0:00

The

0:00

views expressed in this episode as with

0:02

all episodes of sounds like a cult are

0:04

solely host opinions and quoted allegations.

0:07

The content here should not be taken as indisputable

0:10

This podcast is for entertainment purposes

0:12

only.

0:13

Hi. I'm Alex, and I'm calling from

0:15

Los Angeles. And I think

0:18

The copious thing about the troubled

0:20

teen industry is this false

0:22

hope that they peddle to parents

0:25

that they can quote unquote

0:27

fix their troubled

0:29

team when in reality

0:32

we just know that it doesn't work.

0:35

often the best solution

0:37

for this troubled

0:39

team is to

0:42

seek out a licensed and accredited

0:44

therapist. This industry is just incredibly

0:46

abusive and manipulative and exploitative

0:50

and incredibly toxic. Hi. My

0:52

name is Beth. and I'm calling from

0:54

Maine. I think that the courteous

0:56

thing about the troubled teen industry

0:59

is the complete and total

1:01

disregard for the bodily autonomy

1:03

of said teens. I did know somebody's

1:06

older brother who was sent

1:08

to a troubled teen camp kind

1:10

of, like, in the middle of nowhere in Utah. And

1:12

basically, with his parents' permission, just

1:15

two men, like, even stole him out of

1:17

his bed at night and wrestled him

1:19

into a car.

1:23

This is sounds like a cult,

1:25

a show about the modern day cult. We all

1:28

follow. I'm Issa Modena, and I'm

1:30

a comedian, and I'm Amanda Montel, author

1:32

of the cultish The Language of Fanaticsism. Every

1:34

week on our show, we discuss different Zeitgeisty

1:37

group that puts the cult in culture for astrology

1:39

to academia to try and answer

1:41

the big question. This group

1:43

sounds like cult. But is it really?

1:46

To join our cult and see culty memes

1:49

and behind scenes pics, follow us on Instagram

1:51

at sounds like a cult pod. I'm in

1:53

the cult of Instagram. I'm on there at

1:55

Amanda underscore Montel. Also,

1:57

still Amanda here. I wanted to let you

1:59

all

1:59

know that I'm going to be in New York City on

2:02

Wednesday August tenth twenty twenty two,

2:04

doing a cultish book signing

2:06

and vegan read at the strand bookstore

2:08

so you can find details for that at the link in my

2:11

Instagram bio or amanda montal com.

2:13

And I'm on Instagram at esa

2:15

medina

2:15

ISAAMADINAA

2:18

where you can find

2:19

clips of me doing stand up comedy.

2:21

You can also find in mission of where and

2:23

when I will be performing live.

2:26

This month, I will be in Scotland performing

2:28

at Edinburgh fringe fest. all month

2:30

of August twenty twenty two. In the

2:32

fall, I will be in New York City doing so

2:35

many shows, so make sure to check out my

2:37

Instagram where you can also request for

2:39

me to come to your city and you can see

2:41

my little jokes live and in person.

2:43

And maybe after my show, we can grab a drink.

2:45

and talk all things colds.

2:47

And feel free to check us out on YouTube

2:50

where you can watch our show or hit

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us up on Patreon at patreon dot com

2:54

slash It's like a cult. Where episodes are available,

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ah

3:59

Alright. cult girl's

4:02

summer is over. And if you missed it,

4:04

go back and listen to our last five But

4:06

now we are back baby with

4:08

our regularly

4:09

scheduled programming

4:10

the heavy stuff.

4:14

We've got a heavy one.

4:17

This is

4:18

We got it. Maybe one. And, miss

4:20

Lee sorry. I'm just trying to Yeah. Keep

4:23

it, like, keep it, like,

4:25

baby. Oh, yeah. We're be talking about

4:27

the troubled teen industry. And

4:29

if I say it like that, maybe it's a little

4:32

funnier. Yeah. I'm imagining an

4:34

Ooma out above the y. Yeah.

4:36

You know what's funny about this topic is I don't

4:38

think it's been that highly

4:40

requested. Nobody

4:42

wants to hear about

4:42

this. Yeah. No. Which is I think the most

4:45

fun ones because I'm like, surprise,

4:47

bitch. We got a cult for you

4:49

today. It's like, we know. We know. You want

4:51

us to talk about Joe Rogen. Sorry, we're

4:53

talking about the development industry. But

4:55

I have been itching to

4:57

cover this topic for quite a while

4:59

for multiple different reasons and

5:01

we're gonna get into those reasons. Oh,

5:03

right now. I just recently watched

5:05

the scripted series under the banner

5:07

of Heaven about fundamentalist Morgans.

5:10

And I know we have a podcast about cults,

5:13

but I was so fascinated

5:15

because I used to work in documentaries. I

5:17

kinda took a break from watching documentaries.

5:19

Mhmm. But now that we're podcasting, now I'm

5:21

back into documentary watching, and

5:23

I'm, like, texting me on a Friday night. Like,

5:25

holy did you know about this? She's like, yeah,

5:27

bitch. I wrote a book about it. Yeah.

5:30

Actually, the section of my book

5:32

that covered the fundamentalist Mormons did

5:34

get cut, but early or you

5:36

mentioned the phrase keep sweet.

5:38

Yeah. And my stomach just dropped

5:40

to my toes because that is a

5:42

thought terminating cliche used among

5:44

the f LDS to keep

5:46

young women in their place. And the full

5:48

phrase I believe is keep sweet above all

5:50

else. So like no matter what is

5:52

happening to you, literally keep sweet and

5:55

that relates to today's topic. Yeah.

5:57

Absolutely. There is a more explicit, troubled

5:59

teen

5:59

industry to fundamentalist Mormon

6:02

connection, but the surface level connection

6:04

is that it is about

6:05

keeping young people in

6:07

check. Yeah. So

6:09

first

6:09

of all, what is the troubled teen

6:11

industry? So

6:14

the troubled teen industry is

6:16

schools or facilities that

6:18

take in teens who are acting out at

6:20

home, maybe they're drinking underage, they're

6:23

getting under and so their parents

6:25

go to these facilities for help and

6:27

they pay these facilities or these schools

6:30

or these boot camps as I to

6:32

kidnap their child, put

6:34

them in the school for an

6:36

extended period of time, and

6:39

train them to quote

6:41

unquote, be a better person

6:43

or no longer a problematic

6:45

teenager. I think cadet Kelly,

6:48

but not good. No.

6:52

I'd really like to try and retain my individuality.

6:55

I wouldn't do that if I were you. Sweet

6:57

dreams, maggot. Yes.

6:59

The TTi is this,

7:01

which sounds like a sounds like a sexually

7:03

transmitted infection. I know. I really

7:05

think we were, like, doing

7:07

our research and that was like, we were literally

7:09

talking about troubled teen industry for, like, half an hour. And

7:11

I was like, what is TTi? You're like, troubling

7:13

teen industry? Yeah. But it is a gross

7:15

sounding acronym for some reason, ITT

7:18

Tech.

7:18

like It

7:20

does. It does. It's an ITT technical

7:22

institute where you will get abused. Yes.

7:24

No. It either sounds like a four prof at college.

7:27

Those are cults -- Yeah. -- or a a Venereal

7:29

disease. Anyway, yeah, the TTi, it's

7:31

the system of extremely under

7:34

regulated residential youth

7:36

treatment facilities, I suppose, is the

7:38

technical term. Sometimes they're called

7:40

Wilderness Therapy and these

7:42

schools might consist of military

7:45

style boot camps or juvenile

7:47

justice facilities. They're there basically

7:49

to modify the behavior of

7:51

teens that parents for one

7:53

reason or another just can't deal with. Cults

7:55

are in part defined by their misleading

7:58

fucked up recruitment tactics, but I don't

8:00

think we've ever covered a group that putting

8:02

people in as violently as this

8:04

one. With the troubled teen industry, there's

8:06

no love bombing happening. There's no

8:08

one that gets there by joining

8:10

voluntarily. The scary part is the

8:12

way that the teens are brought into the

8:14

program. Mhmm. For me, it was like the

8:16

red flag immediately of like these

8:18

teens are often connect in the

8:20

middle of the night taken from their

8:22

family and they're like screaming for help

8:24

thinking that their parents are going to

8:26

come save them, but it's their own parents who

8:29

facilitated this and

8:31

took them in the middle of the night. And, like, can

8:34

you imagine as a child Absolutely

8:36

not. So some people might be familiar with

8:38

the troubled teen industry from the

8:40

Paris Hilton documentary. I am

8:42

Paris. Paris actually went

8:44

to four different

8:46

troubled teen programs because

8:48

she was partying too much. And

8:50

then, if you recall, she

8:52

got out of these troubled teen programs and

8:54

became the most famous party

8:56

girl in the country so they

8:58

didn't fucking work. They

9:00

literally do not work. She became famous

9:02

for partying and then got a reality

9:05

TV show. But

9:07

it was incredibly traumatic for her

9:09

and a lot of her

9:11

behavior as an adult

9:13

has been in service of, like,

9:15

repressing those memories and distant seeing

9:17

herself from that experience because

9:19

it really did shape her in

9:21

a

9:21

really upsetting way and now she's coming out and

9:24

speaking against the troubled teen industry.

9:26

And I often think to myself, I don't know if you've ever had this

9:28

thought, but ever since I first learned in the trouble

9:30

teen industry when I was very young, I think in

9:32

middle school or high school, I always thought to

9:34

myself like, if my parents were more

9:36

controlling or just like paid more

9:38

attention to me, I might have

9:40

gone to one of these facilities because I

9:42

smoked a lot of weed and cut a lot

9:44

of glass. I have literally never thought of that

9:46

before because I've never heard about the

9:48

troubled teen industry until I

9:50

watched the Paris Hilton documentary.

9:52

Yeah. I think that's the case for a lot

9:54

of people. Yeah. And I also think, like, being

9:57

an immigrant,

9:57

it's like my parents would probably just send me to

10:00

Colombia. There you have it. So now everyone

10:02

has heard of the troubled teen industry, but

10:04

it's actually fairly common. But

10:06

it seems like the reason we don't hear about it

10:08

is because these people are so traumatized.

10:10

They don't talk about it after they leave

10:13

because they're embarrassed. Right. And because

10:15

they don't have a community

10:17

to turn to after they leave to

10:19

believe them and support them.

10:21

Yeah. And another highlight that Paris

10:23

made in her documentary was that because

10:25

you don't have your phone number, you can't

10:27

bring anything into the facility or out of the

10:29

facility. The relationships that you make

10:31

within the facility, like, it's

10:33

really hard to find other people

10:35

after you all left. They're lost to you.

10:38

Yeah. It's like they never existed. But

10:40

it's crazy because there are so many

10:42

of these people that do exist

10:44

today. There estimated hundred and

10:46

twenty thousand young people that are

10:48

housed in these congregate care facilities

10:50

at literally any given time

10:52

across the country. There are currently

10:55

six

10:55

thousand unregulated care

10:57

facilities in the United States,

10:59

and these programs cost between

11:01

two

11:01

thousand and thirty five hundred dollars on

11:04

average for eight

11:04

to twelve week outdoor programs. And

11:07

because

11:07

these programs are not considered evidence based

11:09

treatment, they're often not covered by

11:11

insurance, and therefore, people are

11:13

paying directly out of pocket.

11:15

cults are often defined

11:17

by recognizing a common

11:19

vulnerability and exploiting I

11:21

think this all comes back to how

11:24

overwhelmed parents are in this

11:26

culture when they don't know

11:28

how to handle a conflict in the

11:30

family. They just like,

11:32

outsource it. And that's so

11:34

American. Like, where

11:36

family units are so fractured

11:38

and don't have that same sense of connection

11:40

as they do elsewhere in the world. Yeah. And

11:42

I can see multiple reasons for that

11:45

happening, like they lack community, like a lot of

11:47

immigrant families, you know, their grandparents

11:49

live with them or their family lives with

11:51

them. And so, like, you have that community to

11:53

turn to or you have that aunt or you

11:55

have that uncle that, like, can

11:57

relate to you because maybe, like, they don't have

11:59

kids and they're like, you're homey or something

12:01

and they can get down to your level and be like,

12:03

hey, like, I've been through what you're going through and

12:05

that's like the community aspect

12:07

of care. but then there's also the lack

12:09

of public resources like in

12:11

public schools. You see all

12:13

this money being thrown into policing

12:15

efforts Yep. And putting police

12:17

on campuses and

12:19

you don't see a nurse, you

12:21

don't see a public mental health

12:23

expert on the property of a school.

12:25

And so, like, these It's not enough of them.

12:27

At least not enough of them or you see

12:29

one, especially in, like, lower income

12:31

communities. That's spread so overwhelmed. There

12:33

aren't like enough healthy free

12:36

resources for parents to

12:38

access further children that

12:40

might keep them from being quote unquote

12:42

troubled by the time they get to high school. Exactly.

12:44

And I think the thing that frustrates me the

12:46

most about this troubled teen industry is

12:48

that it's received an estimated twenty three

12:50

billion dollars of public

12:53

funds a year. A year.

12:56

And so why this

12:58

is literally what's wrong with America. Why

13:00

are we giving so much money

13:02

to a privatized industry? Yep. This

13:04

is public funding despite there

13:07

being zero federal legislation

13:09

that oversees the

13:11

troubled teen industry. And despite there

13:13

being like public programs

13:15

to maybe give scholarships to

13:17

teens,

13:18

which in

13:19

hindsight, no, we know. It's better

13:21

that no one's like applying to scholarships

13:23

to get kidnapped. You know what I mean?

13:26

But that is

13:28

so frustrating because, like, public funds

13:30

should be going to actual publicly

13:32

accessible program.

13:42

Hi. My name is Amanda Simmons, and I

13:44

am a lawyer located in Newport

13:46

Beach, California as well as a survivor of

13:48

a now closed TTi facility.

13:50

I currently practice in the areas of

13:52

institutional child abuse and

13:54

child sex assault and I'm working

13:56

on research and coercive environments

13:59

and sexual assault within

14:00

these environments. My belief

14:02

is that TTi facility share a number of

14:04

striking similarities to cultic environments,

14:07

most notably the complete lack of

14:09

consent. The lack of consent within

14:11

the end history and the use of aversive

14:13

technique seems to almost always lead to a form

14:15

of authoritarian control.

14:17

Furthermore, we

14:18

are just beginning to understand the magnitude

14:20

of these harms and the psychological

14:21

abuse that we experienced within

14:23

these facilities. Hey, sounds like a

14:25

cult podcast. This is Emmanuel

14:28

Manuhon. I'm a French

14:30

psychiatrist and I'm over on TL

14:32

four and silence to organization. I

14:34

think the troubleshooting industry programs

14:36

are quite guilty, especially

14:38

because they isolate the

14:40

children from the outside world

14:42

during the entire program.

14:44

Any communication is

14:46

forbidden with their family,

14:48

with difference with

14:50

actually anybody outside of the

14:52

program. And to me,

14:54

this is a way to control the way

14:56

people think, the way people feel

14:58

and to modify the

15:00

the way they think about the

15:03

pro fast.

15:07

It

15:12

is specifically geared for teens.

15:14

It's not geared for young adults. These

15:16

are really important years

15:18

in the development of a person. And

15:20

so the scariest part is that these

15:22

people get kidnapped in

15:24

the middle of the night. So they immediately

15:26

kind of create this like lack of

15:28

trust for anyone around them. That

15:30

is such a destabilizing trauma.

15:32

Yeah. Because it's like these people were

15:34

supposed to take care of you. These parents were

15:36

supposed to, like, be there for you. Are the ones

15:38

who facilitated your own kidnapping.

15:40

I know. I know. It's

15:42

like something from a

15:44

horror movie. Like, I

15:45

cannot believe that this do you want to describe a

15:48

little bit exactly how the kidnapping

15:50

occurs? Yeah. They're parent approved

15:52

kidnappings. The parent makes the decision

15:54

to send their children to these programs and they hire

15:57

transporters. Transporters. Like,

15:59

what a euphemism?

15:59

Yeah. Quote unquote, I feel like

16:02

This often happens with, like, culty

16:04

groups. It's, like, they just design, like,

16:06

really official sounding language to

16:08

close. Yeah. Transporters. Yeah.

16:10

Literally kidnappers to obscure truth

16:13

to hide an unpleasant truth in a

16:15

pocket of subtext. That's what

16:17

euphemisms are foreign. They're a major

16:19

part of cult language, like

16:21

keep sweet. Disgusting. Yeah.

16:23

So these teens are transported usually

16:25

in the middle of the night. They are

16:27

hour and hours away from home. They don't

16:29

have any knowledge of where they

16:31

are, where they're going, or

16:34

why. It makes me feel sick to my

16:36

stomach even thinking about that experience.

16:38

Yeah. So there's the euphemism of

16:40

being transported by a transporter,

16:42

but people who have survived the program,

16:44

they call it being gooned. Paris

16:46

Hilton specifically talks about this way and

16:48

that they come to your house and they say, you

16:50

could do this the easy way or you can do this

16:52

the hard way. But either way, you were

16:54

coming with us. Oh my god. It

16:57

it's it's like a military

16:59

torture. It's like being a prisoner of war.

17:02

But you know. Yeah.

17:03

And you're a kid. And so I think it puts

17:05

into question, like, everything you've

17:07

ever believed your whole life. Yeah.

17:09

Yeah. Who to trust? What the point

17:12

is of life.

17:15

Honestly, like like, what goes through your

17:17

head when you think you're like in

17:19

your very last moments? Because

17:21

growing up, you're taught that, like, if you're getting kidnapped,

17:23

it's for two reasons. It's to be murdered

17:25

or to be raped. Yeah. Especially if

17:27

you're a girl. Especially if you're a girl. So

17:29

what's going through your mind in these moments?

17:32

It's like, one of those things is about to happen to them.

17:34

Yeah. You never think your parents are sending

17:36

you a way to quote unquote

17:38

therapy. Yeah. So then once they get

17:41

there ostensibly they're supposed to

17:43

spend eight to twelve weeks in the

17:45

wilderness away from

17:47

their families without any knowledge of

17:49

what day or time or month it

17:51

is or anything else about the

17:53

outside world. So this is an extremely

17:56

disorienting case of isolation. A

17:58

typical stay is eight to twelve weeks,

17:59

but for eighty

18:00

percent of teens, the story

18:03

doesn't end there because they go on to a

18:05

therapeutic boarding

18:06

school afterwards. Can

18:08

you imagine that? I can't even go

18:10

three days without in to Graham.

18:12

I'm like, they're going eight

18:14

to twelve weeks entirely isolated, not

18:16

knowing why. And like, I lose my phone for

18:18

two hours, and I'm like, where am I? I'm like, what

18:21

year is it? Honestly, that part of it

18:23

sounds really nice. Yeah. That's true.

18:25

If you knew why, if you knew

18:27

why, if you consented Or,

18:29

like, at least I think the fear

18:30

is that the parents think that, like, if they tell

18:33

their kid, like, this is going to happen, the kid

18:35

will run away. But

18:37

even if it runs away, then they can, like, find

18:39

it kid. I

18:42

love children. I love when people who

18:44

don't have kids talk about kids.

18:46

I actually think calling children. It is

18:49

really gender neutral. And I've been

18:51

doing it. I saw a kid

18:53

off. It's like the other day, and I was like, look

18:55

at Belle. and also this is really

18:57

progressive. Some

18:57

languages only have one

19:00

singular third person pronoun to

19:02

refer to objects or people, and it really

19:04

is the it again. So you're not

19:07

wrong. So, like, even if it knew that it was

19:09

gonna get kidnapped and

19:11

it ran away at least when it did

19:13

finally get lapped, it would

19:15

know. I literally can't call it anything

19:17

else, but it would know why. You

19:19

know? This is where it gets

19:21

scary. of communication -- Yeah. --

19:23

in the program. So any

19:25

communication that happens once they

19:27

arrive, which is exclusively with the parents,

19:29

they can't, like, chitchat with their friends.

19:31

it's heavily monitored as if you're in

19:33

prison. If you're like sending letters to

19:35

your parents home, if there is any

19:37

actual abuse happening in these

19:40

facilities, The letters are read by the

19:42

counselors before they're sent home.

19:44

So the parents are actively told

19:46

not to believe anything

19:48

that their kids are saying. So if their kids are

19:50

literally trying to communicate with them,

19:52

like, this is really abusive, like,

19:54

x, y, and z is happening to me, and I

19:56

don't feel actual safe, the

19:59

parents are like told not to

20:01

believe them. Yeah. And I think we have like

20:03

a larger problem in this

20:06

culture and I believe many cultures

20:08

of disregarding the

20:10

validity of what someone is saying just

20:12

because they're young. I think that's

20:14

a lot of what parents are experiencing,

20:16

this cognitive dissonance, and this, like,

20:19

almost cultural unwillingness

20:21

to believe what a kid is saying.

20:23

Yeah. happens a lot. It does make sense and like

20:25

a lot of these times parents do experience

20:27

that cognitive dissonance because

20:29

they think of a big picture. They think,

20:32

like, this is tough love. This is what

20:34

I want for you. I want the

20:36

best for you. And even though you're suffering

20:38

right now, it'll be better in the

20:40

long run. and justify the means. And justify the means.

20:42

And I feel like the problem with that

20:44

as, like, our culture shifts

20:46

and changes is that

20:49

parent don't always know what's best

20:51

for you. Our parents carry the trauma that

20:53

their parents pass down to them. Yeah. If you're not

20:55

in a family of, like, that's been in

20:57

generations of, like, actually good

20:59

therapy. Yeah. Then, like, there's

21:01

no parent that knows what's best. A hundred

21:03

percent, and I think the healthier my

21:05

relationship with my parents

21:07

get it's because I see them as fallible. I

21:09

see them as not having all the answers. But

21:11

when you're a kid, not only do you

21:13

have less perspective, you also

21:15

have little to no power. So if you're

21:18

rebellious or different

21:20

in such a tight ass

21:22

individualist, capitalist

21:25

culture. That that's how a coal

21:27

industry like the troubled teen industry

21:29

can develop. And I think especially

21:31

when the quote unquote cult

21:33

leaders at these facilities are

21:35

telling the parents this is

21:37

treatment. This is for their own

21:39

good. that's going to further

21:41

help themselves justify that this was

21:43

the right move for their kids. And that relates to

21:45

the fact that this cult of the

21:47

troubled teen industry, it's not just a

21:49

cult that's pulling in troubled teens, but it's this cult that's also

21:52

pulling in the parents with their

21:54

language and with their ideology and

21:56

telling them, like, we know what's

21:58

best. But we'll get into that a

21:59

little bit more after we talk about

22:02

the background, like, what are the

22:03

roots of the troubled teen industry and, like, where

22:05

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everybody listen to podcasts.

29:32

The

29:36

origins of the troubled teen industry

29:39

are something

29:39

I've been itching to talk about for

29:41

quite a while because

29:44

This whole industry took a lot of

29:46

inspiration from the

29:48

cult where my dad incidentally

29:50

spent his teenage years sitting on,

29:52

and this is Amanda speaking here

29:54

for anybody who gets our voices

29:56

confused, Amanda's dad grew up

29:58

in sin and on. Okay.

29:59

Wait. Now I'm realizing why your parents never send you

30:02

to a troubled community because they were like, this picture

30:04

is gonna join a cult. Yeah.

30:06

Maybe. No. That's totally possible.

30:08

Your dad is probably, like, I don't

30:10

wanna put her through what I've gone

30:12

through. Yeah. I still maintain that it was because they

30:14

were too busy to pay attention how much we and

30:16

I was I almost worked out for the best because then

30:18

you were like, you didn't join the cult you wrote

30:20

about them. You know? But I also

30:22

think that giving your teens

30:24

the space to make mistakes

30:26

can often even itself out. And

30:29

Amanda knows this as a

30:31

cat mom. You're like

30:34

my teenage cat. Oh,

30:36

yes. Yes. Yes. My cat well, my cat is like a

30:38

middle aged lady Yeah. But

30:40

thirteen years, I wish I could've put that bitch in a

30:42

troubled team in a different path. She's

30:44

still she's still pretty rebellious. so

30:46

much. We

30:46

heard from a few listeners that

30:49

you'd like to hear more stories

30:51

and fun facts about old

30:53

school cults like Jonestown and Scientology.

30:56

here and there on this podcast, and

30:59

we've got lots of those, so

31:01

get ready. Classic

31:03

pulp. So

31:08

synodont was founded

31:11

in the late nineteen fifties

31:13

in Southern California to

31:15

California. It later moved to the Bay Area, but

31:17

it originated as an

31:19

alternative drug rehabilitation

31:21

center for hard drug users who were called

31:24

and later grew to accommodate so called lifestyleers

31:26

who just wanted in on the

31:28

sort of blossoming counter cultural movement

31:30

of the era. but they kept

31:32

a lot of the ideology from back when it

31:35

was just a drug rehab.

31:37

And so in

31:40

synodon,

31:40

kids lived separately from their

31:43

parents miles and miles

31:45

away because their whole

31:47

ideology was like separate family.

31:49

That is like the fundamentalist Mormon.

31:51

Yeah. Yeah. They would separate their kids, and I feel

31:53

like that's literally because

31:55

when

31:55

your parent isn't like attached at the hip to

31:57

you, they can like reinstall, like, a

32:00

mindset into the child -- A hundred percent. -- to

32:02

be exactly what they want them

32:04

to be. Yes. And

32:06

their whole argument was that, you

32:08

know, your family enables you.

32:10

You need to, like, become

32:13

independent from that enabling. But these kids didn't

32:15

have a drug problem. You know?

32:17

And also, like, that's

32:19

not false. You know, like, your family does

32:21

enable you. You know what I mean? Like But,

32:23

like, co dependence is good. No. Co dependence

32:25

is good, but it's up. That's the thing. Nothing

32:27

is black or white or, like,

32:29

perfectly good versus solely bad. So

32:31

like the idea that your family enables you,

32:34

that's not false. But the idea that in

32:36

order for it not to enable you in a bad way,

32:38

you have to fully separate yourself

32:40

from them. That's not

32:42

that's not healthy. That's not healthy.

32:45

So a lot of the troubled teen

32:47

industry's current methods derived

32:49

from synodine where they would try to

32:51

break people's addiction through

32:54

isolation, humiliation, hard

32:57

labor, sleep deprivation, innovation. So acted

32:59

on ended up devolving

33:01

into a lot of violence, and it was

33:03

disbanded in the early nineteen

33:05

eighties after that violence was

33:07

posed. What kind of violence? So what happened

33:10

was the leader. He he was a guy named

33:12

Chuck Dedrick. At the beginning,

33:14

he was characteristically non

33:16

violent. This was like peaceful socialist

33:18

utopia vibes. But classic vibes.

33:20

Yes. Classic vibes. But

33:22

of course, he grew more

33:25

bloodthirsty and deranged over the years as

33:27

notorious cult leaders tend to do. And by

33:29

the founded his own, like,

33:31

personal militia called the Imperial

33:33

Marines. What the fuck? He

33:35

really didn't want people to leave the

33:37

group. People who left were

33:39

called splites and there was once a group of splites

33:41

that tried to sue Dieterich for

33:43

the abuses and that

33:45

lawyer who helped them sue

33:48

Chuck Dederick got the Imperial Marines to put

33:50

a rattlesnake in his mailbox,

33:53

and the rattlesnake then bit the

33:55

lawyer who was hospitalized after

33:57

that incident, Chuck Dedrick, was

34:01

imprisoned. Oh, okay. So, like, there was a

34:03

particular incident where,

34:05

like, there was violence. flood

34:07

a snake. But also, the Imperial Marines would

34:09

be assigned to beat up

34:11

splitties, like physically pummel them

34:13

for leaving. It was bad

34:15

news bears. Bad news spares, you mean,

34:17

like, toxic and dangerous. It was

34:19

horrible. It was horrible. By the early

34:21

nineteen eighties, Synnon was largely

34:24

disbanded and

34:26

yet its model had already been widely copied.

34:28

For example, way back in

34:30

nineteen seventy one, the federal government had

34:33

given a grant to a

34:35

Florida organization called Seed, which had used

34:38

Synenon's methods on teenagers that

34:40

they only suspected

34:42

of having tried

34:44

drugs. It's giving witch

34:46

trials. Of course, like, I'm

34:48

suspecting your witch. It's just,

34:51

like, almost like the patriarchy but for

34:54

adults. You know what I mean? It's like

34:56

the hating of a group of people for

34:58

no particular reason. Yeah. or, like,

35:01

diminishing a group of people, but these people are just children. Like, people

35:03

so much wanna take away

35:05

children's rights when you speak into

35:07

giving children rights.

35:10

here's a conspiracy theory. People don't wanna

35:12

give kids rights because children are the

35:15

future. Mhmm.

35:17

I'm has also traditionally children or young

35:19

people are a lot more liberal. Yeah. Yeah. So it's

35:21

like so conservative to not wanna give you other people.

35:23

This is literally not a conspiracy. That's just

35:25

the truth. Oh,

35:27

I think, you know, a lot

35:29

of these parents sending their kids

35:31

to these drug programs even though they

35:33

were only suspected drugs. It's

35:35

like, throw the woman in the water. And if she drowns, I guess she's not a witch.

35:37

You know, yeah. Exactly. I think a lot of

35:39

these parents were conservative and they were

35:42

scared about all the cookie

35:44

new drugs coming up in the

35:46

culture and they were like, no, I don't even want

35:48

my kid to have even tried any of this

35:50

stuff. Why not? Oh,

35:52

no, we never hurt nobody. You know what

35:54

I mean? I Sorry mom and dad. I smoked

35:56

weed at home alone. My basement when my parents

35:58

went out of town when we did. Fully

35:59

legal and less dangerous than alcohol.

36:02

And if you've raised your kid properly,

36:04

they will get so high will try to call the

36:06

cops on themselves. And

36:08

I tried. I did my friends literally

36:10

grab the phone from me and we're No. Do

36:12

not. I never smoked weed again for, like, another six years. Wow.

36:16

Oh my god. And I just never did weed again

36:18

until I moved

36:20

to where it was legal and then I You know you're still getting used to a

36:22

drug when you say did weed.

36:24

Yeah. Still getting used to it. But today

36:26

famously love

36:28

weed. famously love weed. Yeah. So anyway, the

36:30

seed got exposed for employing

36:32

many of the same

36:34

mind control techniques that

36:38

were used by North Koreans during the Korean War, and that bad

36:40

publicity sort of like

36:42

put an end to the seed, bad

36:46

publicity. Yeah. war tactics --

36:48

Yeah. -- or bad PR. Not

36:50

good. Not good. So

36:52

then this copycat organization

36:54

was created under a sprint name and this

36:56

is a classic cult red flag as well when

36:58

you're basically taking the same

37:00

ideology and you're just renaming it

37:02

in order to

37:04

evade persecution. classic pulp.

37:06

It happens with

37:09

a lot of

37:10

religion It absolutely does.

37:12

fringe religion, Saturday, saints,

37:14

yeah, right. And

37:16

so

37:18

that organization

37:20

was called straight inc. Like,

37:22

scared straight. Like, keep yourself straight. By

37:24

the mid nineteen eighties, straight was operating

37:27

in seven different states and they

37:30

used these same synodont tactics

37:32

of confrontation and humiliation.

37:34

The centerpiece of life in synodont

37:36

was a humiliating for of quote unquote

37:38

group therapy called The

37:40

Game, where everyone including

37:42

kids would have to gather in a circle and

37:44

subject one another to

37:45

hours of vicious rudal

37:47

ad hominem criticism just for the sake of

37:50

it. Yeah. It was pitched as a form of group

37:52

therapy, but really it was a means of social

37:54

control. That actual term

37:56

scared straight reminds me a lot of

37:58

conversion therapy because I feel like it

37:59

probably had a double on tundra.

38:02

Some of them were probably actually trying to

38:04

scare them into being This is like sort

38:06

of dated slang now,

38:08

but at

38:08

least in the seventies and I think maybe

38:10

the eighties, but not really since

38:12

then straight meant sober. like,

38:15

you know, how people say are going to be

38:17

straight and sober. Yeah. And I think people have,

38:19

like, sort of moved away from that terminology

38:21

now because of the overlap with

38:23

gay versus straight. Yeah. But it also probably is in

38:25

that overarching umbrella of like conservatives

38:28

don't want to drink. They don't want to

38:30

do drugs. they don't want to be

38:32

gay. Yeah. AKA, they don't want to have

38:34

fun. Yeah. So

38:36

in all of that falls into, like,

38:38

be

38:39

good or else. Totally. Totally. No. That is all the same. There's definitely

38:41

overlap between the troubled teen industry

38:43

and conversion therapy. But anyway, long

38:45

story short by the nineteen

38:48

nineties, these tough, love,

38:51

military style boot camps

38:53

and wilderness programs were

38:56

common. and it really

38:58

started with sitting on. It always has to

39:00

start somewhere, you know. And it started with

39:02

your dad. I But is I

39:04

freaky that, like, my own father was a

39:07

teenager in synod. Yeah. That

39:09

is so scary. But I

39:11

feel like it's also bad

39:14

publicity for these troubled teen programs because

39:16

your dad turned out to be really

39:18

successful. I'm like a good guy. He did,

39:20

but it was in large part because he broke the rules.

39:22

And you weren't supposed to go to an

39:24

outside school in Cinnan. You were supposed to go to

39:26

the Cinnan school. And my

39:28

grandfather who

39:30

forced my dad to join Synnon maintained until his dying

39:32

day that he brought my dad to Synnon

39:34

because of the good school. That was

39:36

bullshit. It was just him justifying

39:39

why he made my dad join a cult as a

39:41

kid. But anyway, my dad was like, this school

39:43

is bogus, and so he escaped every single day

39:45

and hitched a ride to San Francisco so

39:47

that he could get a diploma from a real high

39:49

school and matriculate in college. And I'm like, I got his

39:51

PhD, and now he's a scientist.

39:54

Now he's smart and

39:56

doing fine. and that goes to

39:58

show sometimes kids need to sneak out. You

40:00

know what I mean? I feel like a lot of really

40:02

good parents especially these days. It's like it's not

40:04

like they let their kids sneak out, but

40:06

it's like they know their kids are, like, doing certain things, but,

40:08

like, as long as they, like, know it's not, like,

40:10

really dangerous. Yeah. They kind of let them

40:12

get away with it. I saw this TikTok the other day of

40:14

a little kid like, an actual

40:16

toddler, like, walking, like,

40:18

really close to the pool. And the

40:20

mom was saying, sometimes you need to, like,

40:22

let your kids, like, learn, but, like,

40:24

you're observing them. And the toddler didn't fall into the pool, but

40:26

you know how toddlers like wobble around. A toddler. Oh my

40:29

god. I never thought of

40:31

that. Yeah. Words. toddler

40:34

was toppling around the pool and it looked like

40:36

it was gonna fall in, but it didn't.

40:38

But it readjusted itself.

40:40

It readjusted and it stepped a

40:43

couple feet away from the pool. And the parent was like, look,

40:45

the child learned on its own. Yeah. But I

40:47

was there to catch it just in case it

40:49

had totally. I think that's a mess for

40:52

for teenagers experimenting.

40:54

Yeah. There is a point past which it's

40:56

dangerous and interfering with your life.

40:58

But if your kids I mean, me saying as

41:00

the parent only a cat and a dog. But, like,

41:02

if your kid is, like, smoking a little weed,

41:04

but seems happy ish, and

41:06

it's still getting good grades

41:09

and, like, lean more. The only thing is that the

41:11

word experimenting kind of triggers me a little bit

41:13

as a queer person because I feel like a lot

41:15

of parents weren't like very

41:18

homophobic. They're just happy there. It

41:20

isn't queer. Like, they say

41:22

that for bisexual people. Like, when we

41:24

come out as bisexual. They're like, oh, you're just experimenting. Oh, I

41:26

guess, I come from a family of

41:28

scientists. So, like, experimenting is

41:30

great. Yeah. experimenting

41:32

is great as long as like your parents are willing to accept you once you

41:34

decide it's like not just a little experiment. Yeah.

41:36

Sometimes the experiment comes out with

41:38

a result and the result is

41:49

Hi. My

41:52

name is Tori. I am calling from

41:54

Washington DC. I'm an

41:57

adolescent therapists have worked with

41:58

a lot of youth who have

41:59

been through the troubled teen

42:02

industry. And the most

42:05

cultish thing about the troubled teen

42:07

industry probably be the power dynamics that

42:10

are kind of

42:12

in play. you know, between

42:14

staff and with kids, the

42:16

normalization of the kids or

42:18

the clients having, you know, no

42:20

autonomy or independence

42:22

or say, and kind of

42:24

expecting to just accept

42:26

that. I'm Eva. I'm from

42:28

DC. I was a victim of

42:31

TTI.

42:31

If you Google my name,

42:34

I was a missing person as a

42:36

result of a troubled

42:39

teen industry I was missing in the

42:41

forest of

42:42

Tennessee

42:44

for six days. I

42:47

was only fifteen.

43:00

Let's talk about some

43:01

of the cult like

43:04

tactics

43:05

that have lasted in the troubled

43:07

teen industry long after it's cinema non derived origins. Yeah.

43:10

So we talked a little bit about

43:12

how they

43:14

use different styles of

43:16

camps like therapeutic camps or

43:18

military style camps or juvenile

43:20

justice facilities, but like what are they

43:22

doing within these

43:24

facilities? And How can this

43:26

affect these kids for such a long period

43:28

of time? One of the things that I think

43:30

is the most extreme that they're doing

43:32

is punishment.

43:34

Extreme punishment. they're making these kids

43:36

go on, like, long hikes.

43:37

They are putting them into law

43:39

too. Like, I'm sorry. That

43:42

sounds like when I

43:44

said that's so simply. I was like, okay, this bitch does not work

43:46

out. But, like, really long

43:48

hikes. Like, think, like, twenty five

43:50

mile hike. bikes. That's

43:52

punishment. Through the wilderness, I

43:54

mean, who knows how good the

43:56

nutrition is? And so I feel like it's again this thing

43:58

of like using

43:59

lighthearted words to make it

44:02

sound easier. Hikes, like everyone

44:04

loves to hike or like some people like to

44:06

hike. hike is just to walk

44:08

in trees. A hike sounds

44:10

so pleasant. This is not fucking

44:12

pleasant. It's not. Like, it's a

44:14

punishment. A hike is pleasant when you have

44:16

control over how long you're

44:18

doing what you can talk about while you're doing it and when it

44:20

ends and like these teens

44:22

have no control over like when it starts

44:24

when it ends and like they are

44:26

already on in survival

44:28

mode. You know, they're in a mode of

44:30

like, I don't know where I am and I don't know how long this

44:32

is gonna last. Imagine going on a hike and not

44:34

knowing when it's gonna end. Oh my god. Me

44:36

and my toxic ex. I was like, be like, let's go

44:38

on a two mile hike and we wouldn't bring water

44:40

in, like, eight miles later I wanna

44:44

die. Yeah. not comparing, but toxicity

44:46

runs in many circles.

44:48

Yeah. There's something called the

44:50

chair that goes on in troubled teen

44:52

programs where

44:54

survivors have come out and talked about being forced to stay silent and sit in

44:57

a chair for all hours of the

44:59

day. And if they broke, their

45:02

time in the chair would be extended. So it's basically like

45:04

extreme time out. I mean,

45:06

anything that's like called the chair reminds

45:09

me of like, fucking death sentence. I know. Like,

45:11

that's so scary. Electric chair. And there's

45:14

also, like, shaming and

45:16

isolation. Like we mentioned, there's solitary

45:18

confinement. Like,

45:20

if you try and act out at these camps, you're

45:22

not only met with, like,

45:24

more punishment, but you have no one to

45:26

communicate with. Like, yeah, a lot

45:29

of the times these camps have, like, quote unquote,

45:31

therapists or counselors that you can go

45:33

talk to, but those people are, like,

45:35

in on it. Yes. if you're complaining to

45:37

them about something, it's like they're communicating that back to the

45:39

person who's overseeing everything.

45:41

It reminds me dating

45:43

shows. Like, when like,

45:45

what your our guests were saying the

45:47

other day, like, we have therapists on

45:50

set, but you don't know if the therapists

45:52

are, like, Producer, dude, full on. If you haven't listened to our cult

45:54

girl summer episode on the cult of dating

45:56

apps, give that a listen if you wanna sort of

45:58

recover emotionally from

45:59

this episode. But

46:02

shame is a huge tactic. There

46:04

was a vice documentary on this

46:06

industry that spoke with people who were forced

46:08

into a program called cross creek

46:10

manner. They said that the whole thing

46:12

is based on a break you down to build you back

46:14

up mentality, so they literally

46:16

destroy you so that they can

46:18

meld you into what they were needing you to

46:20

be. The school performs

46:22

full prison style intakes and

46:24

cavity searches. So, you know, bending

46:26

over spreading your cheeks.

46:28

Another thing that's like really salty

46:30

is the lack of oversight and the lack

46:32

of accountability. It's not that

46:34

these programs aren't like official

46:36

and don't have like all the legal paperwork

46:38

to function. It's that despite how

46:40

much public funding as we mentioned is going

46:42

into these programs There's not a lot of

46:44

public oversight ed. Why do you guys think this is? Why do you guys

46:46

scream it out in your cars, in your

46:49

houses? If you're folding your

46:52

undies, doing laundry, what do you think it

46:54

is? I'll tell you, it's

46:56

because this shit is going down

46:58

in

46:59

conservative ass states. They

47:00

say that a lot of this

47:01

is going down in these conservative

47:03

states because of the nature,

47:05

like in Utah, because they can

47:07

go on hikes and they can go in the

47:10

mountains. But, oh, what

47:11

else is happening in Utah? The

47:13

multilevel marketing in their history,

47:16

the Mormons, the fundamentalist

47:19

Mormons, conspiracy theories, up the wazoo. Yeah. And

47:21

a lot of these

47:23

states have these, like, conservative

47:26

policymakers that turn a blind eye

47:28

to practices like these

47:30

AKA also bliggy If

47:32

you think that policymakers

47:34

in Utah are turning a blind eye to polygamy,

47:36

you can bet your bottom dollar they're turning

47:38

a blind eye to trouble teen industry.

47:40

Yeah. It is absolutely no accident Utah

47:42

is the unofficial headquarters

47:44

of so many culty

47:46

enterprises. Yeah. Doomsday prepping

47:50

Everything. Everything. Essential oils. The only thing

47:52

that's, like, made it out alive is, like,

47:54

the ski industry. Oh,

47:55

a Zion National

47:58

Park. Mountain's magic is

47:59

beautiful. Although, now I don't really like

48:02

Zion National Park now or the name of it at

48:04

least now that I watched

48:06

the fundamentalist documentary because it's like, zion is like their heavy I

48:08

know they could use a rebrand. Yeah. That

48:10

perfectly tracks with the

48:14

fact that the quote unquote therapy going on in

48:16

these places is off

48:18

the books in large part

48:20

not based on evidence group

48:23

therapy sessions might include teens being

48:25

forced to unleash the

48:27

stories of traumatic moments in

48:29

their life in front

48:32

of other there's this one program

48:34

called the Eva Carlston Academy, which employs

48:36

a hot seat procedure

48:40

very similar to the synodont game where a person gets

48:42

up in front of the entire group and they

48:44

all go around and tell them what is wrong

48:47

with the person. one person who survived the Eva Carlson

48:49

Academy said typically what would happen in any therapy

48:52

group which would happen daily is

48:54

we would have some topic for the

48:56

group, and normally one or two people would share

48:58

their story or experience. And once they're

49:00

done, we basically all go around and

49:02

berate them. This is exactly derived

49:04

from the game. That is so

49:06

dangerous because it lacks the, like,

49:08

ethics of actual therapy and proper

49:10

therapy where, like, you just have private space that

49:13

you

49:13

can truly tell your therapist everything

49:14

and you can trust that they're not gonna use it

49:16

against you. But in these groups, it's

49:19

like not only can people working at the

49:21

facility to use it against you, but you're also they're also pinning teens against

49:23

each other. There are rape

49:26

reenactments on sexually

49:28

abused girl they have male staff reenact the

49:30

rape while other teams were instructed to

49:32

yell out horror and slut.

49:34

It's this

49:36

lack of like evidence based treatment that I feel

49:38

like for me is the scamiest

49:40

part about the industry.

49:43

They are charging so much money

49:45

for these treatments that

49:48

aren't legitimate and like the reason a lot

49:50

of parents avoid taking their kids to therapies because so

49:52

expensive to find a good,

49:54

like, proper therapist for

49:56

your child

49:57

but these programs are charging

49:59

up the

49:59

wazoo and they aren't like

50:02

evidence based

50:04

totally. Hi.

50:09

I'm Danielle

50:14

from our Tiana. I attended Wilderness

50:16

Therapy followed by a therapeutic boarding

50:18

school in Utah when

50:18

I was a teenager, and I think

50:20

the courteous thing about the troubled team

50:24

industry is the religious

50:26

agenda. These programs are

50:28

run by Mormons. And for

50:30

example, I had a therapist and

50:32

wilderness town me that the reason

50:34

I abused drugs was

50:36

because I was secretly

50:38

gay and not wanting

50:40

to confront it, but that they were going

50:41

to be curing me. essentially.

50:44

I talked about this in an episode

50:46

of my podcast

50:48

with Joanne Lee Kakers, who's

50:50

the therapist that helped me unpack my time

50:53

in a troubled tea industry cults. I think the most

50:55

cool tea thing is what she

50:57

called catharsis to tendents, which is

50:59

a great way to put it. A lot of these

51:02

quote unquote treatment programs

51:05

what they consider treatment is

51:07

pushing people to the

51:10

point of this, like,

51:12

intense emotion a breakdown,

51:14

whether it's about a specific

51:17

incident or just

51:20

in general traumatic experiences. And the

51:22

person has this intense

51:24

emotional release and it

51:26

feels like a catharsis but

51:30

their time there becomes

51:33

about having those

51:35

kinds of experiences over and

51:37

over and over again to

51:39

try to get that feeling of

51:44

emotional relief.

51:51

So we've talked

51:52

a bit about what makes

51:55

both the parents and the

51:57

children vulnerable to the

51:59

exploitation

51:59

of the troubled teen industry, but

52:02

let's talk about some more of the

52:03

costs. Of course, the

52:05

teens, they're vulnerable because their parents are

52:07

putting them in these programs in

52:09

parents because they just don't know what to do and they

52:11

lack resources. It's not like these parents can

52:13

like afford to spend all this

52:16

money on their

52:18

kids, but they do it, and so all of a sudden they're in this

52:20

sunk cost fallacy

52:20

mindset. And

52:21

I'm like, well, I already spent all

52:23

this money, so I'm not gonna pull

52:25

my kid out. Nobody is

52:28

going to justify their mistakes,

52:30

more than someone who's made a

52:32

really, really bad mistake. And that's on the

52:34

cult of headings. Stay tuned for

52:36

that episode coming oh so soon.

52:39

But that just goes to show

52:41

how these cult like through

52:44

lines really track along the wide cultish spectrum.

52:46

Like, the Suncost fallacy applies

52:48

whether the stakes are as low as I

52:50

spent too much money on a wedding

52:54

or as high as my kid has been subjected to

52:56

months of abuse. And parents famously are

52:58

really bad at admitting when they made

53:01

a mistake. I think we

53:03

all are. I think we all are. You know, as

53:05

our parents were. I actually think

53:07

it's human nature. I think we shift blame

53:09

to protect our own self

53:12

esteem. Mhmm. For example, I was late this morning there

53:14

was traffic, not because I

53:16

left ten minutes late.

53:19

Yeah. We do. We make excuses because we

53:21

wanna protect this vision of

53:24

ourselves as, like, we're fundamentally in the right -- Mhmm.

53:26

-- you know, and that makes admitting to wrongdoing

53:28

really hard. Yeah. So before we

53:30

wrap up and get to our conclusion, let's maybe

53:32

tell the story of like a worst

53:35

case scenario from the troubled teen industry because there

53:37

are so many cases of documented

53:40

abuse. Yeah. As Amanda said, there are a lot

53:42

of cases of documented abuse, but we

53:44

don't wanna go to

53:46

into depth because these are really just Yeah.

53:48

They're dark. There have been hell of deaths.

53:50

It's just bad. The case

53:52

that we're gonna talk about today

53:54

is Cornelius Frederick, he

53:56

died of injuries sustained in a

53:58

residential treatment facility called Lakeside

54:00

Academy. He was pushed into the ground

54:02

and physically restrained by seven

54:04

staffers for throwing a sandwich in the

54:06

cafeteria. They placed their weight on

54:08

his chest for twelve minutes. They did

54:10

not call nine eleven for

54:12

another twelve. after he was unresponsive.

54:14

He died by suffocation and it was ruled homicide. I

54:16

mean, the physical violence that goes on

54:18

in these places is really

54:22

unspeakable, and this is just

54:24

one story out of many.

54:26

Yeah. And Lakeside Academy is still

54:28

open folks. Isn't

54:30

that fucked? I also just thought of another

54:32

connection between the troubled industry and

54:34

a cult we're gonna be covering soon.

54:36

the cult of celebrity doctors because doctor Phil has famously

54:38

sent young people on his show

54:41

to Utah based troubled

54:43

teen programs. Oh, wow. I

54:46

wonder if he's, like, sponsored by them or

54:48

anything. You know? I'm sure he has relationships.

54:50

There's just so much money moving

54:52

around behind the scenes in these

54:54

facilities that we don't know about. And if you think about

54:56

it, the food at these facilities are

54:58

shitty. These people are sleeping in rooms that

55:00

literally look like jail cells.

55:02

So why do they cost so

55:04

much money? Yeah. This is literally it's

55:06

like FLDS vibes in that it's

55:08

just these institutions used to like funnel money.

55:10

It's like a front for something else.

55:13

I wanna see the

55:16

fundamentalist Mormon troubled teen

55:18

industry celebrity doctor of

55:20

Venn diagram. Maybe I'll make that. Yeah.

55:22

Make that. This wasn't the only

55:24

case where one of the teenagers in

55:25

one of these facilities

55:27

died. This has happened multiple

55:29

times and people have

55:31

endured abuse or sexual assault in

55:33

these facilities. It and they when

55:35

they write to their parents and they tell them how bad it

55:38

is, they are literally trained

55:40

not to believe them. Yep. They're trained not to believe

55:42

them or their messages are censored.

55:44

So Paris Hilton again is probably the most famous person

55:46

who's come out and spoken again

55:50

these programs. She was actually sent to four different institutions

55:52

when she was a teenager. One

55:54

of them was called Provo Canyon.

55:56

She said she didn't see sunlight or

55:59

a breathe

55:59

fresh air for eleven months

56:02

and claims that their isolation room is

56:04

covered in scratch marks and

56:06

smeared blood. Parsons now

56:08

has started a movement

56:10

to hold the troubled

56:12

teen industry accountable, and I think it's important

56:14

to talk about what is going

56:16

on with with

56:17

regard to investigations into the

56:20

industry and other people speaking out. Paris

56:22

Hilton's documentary and hashtag

56:24

breaking code silence has really made this a

56:27

viral issue, but she's by no means the

56:29

first person to try to bring

56:31

the atrocities of the troubled teen industry

56:33

to light. Now I mean, I think it's shown that people

56:35

are trying to take it more seriously because in twenty eighteen, which is two

56:38

years before her documentary came out,

56:40

California enacted legislation

56:42

that requires strict

56:44

licensing of troubled teen

56:46

programs and specifically delineates

56:48

participants. Right?

56:50

So now

56:50

now at least

56:51

in California, there are more

56:53

regulations. What

56:54

about you, Utah? Are you next?

56:56

Yeah. There

56:57

ain't never gonna come next. I

56:59

mean, they're still not condemning polygacy.

57:01

Like, I have filmed it all. Get over

57:03

that. Like, polygacy is

57:06

illegal on federal are

57:08

also to clarify because some people

57:10

mishear. We're talking about

57:13

polygamy, not polyamory. Did

57:16

you know that the opposite of polygomy is called

57:18

polyendry? That's when you have one

57:21

wife and multiple husbands. I did

57:23

not know that. What is it

57:25

called when you hate men? Just kidding. For that

57:27

one lady who leaves commenting

57:29

on my tweets, being

57:32

like my son and I were listening to your podcast and

57:34

we really liked it until you said you hate

57:36

all men and then I immediately turned it off, yeah,

57:38

I got your email. I got your tweet I

57:41

got your DM lady. It was a joke. It's a

57:43

joke, but that is called messenger.

57:46

Yeah.

57:47

Good to know. So, Isoo,

57:57

out of three cult categories. Live

58:00

your

58:00

life.

58:01

Oh, watch

58:02

your back. Or

58:04

get the fuck out. What do you think about

58:07

the TTi, the troubled teen industry? To me,

58:09

the troubled teen

58:10

industry is a

58:12

hard get

58:15

the fuck out. Because it reminds

58:17

me of

58:17

ILDS

58:19

That's so funny. You're like,

58:21

I mean, I

58:24

feel like no matter what cult documentary you watch, if we cover and

58:26

get the fuck out level cult, it's gonna remind

58:28

you of that cult documentary. Yeah. It's gonna remind

58:30

me of whatever cult documentary

58:33

I watched as opposed to

58:35

recently. Yeah. But, no, I think there

58:37

are multiple reasons. There are

58:39

literal exit costs. There's brainwashing going on.

58:41

These people that are being affected the

58:44

most are literal teens. They are

58:46

isolated from

58:48

their community. and it has

58:50

a lot of really

58:52

devastating long term effects

58:54

on the mental health of the people who

58:56

even get out

58:58

alive. Yeah. Hardcore ends justify the means philosophy,

59:00

hardcore us versus them

59:02

dynamics, supernatural beliefs, there

59:04

is mystical,

59:06

spiritual Hulu shit going on in these groups. It checks off every

59:08

single box adjacent to Hulu. A lot of them

59:11

are, like, really based in religion. Yeah.

59:14

Like, it it's like why

59:16

why you why don't we think this is happening in

59:18

Utah? Look, people, I don't hate Utah if anyone

59:20

wants to buy me a season pass

59:22

to park city. I'm happy to go

59:24

skiing. Utah has a shitty

59:26

reputation. It is a cult

59:28

hub, but People are trying

59:30

to do good shit in Utah. Did I tell you

59:32

that in the fall, I'm going to

59:34

a sexual health, sex

59:36

education conference in South like city,

59:39

Utah where I'm gonna talk about gender inclusive language

59:41

and sex inclusive language. Oh, I love that. You

59:43

should also mention that abortion

59:45

should be legal. I

59:48

will. I agree. It's a get the fuck out, and

59:50

I think that, of course, it's a

59:52

get the fuck out for teens, but they have

59:54

no control over that. do have

59:57

a friend who was in one of these programs and she

59:59

literally physically ran away and hitchhiked and

59:59

lived with strangers until she was

1:00:02

eighteen. But so crazy to

1:00:03

me like, Just

1:00:05

send your kid to a normal summer camp.

1:00:07

They'll have a summer flavor. They'll

1:00:10

eat shitty food. They'll make

1:00:12

s'mores. They'll come

1:00:13

back literally just happy. Yeah. I

1:00:15

don't wanna blame parents entirely because there is a lack

1:00:17

of adequate mental health support and

1:00:20

inaccessibility to

1:00:22

act actually regulated

1:00:24

treatments in this industry. The

1:00:26

people who are sent to these groups, a

1:00:28

lot of the young people just have, like,

1:00:30

mental

1:00:30

health struggles that parents aren't

1:00:33

educated in. You know?

1:00:34

Yeah. I don't wanna

1:00:36

give too much slack to

1:00:39

the rich parents that send their kids here because I

1:00:41

feel like there are some really

1:00:43

wealthy parents who do have the

1:00:45

ability to access better programs, but they just don't

1:00:47

wanna it's like people who maybe shouldn't have never

1:00:50

had kids. It all comes back to access to

1:00:52

abortion, baby.

1:00:55

You know? Oh, never wanted to have kids. And

1:00:57

so then they just like send their kids away because

1:00:59

they don't want to parent. That's actually such

1:01:01

a good point because in terms of, like,

1:01:03

the really conservative families or wealthier families, sometimes,

1:01:06

like, in the case of Paris Hilton, they're sending

1:01:08

these kids to these programs because their kids

1:01:11

are not falling in line and not

1:01:13

meeting the really, really

1:01:15

rigid poised to keep sweet

1:01:17

esque expectations of who they expect

1:01:19

their kid to be. And I think about this all the time, like, if

1:01:21

and when I do decide to have kids, I'm gonna

1:01:23

need to just completely relinquish any

1:01:26

expectations of who I want that child to

1:01:28

be up. because they're gonna be their

1:01:30

own fucking person and I'm not gonna send them away if they just end up being,

1:01:32

like, a little wilder than I expected. Yeah.

1:01:34

And a lot of people forget that.

1:01:38

Parenting takes time. It's not like you can like just

1:01:40

do ABC and then your kids will fall

1:01:42

in line. Loving a child takes

1:01:44

quality time

1:01:46

effort and things that aren't tangible

1:01:48

with money. Yeah.

1:01:49

I mean, this

1:01:51

might sound fucking corny, but,

1:01:53

like, money is a

1:01:56

privilege, but so our love and support and when you

1:01:58

try to pay for

1:02:00

love and support or

1:02:02

when you create incentives

1:02:04

to try and replace love

1:02:06

and support with something better, which

1:02:08

is what the troubled teen industry is trying

1:02:10

to do. That's the recipe for a cult.

1:02:13

That's our show. Thanks so much for

1:02:15

listening. We'll be back to the new cult next week.

1:02:17

But in the meantime, stay cool

1:02:19

to but not too whole

1:02:23

piece.

1:02:26

Sounds

1:02:29

a cult is created hosted and produced

1:02:31

by Amanda Montel

1:02:32

and Lisa Medina. Kate Elizabeth

1:02:34

is our editor. Our podcast studio

1:02:36

is author this comedy and our theme music is

1:02:38

by case of cult. Thank you to

1:02:41

our intern slash production assistant, You want me

1:02:43

Griffin. Subscribe to Sounds like the cult wherever

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