Marked NSFW for a number of reasons - potentially triggering to anyone who’s been through this or something similar. Supplemental links contain some very dark, horrifying accounts.
Why you should know: Hundreds of thousands (possibly far more) of now adults carry that trauma with them. Many of these schools are still in operation, still abusing children.
You likely can’t fully appreciate what these kids went through and what many of them still carry around with them, but reading and watching accounts from past “students” can get you closer:
Webcomic about one man’s experience with Elan, another Troubled Teen program outside the WWASPS umbrella. I won’t spoil the many, many twists, but his story is something I couldn’t pull myself away from the entire time I read it. https://elan.school/
Watch “The Program” on Netflix. Shows multiple people that were sent to different schools in the WWASPS umbrella retelling their stories while exploring the now abandoned facility they were once prisoners in.
YSAK - Very, very, very few of the people complicit in this industry ever had any real consequences for perpetuating a system of child abuse that lead to the destruction of so many lives going back to at least the late 60’s. Most of these monsters simply moved on to other things after their institutions were finally shut down.
Some were even publicly lauded by their communities and powerful leaders for their “contributions” to society.
Last Podcast on the Left did a series on this and it’s horrifying. I will never understand the capacity for humans to be so intolerably cruel to others.
I was sent to a series of the ‘better’ programs—i.e., the ones without deaths attached to them. It took a decade of therapy to deal with the worst of the trauma and I still experience PTSD episodes several times each year. It’s astounding how these facilities carry on functioning with merely a name change. There’s almost no regulation, let alone patient rights. My first program was truly one of the better ones and they had patient rights information posted through the facility and hard copies provided in your welcome packet. When I was sent to my second program (wilderness), I asked what my patient rights were. I received dumbfounded stares followed by laughter.
I lived near the Elan School many years ago. One of my buddies even briefly worked there. That shit’s freaking TRAGIC!
Made it 30 chapters, thanks for nightmare fuel
