What is the “Troubled Teen” Industry?
The “Troubled Teen” Industry (TTI) is an extensive network of long-term residential programs, facilities, and “specialty” schools. These programs have taken youth approximately 7 to 18 years old over the past 60+ years. Many TTI programs have claimed to rehabilitate and reform youth using radical “therapy” and behavior modification tactics, often while covering up abusive environments.
FACTS ON THE TTI
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The TTI takes children from ALL backgrounds and through multiple channels.
Thousands of kids in the foster care system are funneled into private TTI programs. In 2015, 671,000 children in the United States were provided out-of-home foster care services, often meaning institutional living. Children are also sent through the juvenile justice system and recommended into TTI programs via special education.
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Abuse and deaths in TTI programs are prolific and well-documented.
When these children are sent to programs, they are often sent out of state and far from their loved ones or communities who could advocate for them. There have been many efforts to document and expose the abuse such as GAO reports, investigative reporting, and thousands of survivors and parents speaking out. See further information.
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There are well over 100,000 children kept in residential treatment centers every year.
Children held in residential programs come from all backgrounds and demographics. They are often involuntarily held for months to years of their young lives and are sent away by parents, guardians, the foster care system, and juvenile justice system. Children held in the TTI are disproportionately adoptees, effected by foster care, neurodivergent, and/or children of color.
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At least 145 children have died from preventable causes in residential treatment centers, and at least 62 from asphyxiation or injury caused by restraint.
Because these children often have no way to advocate for themselves or effectively report abuse or neglect, the abuse goes unchecked. And because of poor hiring and training practices, unqualified and/or predatory staff can create dangerous situations in which many children have been killed by suffocation, injury, and medical neglect.
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TTI Programs have used deceptive marketing to garner admissions.
Many TTI programs are known for using deceptive marketing such as false advertising (activities, treatments, and amenities which do not exist/ are not provided), misleading statistics (studies paid for as marketing strategy, coerced reviews from children), and coercive sales tactics. For desperate or emotionally limited parents, these deceptions lead them to commit their child to programs without looking deeply into the program.
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Perpetrators of abuse in the TTI have escaped accountability across decades of continuing harm.
Programs and individuals with long track records of abusing children often escape accountability and continue to operate facilities or work with children. This has been achieved by repeatedly rebranding or relocating programs and organizations, swapping staff, and corruption within oversight and enforcement bodies.
One of the simplest ways to clarify the systemic issues within the “Troubled Teen” Industry is to show its parallels to the private prison industry.
The “Troubled Teen” Industry is finally being exposed.
This industry has thrived on corruption and the silence of shame for decades. Now that it is finally being exposed, hundreds of survivor advocates and allies are making efforts toward change, so that children can be safer from Institutional Child Abuse.
