March 9, 2022 • 25 mins
Provo Canyon School’s tactics of using manipulation and isolation are highlighted through jarring survivor accounts.
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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 from I Heart Radio, London Audio and executive
producer Paris Hilton. This is Trapped in Treatment, where your
hosts Rebecca Mellinger in Caroline Cole, one troubled teen industry
(00:20):
survivor and one investigator on a mission to expose the
truth of an industry plagued by controversy and to make
sure that no child has to experience the hell that
is teen treatment. Wow, last episode was heavy, wasn't it, Caroline?
(00:55):
It really was. I've heard hundreds of survivors stories within
our community and they never stop being agonizing and like
physically grueling to hear. What's so so scary is that
this is still happening today. We examine the tactics of
(01:17):
isolation and manipulation that make time within Provocanian School so traumatizing.
From the moment a child is enrolled at PCs, the
ties to family are immediately cut. It starts with the
decision to hire a third party to transport the kids
at the suggestion of the school. It's safer they say.
(01:38):
Less traumatic parents slowly begin to let go to trust
these strangers and their ready responses. They don't realize that
within the methodology at PCs is the belief that the
child must be uprooted from their communities, their identity, and
their ability to communicate with the outside world. The question
often asked of survivors is why don't you just tell
(01:59):
your parents how bad it was? Why didn't you just
write home and tell them to come get you. It's
a simple question with a complex and multilayered answer. Today
(02:24):
we're gonna hear Tricia's story, the aunt of a young
boy sent away just last year. And this story is
really important because it's recent. Decades after the a c
l U case, the band solitary confinement, polygraph tests, the
use of physical force, and the censorship of communication and mail.
Tricia still struggles to communicate with him. She's conscious of
(02:45):
the rules of the program and doesn't believe that much
has changed. Isolation and control are still the name of
the game. James Thomas was sent away just last year.
(03:07):
He's only twelve years old, so for his safety, his
name has been changed. James was a healthy and bright kid.
In March, he was taken into custody by State Child
Protective Services. His aunt has been fighting desperately to gain
custody of her nephew, but was ultimately denied that right
by the courts. Instead, he was sent away to pro
(03:27):
Volcanian School. It was kind of shocking because I literally
saw Paris Hilton's video randomly. It just popped up on
my feed right before all this happened, and I really,
it's pretty insane to me. I went to school for
social services. I had never even heard about these types
of places ever in my thirty one years of life
being a social service major, and this random video popped up.
(03:51):
And I remember talking to the social worker and she said, well,
your nephew is going to a boarding school. And I
was like, oh, okay, And I was like, oh, so
it's like school and stuff, and like, I really didn't
it wasn't clicking quite yet. And she had said yeah,
it's therapeutic, and I go, oh, really, there's like therapy
(04:12):
there and all that. You know. Cool, All right, he's
got therapy counseling, and he's gonna be his grades, they're
gonna get great. That's great, until I can get him out.
Tricia did her due diligence and began researching where her
nephew would spend the next few months. She hoped it
was a school where he would get an education and
maybe make some friends. When she realized it was PCs,
she felt quite differently. I sat there for a minute
(04:35):
and it was like someone stocked me in the stomach
or something like. There was like this heart wrenching like
why am I feeling this way? Why does this name
like a ring a bell? And then it hit me.
It was that video I watched with Paras Hilton. And
if I wouldn't like seen that video, I would have
had no idea for Tricia. His nephews in the foster
care system, ease of communication was nonexistent at that point.
(04:59):
I I knew he'd be isolated just from the first
video I ever saw, and they had made that clear
to me when I tried to call uh. And I
think for two weeks I just cried, you know, because
I just kept thinking of my little nephew was scared
on a cod wherever he is, you know, and not
allowed to talk to his family. And what kind of
(05:24):
treatment center are you when your method of treatment is
removing an individual from their entire family, especially young children.
She had to fight for contact, and when she finally
was able to speak with him, their calls were monitored.
It was about three and a half weeks until I
(05:46):
got to actually talk to him. Our first conversation was
how did you find me? And this and that and
we got to zoom. There was always somebody in the
room at every point. Um. You could hear them typing,
or you could see him look over at somebody. Often
his body language spoke volumes um. I mean, that was
(06:08):
the thing that upset me the most, his body language,
like without him saying anything. Tricia felt deep down like
James wasn't being truthful during their monitored calls and wondered
what was really happening behind Profo's closed doors. Over the
next few months, her nephew changed in small ways. Each
short visit or called displayed a boy under dress, uncomfortable, agitated,
(06:32):
and trying desperately to communicate with his aunt. There was
this moment where he said, it was trying to tell
me something really quick, and this was this was during
a phone conversation, not a zoom and he was like, hey,
like when you need to get me out of here
and need to getting me at your lah lah you know,
and I was like okay, and then it was just
like this guy walking and you can hear a man
(06:53):
walking in and he goes, yeah, so anyway, yeah, everything's
been great. It was like he was never his authentic self.
He was never comfortable and I was looking at somebody
who had fear in their eyes, unable to speak freely.
He found other ways to communicate his distress, and he
was he was making this as the game like what if,
(07:15):
like what if you were in a tornado? Would you
a grab a parachute or would you be going a bunker?
And then you'd be like, you know, be going a
bunker because that's safer, or I'd go in the parachute
and fly around the tornado. Um, but that's the game.
He was talking about what if And he said, so,
what if somebody people were torturing Kira? Would you a
(07:41):
just pick up the phone and merely caller or be
would you do something? And before I even got to answer,
he said, I think the answer is pretty obvious. You
do something, right, you do something? And I said, um,
I got you, Yeah, yeah I would, I would do something,
(08:07):
and he goes, yeah, see that's my point. That was
my point, and then he no longer wanted to play
the game anymore. It was one round, and that's what
he wanted to tell me. Um, And I don't really
have words for that. I don't because, honestly, until he's
(08:28):
out of there completely, I don't know what they did.
I don't know what all they did, but I know
they did something. One day, shortly before Tricia's last call
with James, she received an email Provocanian School emailed james
(08:48):
social worker before the call. Verbatim, it reads, we're going
to facilitate this call today with James and his aunt.
I do want to request that you let the aunt
know that she has not to speak to James about
discharging or transferring to another facility. James is already struggling,
and we do not need anything that will make it
more difficult for him. I would appreciate if his aunt
(09:09):
could encourage him to do well and to follow the
rules and keep the conversation around those topics. Because Tricia
had seen Paris's documentary, she knew that the calls could
be ended for any reason. If staff heard her or
James speaking negatively about the program, it was her job
to support the program if she wanted to continue speaking
(09:30):
with her nephew. Luckily, Tricia's nephew was released from Provocanian
just a few months later. She was finally able to
speak to him, hug him, and tell him that nothing
was wrong with him, that she had tried her best
to get him out. But James stories stuck with us.
(09:50):
Right at the beginning, there's a wedge driven between the
family and the child. There's physical separation, sure, between magnetically
locked doors and sometimes thousan sin of miles between the
youth and their home. But most importantly, there's a degree
of distrust that's created, and this is the most dangerous. Plus,
(10:10):
these kids have already been framed, whether true or not,
to be troubled and untrustworthy, so it's easy to believe
that maybe they're exaggerating about what's happening exactly. But what
we see is that once that child arrives at the facility,
the program immediately tells the parent, your child is going
to try and manipulate you. They're going to lie and
say that all kinds of things are happening. Don't believe them.
(10:34):
And on top of that, these kids are being told
that being negative, resisting the program, are saying what's happening
to you will only keep you there longer, so eventually
you just surrender and go with the program. We have
a copy of an older parent handbook that actually states,
if your child's telephone calls are used in an attempt
to manipulate or to pressure you for visits, please support
(10:57):
school policies and notify his or her primary therapist. If
we dissect that language, it would seem that PCs is
instructing the parents that, in the case of their child
asking for more visits, to tell on their child by
reporting it to the therapist. I mean, how odd to
ask a parent to report on their child's request for
more visits, more interaction. The school's efforts to block communication
(11:21):
was more than just an innocent attempt at keeping the
kids in line. It was manipulation. Sure for the parents
it was frustrating, but for the young adults locked inside
this could be construed as proof then maybe they really
were bad, and maybe their parents really didn't care. I
don't remember direct words. It was along the lines of
(11:43):
if your family loved you, you would already be home. Um,
but you're here, so obviously they don't care. Did you
internalize that? Did you believe it? For a while? Um,
I struggled. After I got out of my program, I
(12:06):
she genuinely thought my parents didn't love me, because I mean,
look at all these red flags that I didn't realize
that they didn't know about at the time. Um, and
I was still there, so it was hard not to
believe it. But for PCs survivor Jack Hendry and his grandmother,
it was not odd. It was suspicious. Back up, give
(12:29):
me some context what happened. So basically every day I
would write my grandma, and my grandma basically had enough
of trying to figure out what was going on. So
she's calling the front desk. So my therapist don't wint
to this and freaked out, completely freaked out, pulled me
out of school when I was in study in the
library and it was not a normal therapy day, pulled
(12:51):
me out, and for about thirty minutes is trying to
thrill me about why is my grandma calling to figure
out what's going on? So she's the only one actually
getting what the hell is going on? Like, okay, he's
actually in trouble. So in any case, UM, the you know,
she drills me for about thirty minutes and gets my
parents on the phone, so for another thirty minutes, you know,
(13:14):
we're going Basically, she starts questioning them, why is his
grandma calling? And they're like, we don't know, like, you know,
like they don't have the full over my grandma. So
she's no g great you know, there was a great lady,
sweet kind, but you didn't want to piss her off.
(13:34):
So in any case, you know, she's trying to figure
out what the hell is going on, and so like
she can't get an answer. So eventually, you know, my
therapist is like, you know, all what the hell and
hangs up the phone. His therapist hung up the phone,
but didn't hang up the speaker. For the next thirty minutes,
(13:55):
she proceeded to berate Jack, a full on abusive freak out,
and then something unthinkable happened, maybe like twenty so minutes
into it, almost three minutes into it, all of a sudden,
I hear my mom go, what the hell. I was like, yes,
(14:15):
you bit, you found out you just got exposed, bitch,
that's incredible. The relief was overwhelming. So I've had this
like grin as she sent me up the room and
she was talking to my parents back and forth, and
she's like, well you want you get, you get to
(14:36):
be transferred, you know, case loads. That is just an
incredibly like satisfying story. I'm sure you were so felt
like such redemption when your parents heard your therapist saying
all this stuff. But until my mom said about one
line and just relief, just waves of relief came over me.
I was like, thank god she was on that phone. God,
(14:59):
I was like crying, absolutely emotional teller. Well I'll get
like that. But yeah, that was one of those moments.
Jack was transferred after this incident and considered himself lucky.
He realized the truth that his grandmother and parents had
not been receiving his letters at all, and that it
was provo, not them that he had to blame for
(15:22):
Jeremy Whitley, who was enrolled at fifteen. That moment of
truth came years later. I wrote, I wrote my parents
several letters and told them with his places abusive and
it's nothing like it for me, it was and I
never heard from my parents. I think I don't And
(15:44):
so that was that was probably the funniest thing, and
that also set up a story in my head. That
I carried around for a long time because I was
writing my parents telling him about it, and they weren't.
It wasn't until the release of This Is Paris that
(16:05):
Jeremy confronted his parents about their silence while he was enrolled.
When Paris's documentary came out, I told I told my
parents about it. I'm like, kay, I just want I
want you to have a heads up this is coming out.
So after my parents watched it, my parents had pretty
much the same reaction as Harrison. Mom died, and I
(16:28):
asked my parents, I'm like, didn't you get any of
my letters about me telling me about the abuse? Because
they had they had no idea. Sure. My mom said
that they didn't get anything from me for the first
(16:48):
three months I was there. His mother shared that she
did get suspicious after getting reports about his behavior from
staff that didn't seem to make any sense. The school
would tell them that I was in trouble all the time,
I wasn't making progress, I wasn't doing very well. I
was getting in fights with other kids and and that's all.
And the stories were always super vague, and so my
(17:11):
mom and my mom said she started getting very suspicious.
I mean, and she started asking like, Okay, he's not
getting any better than what are we doing? Um? And
so my mom started asking for specifics like who did
they get in a fight with, what time to do
it happen, and all that kind of stuff, and then
(17:32):
spoken and tell them um. And so that's when they
decided to pulling me out of there. Oh wow, so
they had been lying to your parents the entire time. Yeah,
(18:00):
Jeremy and Jack were trapped in treatment, unable to talk
to anyone they love. It's devastating that Jeremy's parents never
received the letters, and even more devastating that he thought
they did for years and that they chose not to
come and save him. But even writing those letters could
have serious implications. Jonathan Newman, a survivor who attended provo
(18:21):
back in, explains this in detail. I mean, I would
wake up in the middle of the night at two
o'clock to the more and maybe you're ripping a guy
below me out of his bed, put him in a
straight jacket sheet on thorsy because he wrote a letter
to his mom that they read for the outbowing mal
about what they were doing, you know, and you know
(18:42):
they would center your molf you would still alive. The
right a letter home you put in this box, well,
they opened every envelope and readdressed it with the digital
label and as sand to the parents and bulk. But
that was only after his therapist read your meal, and
then any incoming mel that you would get your therapist
opened and read and went through thoroughly. Everyone had a
(19:05):
therapist assigned to him, which you would meet with once
a week during school. He'd put you on a class
and um, you know they monitored everything. I mean, so
you can never really tell anyone what was happening. And
the letters you would write home you would have to
write with your therapist and in front of your therapist,
and he would pretty much tell you what's write and
(19:27):
if you didn't like what he told you, right, you
would pay for it. Not directly, you wouldn't know he
was doing it to you, but you get toilet duty
for three weeks, and you know, because you didn't write
that letter, they're not gonna tell you right to your
face what they're doing to you, but it comes back
and haunt you. I think you make such an excellent
(19:49):
point there, because that's retaliation and you know that that's
what you're experiencing when you're in that position. But it
can be so hard to connect to those two um events,
you know, to other people when you're you know, in hindsight,
trying to explain what happened um and and and that
(20:09):
is coercion, and that is you know, retaliation. So that
actually brings me really to our next question. What did
you tell your parents at this time? Did they know?
Did you try to tell them? Oh, you you won't
allowing any visitations. I didn't get a visitation from any
family members for my first nine months. Basically, they tell parents,
(20:32):
you're not gonna have contact with your son or daughter
for nine months other than doesn't me and your parents
are game because they've been sold this program. You know,
they've got Sunset magazine, you know, went in the back
of it, fell pro to canyan school you know for
rich kids, and fixed on everything I needed. Uh so no, no,
my parents were sold a bill look good. This cycle
(20:53):
of manipulation is the key to provose continued operation. No
one really knows what's going on. By monitoring the mail
in blocking communication, they're able to create a wall of silence,
one taken by some parents as a sign that the
program is working. Luckily, parents and family members like Tricia
(21:14):
and Jack's grandmother care more about lack of access than
any rules put in place by the school. They pushed
through the silence to discover what was really going on,
and they chose to believe their children. However, for some
parents it can be hard to admit that they may
have been taken advantage of even years later, even after
(21:37):
the fact, when this was all done. And I looked
to my father, even twenty years ago and told him
the story. This is a man. He said, that couldn't happen.
They can't do that. I said, but Dad, they did.
You paid thirty thars a year from me to go
with their cash. I wouldn't on insurance. I wasn't on
It was cash on his pocket. Thirty thirty thousand dollars.
Was I gotta go into Harvard, you know? And they're
(22:00):
paying cash for this true friend. And the more cash
you paid on the better the treatment. Right. Many survivors
talk about quickly learning that the only way to get
out or to go home was to work the program.
They figure out what is needed to level up and
avoid punishment, and then they do those things if it
means not talking to parents, to each other or staff.
(22:21):
They don't Well after your first nine months, you were
pretty much brainwash into knowing, And this is pretty much
exactly how it works. On your first visit, you're so
elated to be and the company of your family because
you had nothing for the last nine months. You don't
want to talk about any of that because there's so
(22:41):
much other to talk about. At the facility that I
went to, they called this being programized, And it's that
moment when you eventually stopped fighting and you realize that
you're not going home any other way unless you oblige
and be the robot that they want you to be.
(23:02):
Some people are able to hang onto a fragment of
their old self, but I know for me, I left
that program different. The even more challenging thing is how
do you go back to normal completely cut off from
(23:34):
the outside world. Those locked inside think they are alone,
forgotten as the world outside passes by. Trapped in treatment
during some of the most important years of a child's life,
they're alone. So what must it be like to finally
escape this world, to go back to friends, school, and
(23:55):
previous lifetimes. Will it be simple, easy, or more likely
brought with the long term effects of time in a program.
What happens once the students go home. My therapist said,
what would you like to do? And I said, get
the hell out of it. And they let me go
and I'll never forget the day one of the counselors
(24:18):
from me the Salt Lake City Airport and put me
on that plane. Um, it was like I won the lottery.
I mean, I I wow. I can can't even figure
the feeling because I come over you when you know
you're getting away from it, you know you're finally getting
(24:38):
away from it. And then for the rest of my
life it was with me. I couldn't never get rid
of it. Next time on Trapped in Treatment
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care from I Heart Radio, London Audio and executive
producer Paris Hilton. This is Trapped in Treatment, where your
hosts Rebecca Mellinger in Caroline Cole, one troubled teen industry
(00:20):
survivor and one investigator on a mission to expose the
truth of an industry plagued by controversy and to make
sure that no child has to experience the hell that
is teen treatment. Wow, last episode was heavy, wasn't it, Caroline?
(00:55):
It really was. I've heard hundreds of survivors stories within
our community and they never stop being agonizing and like
physically grueling to hear. What's so so scary is that
this is still happening today. We examine the tactics of
(01:17):
isolation and manipulation that make time within Provocanian School so traumatizing.
From the moment a child is enrolled at PCs, the
ties to family are immediately cut. It starts with the
decision to hire a third party to transport the kids
at the suggestion of the school. It's safer they say.
(01:38):
Less traumatic parents slowly begin to let go to trust
these strangers and their ready responses. They don't realize that
within the methodology at PCs is the belief that the
child must be uprooted from their communities, their identity, and
their ability to communicate with the outside world. The question
often asked of survivors is why don't you just tell
(01:59):
your parents how bad it was? Why didn't you just
write home and tell them to come get you. It's
a simple question with a complex and multilayered answer. Today
(02:24):
we're gonna hear Tricia's story, the aunt of a young
boy sent away just last year. And this story is
really important because it's recent. Decades after the a c
l U case, the band solitary confinement, polygraph tests, the
use of physical force, and the censorship of communication and mail.
Tricia still struggles to communicate with him. She's conscious of
(02:45):
the rules of the program and doesn't believe that much
has changed. Isolation and control are still the name of
the game. James Thomas was sent away just last year.
(03:07):
He's only twelve years old, so for his safety, his
name has been changed. James was a healthy and bright kid.
In March, he was taken into custody by State Child
Protective Services. His aunt has been fighting desperately to gain
custody of her nephew, but was ultimately denied that right
by the courts. Instead, he was sent away to pro
(03:27):
Volcanian School. It was kind of shocking because I literally
saw Paris Hilton's video randomly. It just popped up on
my feed right before all this happened, and I really,
it's pretty insane to me. I went to school for
social services. I had never even heard about these types
of places ever in my thirty one years of life
being a social service major, and this random video popped up.
(03:51):
And I remember talking to the social worker and she said, well,
your nephew is going to a boarding school. And I
was like, oh, okay, And I was like, oh, so
it's like school and stuff, and like, I really didn't
it wasn't clicking quite yet. And she had said yeah,
it's therapeutic, and I go, oh, really, there's like therapy
(04:12):
there and all that. You know. Cool, All right, he's
got therapy counseling, and he's gonna be his grades, they're
gonna get great. That's great, until I can get him out.
Tricia did her due diligence and began researching where her
nephew would spend the next few months. She hoped it
was a school where he would get an education and
maybe make some friends. When she realized it was PCs,
she felt quite differently. I sat there for a minute
(04:35):
and it was like someone stocked me in the stomach
or something like. There was like this heart wrenching like
why am I feeling this way? Why does this name
like a ring a bell? And then it hit me.
It was that video I watched with Paras Hilton. And
if I wouldn't like seen that video, I would have
had no idea for Tricia. His nephews in the foster
care system, ease of communication was nonexistent at that point.
(04:59):
I I knew he'd be isolated just from the first
video I ever saw, and they had made that clear
to me when I tried to call uh. And I
think for two weeks I just cried, you know, because
I just kept thinking of my little nephew was scared
on a cod wherever he is, you know, and not
allowed to talk to his family. And what kind of
(05:24):
treatment center are you when your method of treatment is
removing an individual from their entire family, especially young children.
She had to fight for contact, and when she finally
was able to speak with him, their calls were monitored.
It was about three and a half weeks until I
(05:46):
got to actually talk to him. Our first conversation was
how did you find me? And this and that and
we got to zoom. There was always somebody in the
room at every point. Um. You could hear them typing,
or you could see him look over at somebody. Often
his body language spoke volumes um. I mean, that was
(06:08):
the thing that upset me the most, his body language,
like without him saying anything. Tricia felt deep down like
James wasn't being truthful during their monitored calls and wondered
what was really happening behind Profo's closed doors. Over the
next few months, her nephew changed in small ways. Each
short visit or called displayed a boy under dress, uncomfortable, agitated,
(06:32):
and trying desperately to communicate with his aunt. There was
this moment where he said, it was trying to tell
me something really quick, and this was this was during
a phone conversation, not a zoom and he was like, hey,
like when you need to get me out of here
and need to getting me at your lah lah you know,
and I was like okay, and then it was just
like this guy walking and you can hear a man
(06:53):
walking in and he goes, yeah, so anyway, yeah, everything's
been great. It was like he was never his authentic self.
He was never comfortable and I was looking at somebody
who had fear in their eyes, unable to speak freely.
He found other ways to communicate his distress, and he
was he was making this as the game like what if,
(07:15):
like what if you were in a tornado? Would you
a grab a parachute or would you be going a bunker?
And then you'd be like, you know, be going a
bunker because that's safer, or I'd go in the parachute
and fly around the tornado. Um, but that's the game.
He was talking about what if And he said, so,
what if somebody people were torturing Kira? Would you a
(07:41):
just pick up the phone and merely caller or be
would you do something? And before I even got to answer,
he said, I think the answer is pretty obvious. You
do something, right, you do something? And I said, um,
I got you, Yeah, yeah I would, I would do something,
(08:07):
and he goes, yeah, see that's my point. That was
my point, and then he no longer wanted to play
the game anymore. It was one round, and that's what
he wanted to tell me. Um, And I don't really
have words for that. I don't because, honestly, until he's
(08:28):
out of there completely, I don't know what they did.
I don't know what all they did, but I know
they did something. One day, shortly before Tricia's last call
with James, she received an email Provocanian School emailed james
(08:48):
social worker before the call. Verbatim, it reads, we're going
to facilitate this call today with James and his aunt.
I do want to request that you let the aunt
know that she has not to speak to James about
discharging or transferring to another facility. James is already struggling,
and we do not need anything that will make it
more difficult for him. I would appreciate if his aunt
(09:09):
could encourage him to do well and to follow the
rules and keep the conversation around those topics. Because Tricia
had seen Paris's documentary, she knew that the calls could
be ended for any reason. If staff heard her or
James speaking negatively about the program, it was her job
to support the program if she wanted to continue speaking
(09:30):
with her nephew. Luckily, Tricia's nephew was released from Provocanian
just a few months later. She was finally able to
speak to him, hug him, and tell him that nothing
was wrong with him, that she had tried her best
to get him out. But James stories stuck with us.
(09:50):
Right at the beginning, there's a wedge driven between the
family and the child. There's physical separation, sure, between magnetically
locked doors and sometimes thousan sin of miles between the
youth and their home. But most importantly, there's a degree
of distrust that's created, and this is the most dangerous. Plus,
(10:10):
these kids have already been framed, whether true or not,
to be troubled and untrustworthy, so it's easy to believe
that maybe they're exaggerating about what's happening exactly. But what
we see is that once that child arrives at the facility,
the program immediately tells the parent, your child is going
to try and manipulate you. They're going to lie and
say that all kinds of things are happening. Don't believe them.
(10:34):
And on top of that, these kids are being told
that being negative, resisting the program, are saying what's happening
to you will only keep you there longer, so eventually
you just surrender and go with the program. We have
a copy of an older parent handbook that actually states,
if your child's telephone calls are used in an attempt
to manipulate or to pressure you for visits, please support
(10:57):
school policies and notify his or her primary therapist. If
we dissect that language, it would seem that PCs is
instructing the parents that, in the case of their child
asking for more visits, to tell on their child by
reporting it to the therapist. I mean, how odd to
ask a parent to report on their child's request for
more visits, more interaction. The school's efforts to block communication
(11:21):
was more than just an innocent attempt at keeping the
kids in line. It was manipulation. Sure for the parents
it was frustrating, but for the young adults locked inside
this could be construed as proof then maybe they really
were bad, and maybe their parents really didn't care. I
don't remember direct words. It was along the lines of
(11:43):
if your family loved you, you would already be home. Um,
but you're here, so obviously they don't care. Did you
internalize that? Did you believe it? For a while? Um,
I struggled. After I got out of my program, I
(12:06):
she genuinely thought my parents didn't love me, because I mean,
look at all these red flags that I didn't realize
that they didn't know about at the time. Um, and
I was still there, so it was hard not to
believe it. But for PCs survivor Jack Hendry and his grandmother,
it was not odd. It was suspicious. Back up, give
(12:29):
me some context what happened. So basically every day I
would write my grandma, and my grandma basically had enough
of trying to figure out what was going on. So
she's calling the front desk. So my therapist don't wint
to this and freaked out, completely freaked out, pulled me
out of school when I was in study in the
library and it was not a normal therapy day, pulled
(12:51):
me out, and for about thirty minutes is trying to
thrill me about why is my grandma calling to figure
out what's going on? So she's the only one actually
getting what the hell is going on? Like, okay, he's
actually in trouble. So in any case, UM, the you know,
she drills me for about thirty minutes and gets my
parents on the phone, so for another thirty minutes, you know,
(13:14):
we're going Basically, she starts questioning them, why is his
grandma calling? And they're like, we don't know, like, you know,
like they don't have the full over my grandma. So
she's no g great you know, there was a great lady,
sweet kind, but you didn't want to piss her off.
(13:34):
So in any case, you know, she's trying to figure
out what the hell is going on, and so like
she can't get an answer. So eventually, you know, my
therapist is like, you know, all what the hell and
hangs up the phone. His therapist hung up the phone,
but didn't hang up the speaker. For the next thirty minutes,
(13:55):
she proceeded to berate Jack, a full on abusive freak out,
and then something unthinkable happened, maybe like twenty so minutes
into it, almost three minutes into it, all of a sudden,
I hear my mom go, what the hell. I was like, yes,
(14:15):
you bit, you found out you just got exposed, bitch,
that's incredible. The relief was overwhelming. So I've had this
like grin as she sent me up the room and
she was talking to my parents back and forth, and
she's like, well you want you get, you get to
(14:36):
be transferred, you know, case loads. That is just an
incredibly like satisfying story. I'm sure you were so felt
like such redemption when your parents heard your therapist saying
all this stuff. But until my mom said about one
line and just relief, just waves of relief came over me.
I was like, thank god she was on that phone. God,
(14:59):
I was like crying, absolutely emotional teller. Well I'll get
like that. But yeah, that was one of those moments.
Jack was transferred after this incident and considered himself lucky.
He realized the truth that his grandmother and parents had
not been receiving his letters at all, and that it
was provo, not them that he had to blame for
(15:22):
Jeremy Whitley, who was enrolled at fifteen. That moment of
truth came years later. I wrote, I wrote my parents
several letters and told them with his places abusive and
it's nothing like it for me, it was and I
never heard from my parents. I think I don't And
(15:44):
so that was that was probably the funniest thing, and
that also set up a story in my head. That
I carried around for a long time because I was
writing my parents telling him about it, and they weren't.
It wasn't until the release of This Is Paris that
(16:05):
Jeremy confronted his parents about their silence while he was enrolled.
When Paris's documentary came out, I told I told my
parents about it. I'm like, kay, I just want I
want you to have a heads up this is coming out.
So after my parents watched it, my parents had pretty
much the same reaction as Harrison. Mom died, and I
(16:28):
asked my parents, I'm like, didn't you get any of
my letters about me telling me about the abuse? Because
they had they had no idea. Sure. My mom said
that they didn't get anything from me for the first
(16:48):
three months I was there. His mother shared that she
did get suspicious after getting reports about his behavior from
staff that didn't seem to make any sense. The school
would tell them that I was in trouble all the time,
I wasn't making progress, I wasn't doing very well. I
was getting in fights with other kids and and that's all.
And the stories were always super vague, and so my
(17:11):
mom and my mom said she started getting very suspicious.
I mean, and she started asking like, Okay, he's not
getting any better than what are we doing? Um? And
so my mom started asking for specifics like who did
they get in a fight with, what time to do
it happen, and all that kind of stuff, and then
(17:32):
spoken and tell them um. And so that's when they
decided to pulling me out of there. Oh wow, so
they had been lying to your parents the entire time. Yeah,
(18:00):
Jeremy and Jack were trapped in treatment, unable to talk
to anyone they love. It's devastating that Jeremy's parents never
received the letters, and even more devastating that he thought
they did for years and that they chose not to
come and save him. But even writing those letters could
have serious implications. Jonathan Newman, a survivor who attended provo
(18:21):
back in, explains this in detail. I mean, I would
wake up in the middle of the night at two
o'clock to the more and maybe you're ripping a guy
below me out of his bed, put him in a
straight jacket sheet on thorsy because he wrote a letter
to his mom that they read for the outbowing mal
about what they were doing, you know, and you know
(18:42):
they would center your molf you would still alive. The
right a letter home you put in this box, well,
they opened every envelope and readdressed it with the digital
label and as sand to the parents and bulk. But
that was only after his therapist read your meal, and
then any incoming mel that you would get your therapist
opened and read and went through thoroughly. Everyone had a
(19:05):
therapist assigned to him, which you would meet with once
a week during school. He'd put you on a class
and um, you know they monitored everything. I mean, so
you can never really tell anyone what was happening. And
the letters you would write home you would have to
write with your therapist and in front of your therapist,
and he would pretty much tell you what's write and
(19:27):
if you didn't like what he told you, right, you
would pay for it. Not directly, you wouldn't know he
was doing it to you, but you get toilet duty
for three weeks, and you know, because you didn't write
that letter, they're not gonna tell you right to your
face what they're doing to you, but it comes back
and haunt you. I think you make such an excellent
(19:49):
point there, because that's retaliation and you know that that's
what you're experiencing when you're in that position. But it
can be so hard to connect to those two um events,
you know, to other people when you're you know, in hindsight,
trying to explain what happened um and and and that
(20:09):
is coercion, and that is you know, retaliation. So that
actually brings me really to our next question. What did
you tell your parents at this time? Did they know?
Did you try to tell them? Oh, you you won't
allowing any visitations. I didn't get a visitation from any
family members for my first nine months. Basically, they tell parents,
(20:32):
you're not gonna have contact with your son or daughter
for nine months other than doesn't me and your parents
are game because they've been sold this program. You know,
they've got Sunset magazine, you know, went in the back
of it, fell pro to canyan school you know for
rich kids, and fixed on everything I needed. Uh so no, no,
my parents were sold a bill look good. This cycle
(20:53):
of manipulation is the key to provose continued operation. No
one really knows what's going on. By monitoring the mail
in blocking communication, they're able to create a wall of silence,
one taken by some parents as a sign that the
program is working. Luckily, parents and family members like Tricia
(21:14):
and Jack's grandmother care more about lack of access than
any rules put in place by the school. They pushed
through the silence to discover what was really going on,
and they chose to believe their children. However, for some
parents it can be hard to admit that they may
have been taken advantage of even years later, even after
(21:37):
the fact, when this was all done. And I looked
to my father, even twenty years ago and told him
the story. This is a man. He said, that couldn't happen.
They can't do that. I said, but Dad, they did.
You paid thirty thars a year from me to go
with their cash. I wouldn't on insurance. I wasn't on
It was cash on his pocket. Thirty thirty thousand dollars.
Was I gotta go into Harvard, you know? And they're
(22:00):
paying cash for this true friend. And the more cash
you paid on the better the treatment. Right. Many survivors
talk about quickly learning that the only way to get
out or to go home was to work the program.
They figure out what is needed to level up and
avoid punishment, and then they do those things if it
means not talking to parents, to each other or staff.
(22:21):
They don't Well after your first nine months, you were
pretty much brainwash into knowing, And this is pretty much
exactly how it works. On your first visit, you're so
elated to be and the company of your family because
you had nothing for the last nine months. You don't
want to talk about any of that because there's so
(22:41):
much other to talk about. At the facility that I
went to, they called this being programized, And it's that
moment when you eventually stopped fighting and you realize that
you're not going home any other way unless you oblige
and be the robot that they want you to be.
(23:02):
Some people are able to hang onto a fragment of
their old self, but I know for me, I left
that program different. The even more challenging thing is how
do you go back to normal completely cut off from
(23:34):
the outside world. Those locked inside think they are alone,
forgotten as the world outside passes by. Trapped in treatment
during some of the most important years of a child's life,
they're alone. So what must it be like to finally
escape this world, to go back to friends, school, and
(23:55):
previous lifetimes. Will it be simple, easy, or more likely
brought with the long term effects of time in a program.
What happens once the students go home. My therapist said,
what would you like to do? And I said, get
the hell out of it. And they let me go
and I'll never forget the day one of the counselors
(24:18):
from me the Salt Lake City Airport and put me
on that plane. Um, it was like I won the lottery.
I mean, I I wow. I can can't even figure
the feeling because I come over you when you know
you're getting away from it, you know you're finally getting
(24:38):
away from it. And then for the rest of my
life it was with me. I couldn't never get rid
of it. Next time on Trapped in Treatment
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