I was a victim of the troubled teen industry… I turned 13 there and was there for 11 months. Definitely unethical practices, and very physically demanding.
Ran away from home a few months after being released and never went back.
How did life go afterwards?
Homeless on and off until I turned 18 which was tough at times but I think it’s easier to be homeless when you’re young… I traveled a lot and had a lot of interesting experiences. Then when I turned 18 I started to get serious about life and I managed to find a medium sized company which gave me a lot of opportunity. By 24 I had a corporate job pretty high in the company when I went into partnership with the companies’ marketing director.
Having experienced extended periods with no food or shelter, and also having that strict discipline drilled into me during those 11 months at ‘camp’, I think I was uniquely prepared to focus entirely on achieving some pretty big dreams.
With a lot of perseverance and a lot of luck, everything turned out pretty good. Own my own companies, on track to retire young.
Everyone tells me I should write a book but I am not the best writer.
This sounds book worthy IMO. I’d write it for you but that would take a lot of time and you’d basically have to hire me to do that since I couldn’t really do a big project like that while working. It’d also take a lot of your time with interviewing and also time from your friends and people you’ve spent time with.
Pay someone to write your thoughts for you, I’d read it
for example, one person was placed in a troubled teen program because her mother found her choice in boyfriends unacceptable
Creepy indeed.
Numerous troubled teen programs have been reported to engage in the practice of compelled labor, wherein program participants are required to perform physically demanding tasks such as wood chopping and horse manure shoveling.
Still waiting to get paid for my labor decades later. They should really call it what it is.
The fact this exists really bothers me, that someone’s abusive parents can just have them abducted to a torture camp legally
