In Julian F. Thompson’s 1983 novel, The Grounding of Group 6, five troubled teens are enrolled at a Vermont boarding school by their overburdened parents. Officially, they are to be rehabilitated and turned into upstanding young adults. Unofficially, their parents want them dead, and for the right price, the school accommodates them. Upon release, the novel was marketed as a work of fiction, but there are an inestimable number of academies, boot camps, wilderness therapy programs, and drug-rehab facilities operating today that make the boarding school in the novel look like heaven on Earth.
The troubled teen industry (TTI) brings in billions of dollars in revenue. Somewhere between 120,000-200,000 “troubled teens” reside in some sort of TTI school, treatment center, therapy program, or rehab center right now. Some of them are hardened criminals. Others like to smoke weed, party with their friends on the weekends, drink some brewskis, have sex with their significant others. In other words, most of them are 100% normal and should not be involved in TTI programs.
Historically, these facilities have operated across all fifty states with varying degrees of regulation, oversight, and transparency. Utah in particular has been an attractive locale due to lax regulation and the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which promotes family values, authority, and obedience. Some of the most infamous TTI facilities have operated in Utah, including:
- Provo Canyon School has faced multiple accusations of physical, mental, and sexual abuse since its founding in 1971. It is still open for business.
- In 2022, 17-year-old Taylor Goodridge died of sepsis after repeated requests for medical attention were denied by staff members at Diamond Ranch Academy. The school closed the following year.
- At Old West Academy, students were allegedly forced to stand barefoot on crates in freezing temperatures as a punishment for rule-breaking. The school closed in 2019.
- The Challenger Foundation was founded by former military operative Steve Cartisano in 1988 and shut down after 16-year-old Kirsten Chase died of exertional heat stroke during a hike in June 1990.
Like all good true crime stories, this one begins with a cult. TTI grew out of a drug rehabilitation group home called Synanon. Founded in 1958 by Chuck Dederich, the recovering alcoholic sought to apply the tactics used by Alcoholics Anonymous for drug addiction. What started as a two-year rehab stint morphed into a lifelong stay for residents, since it was believed that one could never be cured of drug addiction.
Synanon gained notoriety through the “Game,” in which participants would scream, curse, and hurl abuse at each other. Popularized as a form of attack therapy, it heralded the use of “tough love” in the fight against drug addiction and was incorporated into TTI. Critics of the practice characterized it as a form of social control and brainwashing.
Slowly, the group morphed into a religious community, with Dederich at its head. By the 1970s, women were required to shave their heads. Married couples had to break up. Swinging was common, as were forced vasectomies and abortions. Though initially forbidden, violence was permitted against ex-members and those investigating the group’s practices. An attorney who had brought a suit against Synanon was bitten by a rattlesnake placed in his mailbox.
As legal pressure and negative press grew, the Internal Revenue Service revoked Synanon’s tax-exempt status and ordered it to pay $17 million in back taxes. In 1991, the organization declared bankruptcy and dissolved. Unfortunately, the spirit of Synanon lives on in TTI: beatings, food and sleep deprivation, restricting contact with friends and family, physical or chemical restraint, solitary confinement, gay conversion therapy—the tougher the love, the better.
In 2024, attorney Phil Elburg appeared in a Netflix docuseries called The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping. He noted, “You think about people that join cults. It’s people that are looking for a simple solution to a difficult problem.” When it comes to TTI, the parents who enroll their children in these facilities are often looking for a simple solution to a difficult problem. The fact that there is a demand for these facilities is something that no amount of regulation will fix. Unless parents are willing to accept responsibility for raising their children, however rebellious and troublesome they may be, these abuses will continue and worsen.
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