What is Institutional Child Abuse?
Institutional Child Abuse (ICA) is the range of abuses which harm children in institutional settings such as residential “treatment” programs, behavior modification centers, wilderness programs, religious programs, foster centers, and more. Below you will find information on each type of ICA and why it is so prevalent.
(mobile users: swipe through infogallery)
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PHYSICAL ABUSE
Physical abuse includes beatings, violent and unnecessary restraint, dragging, pinning, and throwing children. Use of severe behavior modification tactics like forced stress (laying face down, squatting, etc) positions and wrapping children also cause great physical and emotional harm.
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ISOLATION & SECLUSION
In the most extreme situations, facilities such as High Impact would leave children caged outdoors in dog kennels. Today, programs still use seclusion rooms, closets, and “calm down” rooms to isolate children. While laws in most states outline the use of isolation rooms as acceptable only when a person is an immediate danger to themselves or others, isolation has been misused as a means of punishment for any level of insubordination, emotional display, or to break the child down.
Isolation can last anywhere from minutes to months. The trauma caused by the loss of bodily autonomy and the physical injuries from laying on floors, etc, can follow a child for life.
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FORCED LABOR
From being forced to run until collapse to digging trenches and raising livestock, many TTI programs have used forced labor as a teaching philosophy. On top of disregarding the physical harms and health hazards, some programs have turned a profit on the goods or services the children labor to create. A clear form of human trafficking, forced labor seems to be most prevalent in religious type TTI programs, but has been present across several types.
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FORCED SILENCE & SOCIAL ISOLATION
This type of abuse in the TTI is so pervasive it became the inspiration for the popular #breakingcodesilence hashtag/movement. Forced silence is a form of control and/or punishment in which the child is not allowed to speak at all, or has their speech seriously restricted. This silence can last from days to years, and often extends to other forms of communicating such as nonverbal signals or even eye contact with others.
Human beings are deeply social, and the social developments in adolescence are key for healthy adulthood. The psychological harm of forced silence on vulnerable and developing young people is beyond measure.
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NEGLECT
Neglect in TTI programs is caused by multiple factors. In many cases, the program is a for-profit business and corners are cut on staffing, upkeep, and quality of care in the interest of larger profits. In other cases the neglect is part of a treatment philosophy such as in wilderness programs where children are exposed and without medical help and pushed to “tough it out”.
Neglect of basic needs like food, water, sleep, mattresses, and medical care has caused serious injury and deaths of children held in such programs.
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SEXUAL ABUSE
The children kept in the TTI are an especially vulnerable population of minors. These children are far away from the communities/ guardians who might notice sexual abuse, and are also in a position where they are easily discredited by staff and have very little opportunity to report such abuse, if any at all.
Potential predators are attracted to work in these environments because of this. And with poor staffing requirements and little oversight, many of these predators have had access to institutionalized youth.
Because programs will house children with a huge range of issues in the same areas, child on child sexual abuse is also common.
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PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
Humiliation, verbal abuse, gaslighting, and emotional abuse are extremely common in many TTI programs. Children are made to believe that they are broken, and that they are the source of pain and struggle in their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Their freedoms and needs are withheld to coerce them to conform or present desired behaviors.
Use of tactics like attack therapy, rape and trauma reenactments, conversion therapy, and behavior mod can destroy the child’s sense of self, safety, and ability to trust.
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KIDNAPPING
Even in states which grant rights of consent to treatment for minors (children must agree to admittance into residential care), transport agencies may still take children by force and deliver them to out-of-state facilities where involuntary admittance is legal. Some of these transports are relatively “tame”, others involve tackling and binding terrified children in the middle of the night to take them to a completely unknown location. In every case, the child’s sense of safety, autonomy, and trust are shattered. The trauma is akin to that of child abduction victims— likely because they were abducted children.
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MEDICAL ABUSE
Forced medication like injected sedatives have been used to control children and for convenience in overcrowded and overcomplicated programs. Improper use of medication, experimental use of medication, and denial of needed medication have been reported.
In some programs there have been reports of unusual routine medical testing and repeated, unnecessary pelvic exams.
This goes far beyond “medical” abuse, but adolescent mothers have also been forced into abortions or surrendering babies for adoption.
Why is ICA so badly underreported?
A common question from people first learning about Institutional Child Abuse is:
Why don’t these kids report the abuse? Why don’t they tell their parents?
The short answer:
Many try. But their voices are silenced.
There is a very effective and convenient way that facilities choose to respond to abuse allegations.
“These are troubled kids. They lie. They’ll do anything to manipulate their way out of the program.”
What happens when a child suffering abuse in an institutional setting tries to speak is this:
Contact the child has is usually monitored by facility staff. Their letters may be screened. Phone calls to their parent or guardian are supervised by a counselor, staff, or therapist. And if during these contacts, the child tries to talk about abuse in the facility such as neglect, isolation, violence, sedation… it is all too easy for the supervisor to stop communications and discredit the child.
This kid probably has a difficult past. Maybe drug experimentation, running away, or dishonesty (what child can be said to have never attempted a lie?). Most of these children already have strained relationships with their parents/guardians. Many have parents who have their own limitations, which contributed to the child being sent away to begin with. So, when an adult in authority says, “Troubled kids lie-- this one is trying to manipulate,” it is much easier to take that authority at their word than it is to listen and investigate further.
Then, behind closed doors, away from anyone who would care to see them, the child will receive the immediate consequences. Further removal of rights or “privileges”, losing their status in the program, orders of silence, isolation, humiliation, or worse.
Their peers see this happen, and they’ve seen it over and over. This creates an environment where other children are afraid to speak up, as they know exactly what will come after—
No one will believe you, and your situation will instead become much more difficult.
Add to this that the majority of children who wind up captive in institutions have already suffered some abuse or trauma in their young lives. They may have never spoken about it, certainly did not know how to cope with it, and the complications this created in their lives helped set the stage for them to be sent away from home.
These kids are disheartened, disillusioned, and do not have faith that adults in their lives will act to protect them. It is far too easy for a kid like that to be silenced.
Luckily for some, their guardians will believe them or fight for them. Some may be “pulled” from the program in the wake of allegations. Lawsuits have been launched, met of course by the teams of lawyers and ample funding which a profitable program has in its service.
In rare cases, the abuse is so prevalent that children or parents raise their voices at once. Like at Red Rock Canyon School in St George, Utah, which was forced to close its doors in 2019 after alleged physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of the children was so pervasive and extreme that the population rioted. Fortunately, this forced the investigation.
So yes, the children do speak. Or try to. Or are terrified to.
Or suffer so long with the trauma that it takes years into adulthood before they can put it into words.
If only one child’s voice were enough to investigate, how much more often would abuse be discovered?
-Jen Robison
