there is a fake facade, the equivalent of universal studio.
(25:49):
Potentican village has come to mean, and I'm quoting Wikipedia here,
any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to
hide an undis arable or potentially damaging situation. Historically, Potempian
villages were used to decorate a rundown area of a city,
or is mentioned on sound stages in Hollywood in elaborate
(26:11):
display with nothing behind. It looks like that's a hospital,
but it's just a wall. It looks like it's a mansion,
but you look on the other side of the wall,
there's nothing there. And I worry profoundly about the prevalence
(26:31):
of what I would call Potentican villages. The universal studio
facade in the struggling team industry. Through the use of
emotional marketing and strong referral systems, Provo was able to
create this glittering facade, one in which children flourished overseen
by competent, compassionate staff. But that was not the case,
(26:52):
not at all. So that the challenges how do you
get underneath that? How do you disclose? Well? One way
is you have someone like Paris Hilton who is willing
to go public, which it's a very brave decision. I
don't know her, I don't know what went into her decision,
(27:16):
but I respect it. Sometimes you need someone in the
public eye, whether it's Paris Hilton or someone else, to say, folks,
we got a problem. This is my experience. Now she's
not an academician, she doesn't do research, but she does
have lived experience, which is very powerful. And I think
(27:38):
sometimes you need people who are willing to pull back
the curtain, people who are willing to look under the hood,
people who are willing to look behind that universal studios
facade if you will, and expose e x p O
S E, expose what really goes on. So how do
(27:58):
you do that? Well, A site is a team may
not see it, whether it's a joint commission or some
other professional association. Because programs, let's let's let's be honest.
If they know the site team is coming, do they
(28:20):
put the equivalent of a fresh code of paint on
the whole place? I don't mean literally, although maybe that.
But do they talk to staff about what to say?
Do they tell students clients how to behave right to
avoid any appearance of a problem. Of course, that stuff happens,
so you know, well, I think accreditation and regulation can
(28:42):
be very good. I don't pretend for a minute that
they're going to be able to identify problems that might
be camouflaged during their visits. Pro Vocanian schools marketing capitalized
(29:07):
on desperate parents, using misleading advertising to paint a picture
of happy students and therapeutic programming. An ad dispersed by
PCs in the late nineteen seventies features a teenage girl
looking back over her shoulder, surrounded by other happy teens.
It depicts a letter from her to her parents. You're
about to hear a re enacted reading of that letter.
(29:29):
I miss your mom and dad. The school's okay after all,
and the teachers are pretty cool. My therapist says, I've
improved a lot in the last four months, plus, I
got a good grade on my English test. I'm sorry
for all the trouble that I caused at home. Okay,
after all, the language is extremely suggestive, emulating actual communications
(29:51):
between a daughter and her parents. They play up the
likelihood of improvement, cool teachers, good grades, and emotional catharsis,
and failed to mentioned the treatment itself. No mention of
solitary confinement or of held all injections the sedative commonly
used on students. But it can't all be blamed on
slick marketing and Potemkin villages. We were interested in the
(30:14):
regulatory and ethical framework that monitors residential treatment centers, so
we asked Dr Reemer for our listeners, can you qualify
for me exactly what ethical treatment is and how important
it is within the context of the teen treatment industry. Sure.
So it's a simple question with a very complicated answer.
And the truth is it would take me hours to
(30:35):
spell it out, insufficient to two but in my opinion
and ethically run program, and I wanted to read to
read given all the bad news in the struggling teen industry,
I think it's important to acknowledge there's also some good news,
and we ought to identify the programs that are ethical
(30:56):
and try to emulate them. You know, in the legal field,
lawyers refer to standard of care. The standard of care
is ordinarily defined as what's considered reasonable, appropriate, prudent in
a particular context, whether it's medicine or dentistry, or engineering
(31:19):
or architecture. And for our discussion with regard to programs
that serve struggling teams, whether the residential programs or non
residential programs. And underneath of that umbrella, if you will,
of standard of care are several guide posts. I think
one is ethical standards in the relevant professions, So the
(31:44):
responsible programs, higher professionally trained licensed professionals, teachers, social workers, psychologists, counselors,
substance use disorder treatment specialists, and so on. Each of
those professions has a code of ethics. That's one. A
(32:06):
second guide post. Ideally, these programs would be reviewed, assessed,
scrutinized in a positive way. I don't mean a big
brother way or a big sister way, in a positive
way by responsible regulatory agencies, accreditation agencies, other independent professional associations. So,
(32:31):
for example, a number of what I consider to be
the reputable, responsible programs they seek accreditation by what's called
the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission is any enormously influential
accreditation organization in the United States. They accredit hospitals and
rehabilitation facilities in nursing homes. Joint Commission accreditation is a
(32:56):
big deal. That's one example. There are in the struggling
team industry a number of organizations that I respect. Are
they perfect, Probably not, but I think they enhance the
likelihood that programs that subscribe to their standards are ethically
run programs. You know. The Joint Commission is possibly my
(33:24):
most favorite topic to talk about. As a nonprofit quasi
governmental entity, they oversee approximately twenty two thousand healthcare organizations,
some of these being the exact facilities that are rampant
with abuse. Dr rumors seems to paint a pretty glowing
portrait in practice, Is that really what's going on? Senator
(33:46):
Galsa Bluin seems to have a very different perspective on them.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation people used to refer to
it as JCO. It started as an accredit teaing entity
for hospitals. So often you would that a hospital was
JCO accredited and people would get ready for their JCO
or Joint Commission inspection, and it was kind of this
(34:08):
seal of approval or quality seal. Um. They then branched
out into behavioral health and into these these treatment programs.
I as a legislator frequently was hearing about while the
Joint Commission, it's accredited, it's got to be good. They
have to reach all these standards. When I started investigating this,
I became concerned about the types of facilities that actually
(34:31):
had Joint Commission accreditation. There was one facility in particular.
It was in Aurora, Illinois. They advertised themselves as a
psychiatric residential treatment facility. I obtained through public records requests
a series of reports of restraint UM. You know, little
(34:51):
tiny children being held in prone and supine restraints for
thirty forty five minutes by four to six adults. UM.
I visited the facility. I saw horrible things when I
was there. I left the facility and just cried. I
reported them to everybody that I could think of, and
I finally went to the Joint Commission because I realized
that their accreditation status was was due. I didn't hear
(35:15):
from them, and I contacted the federal government. Finally, the
federal government went in and they declared immediate jeopardy. And
immediate jeopardy means that they found that every child in
that facility was at an immediate risk of physical injury
or death primarily related to the restraint practices of the program.
We learned that kids were being strangled, um, kids were
(35:36):
being denied X rays, they had physical injuries, all sorts
of things. This was public. Uh, the federal government revoked
their provider number. They told them they could no longer
advertise as a psychiatric residential treatment facility. They could not
build medicaid. The Senator didn't think this was enough. They
needed to be shut down, their accreditation revoked. I sent
(35:58):
this information to the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission reinstated
their certification of the program, gave them their quality Seal
of approval. They called it stomy this and I said,
how can you do that? You know, you have a
responsibility as the Joint Commission. And what the representative said
to me was, we are a continuous improvement organization that
(36:21):
serves programs. We are not the Betty Crocker Seal of
Approval for child safety. That's what people think they are.
That is not what they are. The Joint Commission accredited
like Side Academy where Cornelius Frederick was killed. UH Joint
Commission accredited and maintained accreditation, and Morthern Illinois Academy until
it closed earlier this month. It accredits pro Vocanian School.
(36:45):
It is very, very difficult to get that revoked. The
other thing is unless you buy their standards, you can't
even know what their standards are. And after their initial assessment,
they don't assess on all of the standards. They'll go and,
you know, just check on on one or two. So
people look at that and they think their kids are safe.
They think it's a high quality program. It's it's not.
(37:07):
Their track record is terrible. The fact is they are
a front for the industry. They are funded by the
programs that they accredited. The Joint Commission is an incredibly
powerful organization. People trust them. They barely even investigate these facilities,
facilities filled with miners. They are claiming to protect. Their
(37:29):
accreditation cycle last three years, inspecting a given facility several
times before reaching a conclusion. However, it is not without controversy.
The inspections are supposed to be unannounced, but they often
give the facilities due warning. A two thousand five article
in The Washington Post stated that over of facilities that
(37:49):
seek accreditation and receive it, that's basically all of them.
And I actually called them many months ago and asked
them my self how they enforce their standard of care.
I was told by the phone operator that they send
out surveys every three years and sometimes sometimes will visit
(38:11):
a facility in person. A similar concern was raised by
The Boston Globe, who stated the Joint Commission, whose governing
board has long been dominated by representatives of the industry
it inspects, has been the target of criticism about the
validity of its valuations. Can an accreditation body with vested
interest really be trusted to properly police itself? If this
(38:35):
is the primary accreditation body for the industry, then it's
likely that the oversight is extremely shallow, deepening the case
that Provocinian School and other schools like them are actually
being given a free pass, a lax application of regulation
that in fact does nothing other than assuage the public's concerns.
So these schools and I hesitate to use that word,
(38:55):
can continue to operate at the sole benefit of their
investors and funding. Thought, the proliferation of mixed interests is
nothing new to the industry, and especially not to pro
Vocanian school From the very beginning, the owners were in
(39:17):
it to make a profit. It was clearly not just
about child welfare, if at all, it was big business
too FtM Follow the money, Follow the money late nineteen seventies, nies,
nineteen nineties, the two thousand, there's been an explosion. There's
an enormous amount of money available. You're going to find
(39:38):
programs emerging next time on Trapped in Treatment. Yeah, are
(40:07):
you interested in getting involved? Join our efforts at trapped
in Treatment dot com.
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care. Welcome back to Trapped in Treatment. I'm your
host Caroline Cole, and I'm Abacamelinger. Here we are now
in week three. If you've been following along so far,
(00:23):
you know that we have started to unearth some of
these really horrific stories of abuse around pro Vo Canyon School,
but we haven't really taken a peek inside just yet.
So in last week's episode, we heard a lot about
the transport industry, which, in our opinion, is an extremely
traumatic way to enter into a process that is supposed
(00:44):
to provide you with a healing journey. And in this
week's episode, we're going to hear about what it's like
to enter into the doors of pro Vo Canyon School.
Even the thought of that is honestly giving me flashbacks
recalling the time when I first arrived at the facility
that I went to, and I think for most survivors,
(01:05):
it gives us that visceral memory, right that like stomach tightening, fear, anxiety.
Are you guys ready for this episode? I think they're ready,
let's go intake investment solitary confinement, or OBS as they
(01:39):
call it, a school that sounds more like a prison.
In today's episode, we arrive at Provocanyon School, walking through
the doors of one of the most notorious residential treatment
facilities in North America. We'll hear stories from survivors about
what the first few days are like and explore the
seductive marketing techniques of the industry at large. What exactly
(02:00):
makes a school a school? Because pro Vocanian school, it's
not a school, not by a long shot. Victoria Lane
(02:21):
was not a particularly bad kid. She grew up in
Seattle with her family, but moved to Southwest Washington to
live with her mother and brother after a tumultuous divorce.
A city kid, Victoria was used to the hustle and
bustle of a metropolis, so the new environment was unfamiliar,
to say the least. We had been raised in towntown Seattle.
(02:41):
We didn't even know there were trees and seattle in
the state. We were like, Wow, this is crazy. Her
parents seemed preoccupied. She shared that her mother was a
flight attendant who traveled constantly. My mom flew constantly. Um
when I was about eleven, she started leaving the country
with us at home a loan and I was I'm
(03:03):
um eighteen months older than my brother, so it was
predominantly UM, you know, just kind of take care of yourselves.
You're safe, you're in the country, whatever. And of course
we started getting into trouble not going to school. Um,
the school would contact my mom and I was in
public school because I just didn't go. Parents aren't there.
(03:24):
I was like, I'm not gonna go. We don't have
to go. And I didn't do anything bad. I mean
I maybe smoked pot maybe like it didn't do anything.
But I would lie and my brother lied to for attention.
For attention. Um, there was no parent at home. We
would just be like boisterous about our lives. Oh, we're
doing this and that. You know, we weren't doing anything.
(03:45):
We were living in We were nobody and um. Instead
of helping us or giving us the attention, my mom
immediately listened to some people who said, you know, there's
this place in Utah you could send her. Her mom
told her it was a boarding school. Victoria had spent
summers away at summer camp, so she really didn't think
(04:06):
anything of it. She even looked at a brochure. I
remember packing kind of and I remember telling my brother
I was going to boarding school. I think I remember
even like looking at pictures or videos like a brochure,
like I remember bringing things. I remember there were things
you couldn't bring or something. And I never thought that
was weird because I just thought it was like camp,
(04:26):
you know. I never thought it was that weird. And
because my mom was a flight attendant most of my life,
I had already been very comfortable flying. So I went myself.
I flew myself. She dropped me off at Sea Tech,
and I didn't see her again. Nestled on an unassuming
residential block, Provo Canyon School doesn't look out of place.
Flanked by a soccer field and a tennis court, one
(04:48):
might walk by it without taking a second look, but
something stands out. An eerie calm permeates the boys and
girls campus. The pool is empty of children, the fields
are the same for being called to school, it sure
doesn't feel like one. But when Victoria arrived at the
(05:08):
girls campus, she kind of liked the place at first.
So I flew into Salt Lake City. Um, I felt
kind of cool because someone was picking me up, like,
I mean, this is the nineties. This isn't like you know,
there's not phones. You know, people don't know what's going on.
Like to me, like somebody picking me up with my
name on a sign. That sounds cool. You know, I
(05:30):
didn't think it was weird. It was pretty. It was
grein Utah is a pretty place. It's real clean. You
drive up, it looks like a boarding school. It's um.
It was surrounded by these beautiful it was springtime. Um,
these cherry blossoms were all in bloom around it. So
it was pretty pretty picturesque. Even Provo's website paints the
(05:57):
picture of a behavioral health center that will for even
the most rebellious child. But behind the heavy metal doors,
a very different scenario plays out. You know, I went
inside and it looked like your therapist office or like
a doctor's office when you were waiting, heavy oak furniture,
you know, big and transway. There wasn't anybody standing there,
(06:20):
you know though, like if you walk into a hotel,
there's not like a person. There was never anybody in
the front office ever, and that should have been a
I guess assigned me. Immediately after arrival. You go through
intake the equivalent of being processed in prison. Rather than
a quaint office with an oversized armchair, you're taken into
(06:41):
a cold, cinder block room with no tables or chairs.
This is where it begins. They so they take everything
and they say they're going to go through everything and
label everything. So you're like, okay, they're gonna label everything.
Maybe they do that for you know, purpose whatever, And
then they give you somebody else's clothes and then you're
immediately like, you this is gross because they're not like
(07:02):
nice clothes, they're like very used stained. Holy You're like,
this is gross. I don't know where the heck I am.
And I was thirteen, of course I was allowed to
think that way. And then I um, I had to
squat I remember that to check you, you know, as
a woman, like if you were getting checked it like
(07:23):
security or some kind of situation where they make huge squat, right.
I remember myself going. So I showed up in the
middle of the night, it was like three am, and
they brought me to this very institutional looking dormitory where
(07:43):
everything was like cinder blocks and very barren. And I
remember I was also around the age that you were.
You were thirteen years old. I was had just turned fourteen,
uh the month before, and and at that age I
had never really been naked in front of anyone. Yeah,
hardly even my own mom. Nonetheless, these complete strangers, and uh,
(08:09):
I feel like during these kinds of strip searches, because they,
you know, asked me to get completely naked. Um, and
then I think they made me do jumping jack's. They
make you do the jumping jacks and then they make
you squat and cough. And I specifically remember because I
didn't know what they were getting at, Like I didn't
know why they were making me do this, and so
(08:29):
I remember looking at them and like going and then
being like was that enough? Like do you want me
to cough harder? I just truly wasn't understanding what the
purpose was of me doing this. But it was the
first real realization that, like, I've never been to a
summer camp that made me do this before, Maybe this
is not what I think it is. I think immediately
(08:52):
I was like it hit me probably because yeah, you're right,
I've never had that experience in my life. And I
honestly I had never done really, I had never done drugs.
I had never really even partied. So to me, the
idea that I was holding something in my private parts
was just like I didn't I old people do that,
(09:14):
Like I was just totally totally not into that. And
that's how it was pretty much twenty four hours a days,
seven days a week for like the first, you know,
a few months I was there. I mean I remember
seeing people in straight jackets. Immediately you go in, You
go in, and then you go up to this elevator
(09:34):
and it goes you up to the top of the
only top floor, and then you walk past the doctor's
offices and you go past their like little school area,
and to the right is investment, and then past that
is where you go when you're first there. So you
have to go through investment just when you first get there.
So when you first get there, you have to experience
(09:57):
girls screaming, locked uh peeing themselves in the hallway sleeping,
and you're like, where am I? Holy heck, this is
not what I expected. For Courtney Knapastick, the entire experience
(10:30):
was surreal. She had a different upbringing growing up in Carrie, Illinois.
Her parents were loving married for over thirty years. Nonetheless,
she struggled with depression and bullying. She would get in fights.
She admits she was rebellious sent to two wilderness programs
before arriving at Provoe. She was looking forward to having
(10:52):
a normal experience for once. I remember like a really
cool ride they're I was super excited to like take
showers and like use a toilet and just be human again. Um.
But when we got there, the staff's atted tubes changed
very quickly once the door is locked behind me. So
(11:14):
you get there, and then they bring you into this
like concrete cell and they tell you to like strip
and hand over each piece of clothing like slowly to them,
and then there's like a mirror in the corner that
you're facing um, and your back is towards staff, and
(11:34):
then they can watch you through the mirror up in
the corner as well. So you're handing them each piece
of clothing. Like eventually you're naked, and they tell you
to squat and cough, and then eventually, like a minute,
they'll throw close back at you. I didn't cough hard
enough the first time, so they made me do it twice,
which was already really humiliating. Then you get this surprise
(12:03):
vaginal exam that is not optional. Um. I was a
fifteen year old kid. I've never had sex before, and
I remember kind of crying and be like, do I
have to do this? And she told me if I
didn't cooperate that she could get the staff from Investment,
(12:23):
which is the unit that the kids who are in
trouble go to, so she could get the staff from
that unit to come restrain me, so she could perform
this exam. And so I just complied and let that happen.
(12:44):
The stories seem unreal, like something out of her prison novel.
Girls in straight jackets, squatt and cough, internal pelvic exams,
children who should have been at a normal school, with
desks in recess rather than els. The environment is tense, unhappy,
(13:04):
screams ring out. It's hard to comprehend how PCs could
be called a school. Typical schools in our country don't
subject students to cavity searches. We don't ask our sixth
graders to sit alone in a room for six hours
at a time staring at the wall. What Victoria and
Courtney witnessed on their first days inside was a sure
(13:25):
indicator that they were not in for a traditional experience.
They thought they were heading to boarding school, even if
it was one for bad kids. Instead, they ended up
in an institution made to strip down and assigned a number,
stripped of their clothing, their dignity in any sense of
being in control of their surroundings. At Provo, this wasn't
(13:47):
just a safety measure, but an intentional assertion of power
that didn't end with intake, because the next hurdle, the
never ending task, was avoiding. The investment unit, which is
to mind in the parent handbook, is a period in
which a student has to prove their willingness to cooperate
in their treatment. The period of time locked away in
(14:09):
this unit could range from days two months. So wait
a second, before we get too far into the story,
Let's let the audience in on the structure of the
program at profile. Please let's do that, because I think
this can be one of the most twisted and oppressive
aspects of PCs and facilities like it. So the entire
program is built off of gaining levels, and as you
(14:32):
gain levels, you gain privileges like getting to go to
class or live with your peers, and each level has
a name like Orientation, Achievement, Senior, and so forth. The
investment unit is essentially the punishment unit, the lowest of below.
We have a letter from PCs to a parent that
claims it only takes approximately two weeks to move through
(14:55):
each phase of the program. So why is it that
some kids are staying at Provo for years on top
of having to stay off of investment and probation. Every
status advancement had to be voted on by staff in
their weekly treatment team. In most cases, children were denied
from moving up in levels too quickly for arbitrary reasons
(15:16):
such as it's too soon, or worries about the child
faking it, stretching out their stay for many months two years.
Here's Victoria on her experience. Investment was what happens when
you So there was class systems and that was part
of it. Um they pin you up, they put you
(15:37):
against each other, that's part of it. There everybody's in
different levels and you get in struggle, you get written up.
You're getting written up enough, they take everything from you.
You move your unit and you live in Investment. So
but Investment was then ten rooms, maybe eight and a
big central room and too quiet rooms is how they
(16:01):
put on. But they were just completely stone, raw rooms
with a UM a a like a shower in the center,
a shower hole in the center. Why just stone two
of them, and a bathroom in the middle and everything.
All the bathrooms were like super super medical, Like if
you were going to like a medical place that was
(16:24):
like super sano medically. It's the whole place looked like
a like a medical hospital or that kind of situation.
I have the parent handbook in front of me, and
this is how they describe this unit. The investment unit
is a secured area where patients receive more intense supervision,
depending on the infraction assignment to the unit, maybe for
(16:44):
a number of hours or days. The word investment indicates
that it's the patient's responsibility to contribute time and effort
to regain lost privileges or status. That sounds a lot
different than what the survivors describe locked in investment made
to prove their willingness to comply, youth would be forced
to work off points by standing or sitting for hours
(17:07):
at a time, staring at the wall in front of them.
We asked Katherine McNamara about her experience. If you remember
we spoke to her last episode. Now an activist herself
and part of the breaking code silence movement. We wanted
to know what her experience with Investment was. Yeah, Like,
so I'm sitting there on a chair and like crying
and like really upset, and like the staff member comes
(17:27):
over and I forgot like what why she wanted me
to get off the chair, but like I pretty much
was like fuck, you know, and um and uh, she
just looked at me and she was like, oh, You're
gonna get off the chair if I want you to.
And I was like no, no, I'm staying here, like
f you and UM I said something like make me
(17:48):
I think, and um, you know, at the time I
was sitting on chair, I'm I'm at fourteen years old,
I'm really scrawnly, scrawny. I'm like I remember being like
I was underweight, I believe, and I was hardly intimidating.
And uh, all I remember is her picking up her
radio because they all carried radios and going dial nine
to Investment and I didn't know what dial nine was,
(18:12):
but I figured out, like, and she's like getting to
Obbs or else or else, and you know, she pointed
the way towards the door, and um, I didn't know
what a dial nine was. As I said, But I
realized really quickly it was something bad when I started
hearing like boomoomook up the stairs because it sounded like
a like a stampede was coming. So I got my
butt up and went into Obbs before the stampede showed up.
(18:35):
But basically all this the staff like showed up and um,
they're basically like you gotta handled okay, cool, and they
like ended up leaving. But what would have happened if
I had refused and stayed on that chair is basically
all these staff would have tackled me and dragged me
in there. So I went into Obbs, and Obbs was
this like, uh, you know, this weirdly shaped cement room.
(18:57):
If you've seen the Parasilain documentary that that like, uh
drawing of it is scary accurate. It's this weird shaped
cement room. It's always cold, and there was like a
skylight above where you could see just like the glimmer
of maybe like light up there. It was always cold,
like they were running that a c in there on
(19:19):
purpose to like sixty something degrees. And when once you
get in there, uh, they make you stripped down because
they their claim is that they don't want you to
commit suicide. So they take away your bra your panties.
They give you like these really thin tiny shorts that
you put on and this really thin like shirt and
with the a C running at like sixty degrees plus
(19:40):
uh plus like cement everything and nothing to keep you warm,
you just freeze in there. So I was in and
they call it observation or OBS, and the staff like
sits there. They might close the door. If they close
the door, there's no no um uh door knob inside,
so pretty much screwed if you're in there, like until
(20:02):
they let you out. There's just one little like window.
But they didn't close the door on me. They just
kind of left me in there, and I remember crying
in there and just being cold like so called like
I remember pulling like the shirt over my legs trying
to stay warm. And the idea of it is like
obviously to keep you like cool, you chill you off
and like make you like want to come out so
(20:23):
badly that you're just going to comply. And um OBBS
was like you know, like in a in a classic
like psychiatric facility, something like a calming room would be
used like is supposed to be used if you're a
danger to yourself or a danger to others, and it's
only for like you should be you know, in a
real facility like the Standard of Cares, you should be
(20:44):
UH talk down to, like you know, talk down from
whatever crisis you're in, by a licensed professional and stuff
like that. I was not in a crisis. I was,
and and you also should be let out as quickly
as possible, as soon as you're escalated. There's no therapists
who came to speak to me in there. I was
there for hours, I was freezing my butt off, and
(21:05):
I was not a danger to myself for others. What
would have happened if I just stayed on that chair
and they came back to me like an hour later, nothing,
Nothing would have happened, No danger to myself for others.
But that was how kind of PCs was. They had
these elements of things that you might see in a
psychiatric hospital, but they were used by people who were
not really trained to understand when when the proper use
(21:28):
were was. I was at probo for like a little
under a year my first time there, and I spent
more than like like six months of that time there
at UH in Investment or in obs. The investment unit
is filled with resive desks. In order to earn points,
the children would have to sit in perfect chair structure
(21:49):
without looking up or communicating for hours. Occasionally, thin bear
mattresses would line the halls at night. If a student
was deemed to be at risk of harming themselves, running away,
or potentially having same sex attraction, what kinds of things
would cause someone to be sent to this unit. You
might assume only the worst of behaviors, violent outbursts or
(22:11):
self harming, but you would assume wrong small minor infractions
could lead to investment. Um, you know, I was fourteen
years old and I was an I was a kid
with a d h D for sure, and um, there
are certain things I couldn't control, like about a d
h D or just maturity wise. Like I was a kid,
(22:31):
I would get a goofer out and then get in
trouble for it. But like these natural things that are
part of teenagehood, you were punished for. As an adult,
I think we like know how to kind of control
ourselves and control our physical reactions, but as a child,
it's a lot harder, especially like a child with a
d h D or if a child's there with like
bipolar disorder or like any other mental illness. Um having
(22:52):
to control like every reaction you do, like if anything
happens surrounding you can't look at it, having to like
make sure your breathing quietly, you're not fidgeting, like having
to be hyper aware of every little thing. That was
what like investment was was like if you aren't that strong,
high strong in that stress, you are not doing investment right.
And you could be there for much longer. We had
(23:14):
these things an investment called investment points IPS. You you'll
probably hear that a lot um and you turn off
like to every hour by sitting on your button. Investment
you would have like thousands of IP points to turn off.
So that would be months and months and months and
months of investment. And you could, like if you sit wrong,
(23:35):
or if you fidget too much, or if you like
make noise during investment, you get you know, you can
get more points at it. You could get your points
durrowed out. So obviously all of this discipline and structure
is nothing that any of us would experience in a
typical school. In all honesty, it doesn't really sound much
like a school at all. How can they even call
(23:57):
themselves one. This has always been an issue with pro
Volcanian School from the beginning when they opened in the
town pushed back on the zoning regulations. They argued that
although PCs would have school in its name, that it
was actually a juvenile detention facility. It's a hard point
to argue, as pro Vocanians seems less like a school
(24:18):
every moment you're inside. Would parents really send their children
here if they knew what was behind the wall, if
they knew that so much of it was just good
marketing with very little to back it up. We talked
to Dr Reamer about their marketing techniques and the psychology
behind it. When you look at their website, it looks
really good. When you look at their programmed descriptions, it
(24:41):
looks really good. It's very seductive, and I use that
word very deliberately. It's very seductive. I think one of
the biggest mistakes parents make. And I'm not being critical
of parents. I understand if they have a teenager who,
in their judgment, is spinning out of control old and
the local therapist has it worked, and the local school
(25:03):
has it worked, and they don't know what to do
and they start googling, which is what some people do.
I get it, I'm not being critical, and they come
across some of these websites that are very skillfully constructed.
And when you look at the website and you look
(25:23):
at the videos and you look at the testimonials, it
sounds and looks great. Sign me up. And then there's
the phenomenon of what we call potent in villages. Some
of you may know what a potent in village is,
where there is a fake facade, the equivalent of universal studio.
(25:49):
Potentican village has come to mean, and I'm quoting Wikipedia here,
any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to
hide an undis arable or potentially damaging situation. Historically, Potempian
villages were used to decorate a rundown area of a city,
or is mentioned on sound stages in Hollywood in elaborate
(26:11):
display with nothing behind. It looks like that's a hospital,
but it's just a wall. It looks like it's a mansion,
but you look on the other side of the wall,
there's nothing there. And I worry profoundly about the prevalence
(26:31):
of what I would call Potentican villages. The universal studio
facade in the struggling team industry. Through the use of
emotional marketing and strong referral systems, Provo was able to
create this glittering facade, one in which children flourished overseen
by competent, compassionate staff. But that was not the case,
(26:52):
not at all. So that the challenges how do you
get underneath that? How do you disclose? Well? One way
is you have someone like Paris Hilton who is willing
to go public, which it's a very brave decision. I
don't know her, I don't know what went into her decision,
(27:16):
but I respect it. Sometimes you need someone in the
public eye, whether it's Paris Hilton or someone else, to say, folks,
we got a problem. This is my experience. Now she's
not an academician, she doesn't do research, but she does
have lived experience, which is very powerful. And I think
(27:38):
sometimes you need people who are willing to pull back
the curtain, people who are willing to look under the hood,
people who are willing to look behind that universal studios
facade if you will, and expose e x p O
S E, expose what really goes on. So how do
(27:58):
you do that? Well, A site is a team may
not see it, whether it's a joint commission or some
other professional association. Because programs, let's let's let's be honest.
If they know the site team is coming, do they
(28:20):
put the equivalent of a fresh code of paint on
the whole place? I don't mean literally, although maybe that.
But do they talk to staff about what to say?
Do they tell students clients how to behave right to
avoid any appearance of a problem. Of course, that stuff happens,
so you know, well, I think accreditation and regulation can
(28:42):
be very good. I don't pretend for a minute that
they're going to be able to identify problems that might
be camouflaged during their visits. Pro Vocanian schools marketing capitalized
(29:07):
on desperate parents, using misleading advertising to paint a picture
of happy students and therapeutic programming. An ad dispersed by
PCs in the late nineteen seventies features a teenage girl
looking back over her shoulder, surrounded by other happy teens.
It depicts a letter from her to her parents. You're
about to hear a re enacted reading of that letter.
(29:29):
I miss your mom and dad. The school's okay after all,
and the teachers are pretty cool. My therapist says, I've
improved a lot in the last four months, plus, I
got a good grade on my English test. I'm sorry
for all the trouble that I caused at home. Okay,
after all, the language is extremely suggestive, emulating actual communications
(29:51):
between a daughter and her parents. They play up the
likelihood of improvement, cool teachers, good grades, and emotional catharsis,
and failed to mentioned the treatment itself. No mention of
solitary confinement or of held all injections the sedative commonly
used on students. But it can't all be blamed on
slick marketing and Potemkin villages. We were interested in the
(30:14):
regulatory and ethical framework that monitors residential treatment centers, so
we asked Dr Reemer for our listeners, can you qualify
for me exactly what ethical treatment is and how important
it is within the context of the teen treatment industry. Sure.
So it's a simple question with a very complicated answer.
And the truth is it would take me hours to
(30:35):
spell it out, insufficient to two but in my opinion
and ethically run program, and I wanted to read to
read given all the bad news in the struggling teen industry,
I think it's important to acknowledge there's also some good news,
and we ought to identify the programs that are ethical
(30:56):
and try to emulate them. You know, in the legal field,
lawyers refer to standard of care. The standard of care
is ordinarily defined as what's considered reasonable, appropriate, prudent in
a particular context, whether it's medicine or dentistry, or engineering
(31:19):
or architecture. And for our discussion with regard to programs
that serve struggling teams, whether the residential programs or non
residential programs. And underneath of that umbrella, if you will,
of standard of care are several guide posts. I think
one is ethical standards in the relevant professions, So the
(31:44):
responsible programs, higher professionally trained licensed professionals, teachers, social workers, psychologists, counselors,
substance use disorder treatment specialists, and so on. Each of
those professions has a code of ethics. That's one. A
(32:06):
second guide post. Ideally, these programs would be reviewed, assessed,
scrutinized in a positive way. I don't mean a big
brother way or a big sister way, in a positive
way by responsible regulatory agencies, accreditation agencies, other independent professional associations. So,
(32:31):
for example, a number of what I consider to be
the reputable, responsible programs they seek accreditation by what's called
the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission is any enormously influential
accreditation organization in the United States. They accredit hospitals and
rehabilitation facilities in nursing homes. Joint Commission accreditation is a
(32:56):
big deal. That's one example. There are in the struggling
team industry a number of organizations that I respect. Are
they perfect, Probably not, but I think they enhance the
likelihood that programs that subscribe to their standards are ethically
run programs. You know. The Joint Commission is possibly my
(33:24):
most favorite topic to talk about. As a nonprofit quasi
governmental entity, they oversee approximately twenty two thousand healthcare organizations,
some of these being the exact facilities that are rampant
with abuse. Dr rumors seems to paint a pretty glowing
portrait in practice, Is that really what's going on? Senator
(33:46):
Galsa Bluin seems to have a very different perspective on them.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation people used to refer to
it as JCO. It started as an accredit teaing entity
for hospitals. So often you would that a hospital was
JCO accredited and people would get ready for their JCO
or Joint Commission inspection, and it was kind of this
(34:08):
seal of approval or quality seal. Um. They then branched
out into behavioral health and into these these treatment programs.
I as a legislator frequently was hearing about while the
Joint Commission, it's accredited, it's got to be good. They
have to reach all these standards. When I started investigating this,
I became concerned about the types of facilities that actually
(34:31):
had Joint Commission accreditation. There was one facility in particular.
It was in Aurora, Illinois. They advertised themselves as a
psychiatric residential treatment facility. I obtained through public records requests
a series of reports of restraint UM. You know, little
(34:51):
tiny children being held in prone and supine restraints for
thirty forty five minutes by four to six adults. UM.
I visited the facility. I saw horrible things when I
was there. I left the facility and just cried. I
reported them to everybody that I could think of, and
I finally went to the Joint Commission because I realized
that their accreditation status was was due. I didn't hear
(35:15):
from them, and I contacted the federal government. Finally, the
federal government went in and they declared immediate jeopardy. And
immediate jeopardy means that they found that every child in
that facility was at an immediate risk of physical injury
or death primarily related to the restraint practices of the program.
We learned that kids were being strangled, um, kids were
(35:36):
being denied X rays, they had physical injuries, all sorts
of things. This was public. Uh, the federal government revoked
their provider number. They told them they could no longer
advertise as a psychiatric residential treatment facility. They could not
build medicaid. The Senator didn't think this was enough. They
needed to be shut down, their accreditation revoked. I sent
(35:58):
this information to the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission reinstated
their certification of the program, gave them their quality Seal
of approval. They called it stomy this and I said,
how can you do that? You know, you have a
responsibility as the Joint Commission. And what the representative said
to me was, we are a continuous improvement organization that
(36:21):
serves programs. We are not the Betty Crocker Seal of
Approval for child safety. That's what people think they are.
That is not what they are. The Joint Commission accredited
like Side Academy where Cornelius Frederick was killed. UH Joint
Commission accredited and maintained accreditation, and Morthern Illinois Academy until
it closed earlier this month. It accredits pro Vocanian School.
(36:45):
It is very, very difficult to get that revoked. The
other thing is unless you buy their standards, you can't
even know what their standards are. And after their initial assessment,
they don't assess on all of the standards. They'll go and,
you know, just check on on one or two. So
people look at that and they think their kids are safe.
They think it's a high quality program. It's it's not.
(37:07):
Their track record is terrible. The fact is they are
a front for the industry. They are funded by the
programs that they accredited. The Joint Commission is an incredibly
powerful organization. People trust them. They barely even investigate these facilities,
facilities filled with miners. They are claiming to protect. Their
(37:29):
accreditation cycle last three years, inspecting a given facility several
times before reaching a conclusion. However, it is not without controversy.
The inspections are supposed to be unannounced, but they often
give the facilities due warning. A two thousand five article
in The Washington Post stated that over of facilities that
(37:49):
seek accreditation and receive it, that's basically all of them.
And I actually called them many months ago and asked
them my self how they enforce their standard of care.
I was told by the phone operator that they send
out surveys every three years and sometimes sometimes will visit
(38:11):
a facility in person. A similar concern was raised by
The Boston Globe, who stated the Joint Commission, whose governing
board has long been dominated by representatives of the industry
it inspects, has been the target of criticism about the
validity of its valuations. Can an accreditation body with vested
interest really be trusted to properly police itself? If this
(38:35):
is the primary accreditation body for the industry, then it's
likely that the oversight is extremely shallow, deepening the case
that Provocinian School and other schools like them are actually
being given a free pass, a lax application of regulation
that in fact does nothing other than assuage the public's concerns.
So these schools and I hesitate to use that word,
(38:55):
can continue to operate at the sole benefit of their
investors and funding. Thought, the proliferation of mixed interests is
nothing new to the industry, and especially not to pro
Vocanian school From the very beginning, the owners were in
(39:17):
it to make a profit. It was clearly not just
about child welfare, if at all, it was big business
too FtM Follow the money, Follow the money late nineteen seventies, nies,
nineteen nineties, the two thousand, there's been an explosion. There's
an enormous amount of money available. You're going to find
(39:38):
programs emerging next time on Trapped in Treatment. Yeah, are
(40:07):
you interested in getting involved? Join our efforts at trapped
in Treatment dot com.
Hosts And Creators
Paris Hilton
Rebecca Mellinger
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