The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

[tense music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[woman 1] Okay.
Okay.
[exhales] Fuck.
[woman 1] Okay.
[discordant notes playing on piano]
[woman 2] All right. Let's go.
[woman 1] Found it.
[woman 2] What is it?
Oh my God.
Ugh.
Jeez.
So many files.
How far back does this go?
[woman 1] What is this?
"Study hall log, May 2nd, 2005."
Oh, I remember her.
Didn't she die?
[woman 2] I can't keep up.
We don't know
why all these files ended up in here.
And there's birth certificates,
Social Security cards, medical records,
detailed, handwritten notes
about the most insane shit.
Oh fuck.
I feel like I'm in the pit of despair.
[reporter 1 on TV] What do you do
if your child gets caught
in a cycle of self-destructive
or even dangerous behavior?
Some desperate parents are turning
to a drastic solution.
They're having their children abducted,
taken against their will
to a behavior modification program.
[reporter 2]
It sells tough love
for troubled kids,
but the reality is torture of children.
[woman 2]
This is not
how I pictured my high school reunion.
But then again,
this was never really a high school.
For the past decade,
I've been investigating the program,
trying to make sense of what happened
to me and expose those responsible.
Considering how hard we tried to get
out of the building while we were there,
it's funny to think we'd be coming back.
But we needed to find proof
so that people would believe us.
Because there's still kids trapped
in these places.
-[woman 1] Fucked.
-[woman 2] That's creepy.
[woman 2]
I never imagined they would just
leave all the evidence just sitting there.
It's so weird to find this stuff.
Why did they…
Why did they keep this shit?
My friends and I have made several trips
back to the building over the years.
"They tried to murder
children's souls here."
It was like a time capsule.
A crime scene.
We have these handwritten,
signed and dated confessions of abuse…
We were never supposed to see these.
-[all exclaiming]
-[woman 1] Oh my God!
[woman 2]
And they never wanted us
to find each other.
I keep thinking,
after all these years of looking into it,
you'll get to the bottom of it.
There's just more and more.
You just keep finding out more characters,
more connections.
And it just gets bigger and bigger
and bigger.
This is a story
of just unbelievable greed.
[tense music building]
[music fades]
[woman 2] So many more files.
This says, "Catherine."
[woman 3] Where's Kat--
Oh, "Catherine Daniel."
-You might not recognize. It's a C.
-[woman 1] Angela. Yeah.
Okay. So this was my first share.
[woman 3] Yeah. I found
my first share too, separate from these.
[Katherine] M'kay. "Catherine Daniel."
"Real mom died of breast cancer…"
Yep. That's always
my introduction to people.
"…before I was two."
Oh, this is my words.
"Had a lot of nannies."
"Dad remarried at age seven."
"I was really happy,
then it started turning horrible."
"In fourth grade, she yelled at me."
"Said, 'Thank God Mom is not alive
to see the person you've become.'"
-[woman 1] Jesus.
-Yep.
"I drank and smoked
because I was stressed by all this."
-Well, shit!
-[all chuckling softly]
That is, uh, poetic.
[upbeat music playing]
[Katherine]
I grew up
in a conservative Christian family.
I was heavily involved
in my church youth group.
I was on the student council.
A star soccer player.
And I filmed everything.
[Katherine on video] Oh yeah!
Oh, look at that cute person!
Oh, wait. That's me.
And I'm interviewing Katherine.
In other news, the man who was swallowed
by a whale ran to the end
till he got pooped out.
Do not try this at home.
Here I come!
-[screams] Oh my God!
-[kid laughing]
[upbeat music continues]
Okay, cut.
But you can see the rest
when it hits theaters this fall.
-[man] There.
-[kids] Cheese!
[woman] Is it on?
[Katherine]
It's interesting
to look back at my home videos
and try to pinpoint
where things went wrong.
[woman] This is Daddy
and his three girls saying cheese.
[Katherine]
My dad
was the original documentarian.
And here is a shot of the cameraman.
[Katherine]
I grew up
with the camera always in my face.
Daddy.
-Cheese.
-[man] We're going to--
Cheese. She was saying, "Cheese."
Do you hear her?
-[man] Yeah. Aw.
-Cheese!
[Katherine]
My mom
was dying of breast cancer.
My dad wanted to make sure my sisters
and I had videos to remember her by.
You see those three little tapes up there?
Someone suggested I get these cassettes
and just have one for each of the girls.
Just to say things.
You know, not that things
might not work out.
But just so I can have the peace of mind
that the girls have something personal
for each of them.
[Katherine]
She died
a week before I turned two.
[family]
Happy birthday, dear Katherine
Happy birthday… ♪
[Katherine]
So these videos
are the only glimpse
into what life was like
with my mother in it.
My dad got remarried
when I was seven to my evil stepmother.
[woman on video]
Katherine isn't much help.
Would you go away with your little camera?
What'll you do with your tape recorder?
You gonna take it into court?
[Katherine]
It's kind of
a Cinderella story.
♪
Someday my prince will come ♪
[mock crying] My evil stepmother
has kicked me out of the house!
And now I'm here in the woods
and have no place to go!
Why would she do that?
'Cause she's evil, and I hate that bitch.
[Katherine]
Things got bad at home,
and I started acting out.
Drinking, smoking, sneaking out at night.
Typical teenager stuff.
I begged my dad
to let me go somewhere. Anywhere.
As long as I didn't have to stay
at home with her.
In the middle of sophomore year,
I transferred to a private Christian
boarding school in Long Island, New York.
I was only there for a few months
before I was forced to withdraw
for having Mike's Hard Lemonade,
in violation of the school's
zero-tolerance policy.
I was sitting in the principal's office.
My dad told me
he was on his way to come get me.
He was gonna be driving up from DC.
But then these two people walk in,
and they have handcuffs.
They said, "We're here
to take you to your new school."
My parents had hired two strangers
to forcibly escort me
to Academy at Ivy Ridge in the small town
of Ogdensburg in Upstate New York.
I got here at 3:00 in the morning.
It was pitch-black out.
The transport car just pulled up in here.
And they sent some staff here
to come greet me.
And I walk in, and I, uh…
I set my bags down.
And then I turn around to go back outside
to get the rest of my stuff,
and they pulled me back.
And they're like, "No.
You can't go out anymore."
And I was like, "Well, I just am gonna get
the rest of my stuff from the car."
And they're like,
"No, you can't go outside anymore."
"We'll get it for you."
This was the first time
I started realizing,
"This isn't a normal school."
Like, "What's goin' on?"
Then two staff members
flanked me on either side,
linked arms with me, and…
walked me off to the dorms.
And they said
I was not allowed to talk anymore at all.
And, um, yeah, that's most people's first,
uh, experience at Ivy Ridge
is just hearing these doors
click locked behind them.
And you can never leave.
So…
[clicks tongue]
-[sighs]
-[dark music playing]
[Katherine] So, they escort me back here,
and then they take me into the bathroom.
The hallway was just lined
with mattresses,
with kids sleeping out in the hallway,
with their arms out,
their wrists out like that,
and staff at different points.
And then they brought me in here,
into the bathroom,
and had me take off all my clothes
and jump up and down and cough.
Strip-searched. So…
Then they had me sleep in the hallway.
As I lay on the mattress
in the brightly-lit hallway,
with my hands outstretched
while a stern-looking woman monitored me
throughout the night,
I couldn't help but think,
"Where the fuck am I?"
[woman on video]
The Academy at Ivy Ridge
is located in upper New York State,
along the St. Lawrence River
and close to the Adirondack Mountains.
Its remote location helps minimize
inappropriate distractions,
but it's still only
a six-to-ten-hour drive
from many of the major cities.
In addition to academic curriculum,
students are also taught values,
integrity, honor, accountability…
[voice distorting]
…and respect for authority.
The program was marketed
as help for kids with "bad behavior,"
for lack of a better expression.
They sold it as "tough love."
Many of these kids are taken
in the middle of the night
out of their bedrooms
by these so-called "transport services,"
where these big guys come,
all dressed in black with their handcuffs.
Your parents are standing there
at the doorway, watching.
It's 3:00 in the morning.
You get woken up out of bed.
These guys grab you.
You don't know what's going on.
You're saying "help" to your parents.
They're just standing there.
They take you off somewhere.
You have no idea where you're going.
That alone is going to be
a lifelong trauma.
[Katherine]
When you first arrive,
you're put on run watch,
where they take your shoelaces
and make you sleep in the hallway.
Kids who were placed on suicide watch
had to sleep with their arms outstretched
so staff could monitor that
they weren't trying to hurt themselves.
They would force haircuts
on all the male students
or for girls
whose hairstyle they didn't like.
Every kid was strip-searched.
Alexa had a male,
I believe, do her strip search.
Unbelievable.
It was this. That's all you got, you know?
-[man] Hmm.
-And then it was jumping.
I had to squat and cough.
And then I had to pee into a cup.
And at this point, you know, you're naked.
-I was naked and peeing into a cup.
-[man 1] That's, that's…
I'm covering my, you know, whatever,
but then that's all exposed.
-[man 2] Yeah.
-I was 15.
[man 1] Was that not illegal?
-[man 2] That shouldn't be the male staff.
-I mean, it has to be.
[Katherine]
Alexa and I were friends
before the program.
-Alexa!
-[laughs nervously] Hi.
-[Katherine] Hi!
-Hi.
[girl] I don't think
you're gonna get that.
[Katherine] Are you a little camera shy?
[Alexa] Stop, I hate cameras.
I met you in 7th grade,
and my memories of you, honestly,
was just this super bubbly,
like, outgoing, crazy, off-the-walls,
larger-than-life personality.
[Katherine] I was really cool.
[Alexa] Yeah! I remember you being cool.
You were the jock.
[Katherine] I was like the Ferris Bueller,
if I may.
Well, no, but you were great.
You were super, super personable.
I feel like everybody liked you.
And so it was shocking to me
when I saw you in the program.
Like, shocking.
"Wait, Katherine?"
"Wait, wait, wait. Katherine Daniel?"
-Like, this super Christian…
-I was a good kid!
-…drinking the Kool-Aid kid.
-I was a really good kid!
-I was super Christian.
-You were. You were.
[Katherine] So, the first day,
I remember hearing
over the walkie-talkies them go,
"Upper level, Alexa Brand."
And I was like, "Hey! I know Alexa Brand!
I went to school with her!"
And they were like, "Oh, you know Alexa?
You can't talk to her, then."
Yeah, they really do not want close
relationships forming in the program.
So, if you have a past relationship,
you're not talking to them.
Well, yeah. So, it's a lot to process
'cause there are all these rules.
It's so insane.
It takes so long to learn
about it that they literally…
When you first get to the program,
they assign you a hope buddy
for the first three days
-to tell you all the rules.
-[Allison] Right.
[Katherine]
Allison was my hope buddy
at Ivy Ridge.
So she spent the next three days
explaining all the rules to me.
I remember it was just so clear
that you really thought
you were at a school of some variety.
And so, I just remember thinking, like,
"Oh, she's about to have her mind blown."
[Katherine] These are all
the rule violations.
But then what's nice is
it tells you what you would get them for.
There are so many rules
that it's impossible to learn all of them
in those three days.
So, I'll just give you the highlights.
You can't talk.
You can't look out the window.
You can't make eye contact
with other students.
You can't touch anyone.
You have to pivot around every corner
and maintain a strict,
military-like structure.
You have to wear your hair in a braid.
No makeup. No shaving.
You're not allowed to look in the mirror.
You're so controlled.
When you went to the bathroom,
you always had
to keep the stall door open.
And so you'd have to go to the bathroom,
and the staff
would just be staring at you.
You had to be fast too.
You didn't have much time.
101 Rude Act, intentionally passing gas.
You're literally not allowed to fart
without permission.
No joke. If you farted without asking
for permission, it was a 101 Rude Act.
Minus five points.
[Alexa] Any nonverbal showing,
like, winking or smiling, is a correction.
Yeah, our facial expressions
were so controlled…
-[Alexa] Yeah.
-We literally couldn't smile.
Or that would add two days
on to your sentence.
For us, it was like a game. You have to
get a certain amount of points.
So you calculated how many days
it would take you to get home
if you got 15 points a day.
[Katherine] And you just tried to get
through the day just by being emotionless.
Just dissociating and being like,
"Let me just be a robot,
and pivot, and get through this day."
"And play this, like,
insane video game that is not fun."
[sound effects play]
[Katherine]
The program runs on a points
and level system.
Everyone starts on level one
with zero points.
You move up in levels by getting points.
You earn points
by following the rules all day.
If you break a rule, you get a correction.
That removes points from your total.
On level one, you are nothing.
If you got a correction, you likely
didn't have enough points to cover it.
So you'd be sent to worksheets
to write meaningless essays
or copy rules for hours.
When you got to level two, you were
allowed to have a candy bar twice a week.
Level three was a big deal
because it meant you were finally allowed
to have a 15-minute phone call
once a month with your parents.
But staff would listen in.
If you said anything bad
about the program,
they would disconnect the call,
and you would lose your phone privileges.
Levels four through six were upper levels.
And it was a completely different program.
You could talk. You could shave.
You could wear your hair down.
But you can't leave the program
until you get to level six.
And that takes a very long time.
They want to keep you here forever.
It's impossible to get points.
The program is intentionally
impossible to follow.
They make it
so you're just stuck here forever.
My first few days
in the program were a blur.
Like a horrible fever dream.
This was supposed to be a place
for bad kids
with serious drug issues, not me.
This had to be a mistake.
Then I got my first letter from my dad.
"Dear Katherine, the reason that I had
to arrange special escorts to pick you up
was that I was afraid
that if I picked you up
and brought you home,
that I would go soft
and just let things go."
"I had to sort of trick you
in order to help you escape
from your own dangerous behavior."
"You need to plan your action around
completing the entire program there."
"It really works."
"And how fast
you get through it is up to you."
"But don't fake it."
"They won't let you."
"I miss you so much, and so does Jane.
And don't try to blame this on Jane."
"She feels guilty
for being so hard on you."
In my intake file, they said,
"Jane admits she has been
borderline abusive," and that,
"Katherine will most likely relate
'evil stepmother' stories about Jane."
What was this program,
and how did my dad even know about it?
If I could just hop on the phone
and talk to him,
we could get this all cleared up.
But I wasn't allowed to use the phone.
When you get to Ivy Ridge,
you're cut off from all communication
with the outside world.
Except for a letter we were required
to write to family once a week.
My parents kept every single letter
I sent from the program
.
Reading through them sheds light
on what daily life was like at Ivy Ridge.
"Dear family,
in your last letter, you asked me
about my room and what stuff I have."
"Haha. I laughed when you asked that."
"I'm in a room with four other people."
"If I talk to them in the dorm room,
I will get a Cat 4
and lose all my points."
"The door always stays open,
and the lights on."
"As to what we are allowed to have?
Two pair of pajamas."
"Our uniform and toiletries.
"
"And a letter box and photo album."
"Anything else is an illegal item,
which is 50 points."
"But anyway, enough of rules.
I hear them all day long."
The boys' and girls' side
were completely separate.
We weren't allowed to make eye contact
with the boys.
They did school separately,
ate separately,
and stayed in a different part
of the facility.
So we slept in this building.
We were only here to sleep at night.
This is where all the dorms were.
During the day,
every morning, they would get us up,
and we would go into the other building,
dorm one, which is right over there.
But they wouldn't trust us
to walk from this building
to that building.
So, we'd have to line up
and get in a school bus
just to drive us
from this building to that building.
Ivy Ridge was a lockdown facility,
and we weren't allowed outside.
They even built these enclosed walkways
to connect the buildings
so that we never walked outside.
Our whole lives were spent
inside the facility.
But the marketing materials
presented a different story.
[woman on video]
The Academy at Ivy Ridge
campus was formerly a junior college.
It is located on 237 acres,
with plenty of outdoor recreational space
and nature trails.
[Katherine]
If you look at pictures
of Ivy Ridge,
you wouldn't think
anything bad was going on.
Once a year,
they allowed us to have a "fun day,"
where we could go outside,
and play, and have decent food.
But the marketing materials made it seem
like this was a daily occurrence.
It's very hard
to find photos of what life was like
for the majority of children
in the program.
[Diana] I remember just staring
at these walls for hours.
Probably to break me.
I think that's probably what it was.
It became a game with these staff members.
"Who was gonna be the one to break Diana?"
Because I had been here for so long,
and I just was refusing.
I wouldn't follow the rules.
I wouldn't do it.
And everybody was like,
"Just fake it till you make it."
And I was like, "I can't. I won't do it."
So, at that point, they were like,
"Then you're gonna go to intervention."
Intervention is where they sent students
when they were actively rebelling
against the program.
You can see how small these rooms are.
They're not very big at all.
A lot of times,
either I'd be facing a wall
and staring at a wall for hours,
or they would have me face down.
I would have to be on my stomach,
with my arms out, and my feet out,
and then with my chin on the floor.
So, up like this.
So I would just
have to sit there for hours.
So a lot of staff members
did a lot of things to me
because they wanted the award
of being the one who broke Diana's spirit
and got her to work the program.
[Katherine]
Staff would create
special challenges
for kids who were resistant
to the program.
So Diana was given quite a few.
-So, like, the box challenge.
-[Diana] It's called "a box of crap."
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-And it was about this big.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-And it did not have handles. It wasn't…
-It was just a box.
-[Katherine] Difficult to hold anyway.
Yup. And then
it was full of reams of paper.
So, I had to hold it like this.
-[Katherine] So, that's heavy.
-Very heavy.
I would have to carry it everywhere,
all around the facility.
And I'd be trying to balance
and keep in line structure.
[Katherine] And how long
did that last for?
[Diana] About two weeks.
[Katherine] But that's
impossible to hold all day.
It was just I was sore all the time.
It just really hurt.
There were bruises all over my arms
from the corners.
And the staff sent out an email saying
if anybody sees bruising on Diana's arms,
it's because of the box.
[Katherine] So you could just
never set it down?
Never.
They'd make me run with this in gym!
-[Katherine] Are you serious? How?
-Yes!
Everyone would be running,
and I'd be like… [laughs]
But I'll never forget,
I got this, like, strength,
and I took the box,
and I was, like, dancing with it.
-[Katherine laughing]
-And then making eye contact with Amy.
[Katherine]
Amy Ritchie was the director
of the girls' side at Ivy Ridge.
And all of this happened under her watch.
[Thomas] The entire program seemed to be
one of more or less constant oppression.
And I said, "Well, if this
is really happening, this is troubling."
"So I should look into this."
I was writing a series of articles
for United Press on this,
interviewing witnesses.
But the program did their best to keep,
you know, the truth of
what was going on there from getting out.
The kids were severely restricted
in terms of who they could write to.
And, you know,
their letters were strictly censored.
[Katherine]
If I said anything bad
about the program or asked to go home,
I would receive a correction.
The very first correction I received
in the program was a "manipulation"
for asking my dad
to take me out of the program.
I'm surprised they let
this letter get sent
because it shows
how controlling they were.
"I'm so sick of doing
the same thing every day,
of not being able to talk."
"And I just wanna go home.
And I wanna watch
I Love Lucy,
and
Andy Griffith,
and talk to my sister."
"And not have to stand in line structure."
"And be able to go to the bathroom
without a staff member."
"And be able to curl up
in my bed when I'm sick."
"And play my guitar.
And be able to look out the window."
"What is it that's still wrong with me
that you want me to change?"
"Obviously, something about me
isn't good enough for you yet
because you're still keeping me here."
"Please just tell me
what you want me to do and I'll do it."
"Give me a chance."
So many more files.
I think these are all just academic files,
which are all bullshit.
I don't even give a fuck
about my academic file.
It's like, "Bible class, you passed!"
[laughs dryly]
[Katherine] Okay, wait.
I wanna see if I'm in here.
Katherine Daniel!
-[Alexa] No!
-[Katherine] Yeah!
-[Alexa] Your academic record.
-There she is! My academic record!
Which is probably awful.
'Cause that was one
of the other reasons I was sent here.
What did I get on the SAT?
Don't look. It's probably bad.
I'm actually smart.
I was just in these circumstances, so…
[Alexa] Yo, mine was really bad.
It was 1100.
-[Katherine] I think I have, like, 1100…
-[Alexa] Yeah.
[Katherine] It's hard to do well in school
when you're being abused all the time.
So, this is
where we would do all our schoolwork.
We'd spend most of our time
just here in this lab, and, um…
Couldn't look out the window.
This is setting you up for failure here.
Computer facing the window.
Not allowed to look out that.
And they had this homeschool program
where we would do all of our work.
We spent most of the day
just sitting in here
and bullshitting schoolwork.
'Cause we just had
this homeschool program,
and no one would teach us,
so we'd keep taking the quizzes
over and over again
until we got 80 or above to pass.
And that was our high school.
They would have "teachers" they would say,
that would sit at the end there.
We could raise our hand
and ask 'em a question.
We could get five minutes with them,
and that would be our education.
[Thomas] I refused
to refer to them as students
because they weren't being given anything
that could be called
an adequate education.
They were kept
under oppressive conditions.
You know, if you're gonna
market yourself as a school,
then you better show me something
that looks like education.
And I'm sorry, I just wasn't seeing it.
[Katherine]
Ivy Ridge's slogan was,
"A boarding school for the future."
Maybe they meant that at some point
in the future it would be a school,
because it never actually was one.
It was a behavior modification program.
We use a ver… a level program
that enables the kids
to see where they've been misled
and get rewarded for good behavior
or consequented for bad behavior.
[Katherine]
Jason Finlinson
was the Director of Ivy Ridge.
And he's also an idiot.
Okay, so tonight,
we're gonna talk about black holes.
Black holes are, um…
They're black
because as they're condensed…
They're really dense in the middle.
[Katherine]
He couldn't spell or write
a complete sentence to save his life.
When a parent emailed him
concerned about the quality of education
at Ivy Ridge, he replied,
"All of our teachers
are New York State Certifityed."
"All of the therapist
are Certifityed as well."
I'm sure that response was reassuring.
Jason had hired his little brother,
Jake Finlinson,
to be the Head of Academics at Ivy Ridge.
But even Jake said,
"Students are not here for academics,
but to work on themselves
and their families."
Jake also banned several books
from Ivy Ridge.
One book they didn't ban, though,
was
The Count of Monte Cristo
.
I just found
Count of Monte Cristo
with my name in the checkout thing.
And I've always said that
this is like
Count of Monte Cristo
because I had this false imprisonment
where I planned my big revenge.
I was like, "When I get out of here,
I'm gonna make a documentary
about these places."
-"And I'll get back at every one of you!"
-[friend laughs]
[Katherine] This is so representative
of my program journey.
If you're not familiar with the story,
it's about a man
who was falsely imprisoned
and used his confinement
to plot his revenge
against those responsible.
I read the book while I was there
and found solace in the thought
that one day I too would escape
this wrongful imprisonment
and get revenge on those responsible.
So, here I am,
18 years later, to do just that.
Ogdensburg is a small town,
so there's a good chance
I'd run into a familiar face.
That's Miss Siss.
[Siss]
What is y'all doing here?
[Katherine] We're just filming in Phillips
'cause I'm actually working
on a documentary about Ivy Ridge.
-Oh, really?
-[Katherine] Yeah! I'm curious.
Would you be open to being interviewed
about your time there?
Sure. How about tomorrow, huh?
[Katherine] Yeah! I'll buy breakfast.
How about that?
Florence Dedekker,
or "Miss Siss" as we all called her,
was the shift supervisor
for the girls' side at Ivy Ridge.
This was Siss's desk.
This was, like, the control center.
Like, the heartbeat of the girls' side.
She would sit here
and she'd just keep an eye on everything.
Like, "You pick up a correction!
You're lookin' the wrong way!"
"Get back! Line structure!" You know?
And she just, like,
ruled the place from here.
[Allison] Siss is a character.
I mean, she's loud. She's unapologetic.
If she did your intake,
you're doing the full squat and cough.
You know, she was just, like,
notoriously inappropriate that way.
Like,
"Ah, we're gonna do your strip search!"
"Get naked, girl!"
Right? The strip searches!
She was really, like,
into the strip searches.
She was a very,
very thorough strip searcher.
-"Who wants a strip search?"
-[Allison] "There's a missing pen!"
-"Why not?" [laughing]
-"A pen is missing!"
-"Who wants a strip search?"
-[Allison chuckling]
[Katherine]
Never in my wildest dreams
did I think
I'd be buying her breakfast one day,
but I had a lot of questions for her.
And then more coffee
when you get a chance. Thank you so much.
Now, it…
Is this to help you girls
with what you went through?
I'm trying to piece together
a lot of stuff.
So I was hoping you could help me
fill in some of the gaps.
Can you explain what your role was there?
What your job title was?
What they told you when you went into it?
When I first went in it,
I was a dorm parent.
[Katherine] Okay.
[Siss] My job was
to keep you on structure.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-[Siss] Okay?
Like, couldn't talk
when you wanted to talk.
You had to have permission
for just about everything.
-[Katherine] Everything.
-Everything.
So, if I was sitting at my desk,
and I seen you goin' like this, I'd say,
"Katherine, you need
to get a consequence for off-task."
Yeah, which is a 25-point correction.
You couldn't talk to the girl next to you.
You couldn't look out the window.
Upon arrival, they had to strip down.
-Okay?
-Yeah!
They may have a cell phone
hid somewhere in them.
-Like, and I mean,
in
them.
-Oh,
in
them.
-Yeah.
-Oh wow.
Like, he always had them squat.
I guess you…
I say you didn't have the privacy
that you should have had.
You know?
Do you remember George Tulip?
Yes! Doesn't his wife work here?
-His wife works here.
-Okay.
Wait, is she here right now?
I think she's the blonde one, right?
-I can't see who's back there.
-I think she's behind. We'll see.
She was walking by you.
Tell me if you see her.
What about George Tulip?
I had been hearing
a lot of stories about him.
He was a tough one.
[Katherine]
George Tulip was the director
of the boys' side of the program.
This is him tackling and restraining
a kid in order to forcibly shave his head.
[dark music playing]
There was a lot of kids
that would try to hit you and everything.
You did have to do a restraint
on some of them.
Oh yeah?
But I didn't use the restraint techniques
that I was taught up there.
Oh really? What did you do?
I always just put a pressure point
on their neck
and took their arm and put it behind 'em.
And then if they kept fighting,
I just put 'em to the ground.
Mm-hmm.
If you put a pressure point
on the back of their neck,
they're gonna go to the floor for you.
-Yeah.
-Easier if you have their arm behind them.
-Oh, really?
-Because they can't hit you.
So, after the first year, I said,
"This ain't no boarding school.
This is fucking prison."
Yeah. I'll tell you what.
This food here is better
than Ivy Ridge's food. [laughing]
I don't know how youse could eat that.
I never ate a lot up there.
I had a problem.
-Yeah?
-I'm not afraid to tell you.
The girls that…
-The girls that were gay.
-Mm-hmm.
-I had a problem--
-Oh, sorry.
[Katherine]
I really want to know
what Siss was about to say just then,
but this is when my producer came up
to tell me that
we were being asked to leave the diner.
[Katherine] Okay. Okay.
Apparently, one of the waitresses
didn't want us talking about Ivy Ridge.
I wonder why that could be?
[Alexa] We just found a treasure trove.
-So, we were in George Tulip's office.
-[Katherine] Whoa! Okay.
What is it?
[Alexa] So, these are all restraints.
-[Katherine] Oh jeez.
-And I'm not done.
-These are all restraints.
-Jeez.
There's over 200 restraints here
over the course of one and a half months.
[Katherine] And it… Look.
Writer's signature, "George Tulip."
George Tulip. That means
he's the one that did that restraint.
So, "I, George Tulip,
brought him to the floor."
-[Dominick] Right.
-Yeah! And that was his MO!
This, to me, is the most
interesting things of the finds here,
is these handwritten, signed, and dated
confessions of abuse by the abusers.
So George Tulip
was a fucking child abuser.
[Dominick] Right.
And he signed
and dated his own confession.
And we have so many of these.
I don't know if these
are gonna be of any importance, um…
-So, these are--
-[Katherine] Oh shit.
My friend Sean found a bunch
of archive security camera footage
in the building.
There were stacks of DVDs that were
compilations of the most abusive moments.
You can hit the lights.
Yeah, just flip that switch. There you go.
-Oh, I can't believe there's footage…
-[Sean sighs heavily]
[Katherine] Wow, Sean.
[Sean] So, this is a…
This is gonna be
a restraint that takes place.
"You're not doing it good enough,"
or something.
-[Katherine] Oh jeez.
-[Sean] While he went down!
[Katherine] While he went down--
What was the kid doing?
I don't even see the reason.
-[Alexa] There was no reason.
-There was no reason?
[Alexa] He was not doing fitness
well enough.
[Sean sighs]
[Sean] Yeah.
Let's see.
Okay. So, this is upstairs of dorm one.
-[Katherine] Oh wow.
-[Alexa] Jesus Christ!
[Sean] That shouldn't be grounds
for an instigation on his end.
[dark music playing]
[Katherine] Holy shit.
-[Katherine] Whoa! Whoa!
-[Alexa] Oh my God. Oh my God.
-[Katherine] What's in there?
-[man] This is the no-camera room.
[Katherine] What's that mean, "no-camera"?
[man] This is where
they took you to fuck you up.
[Dominick] So this room
did not have a camera.
This was… The big boys came in here.
And if you came in this room, it was over.
They're tossing you into the wall,
slamming you onto the floor,
whatever they wanna do to you.
Banging your head into the thing.
Slamming it directly into this radiator.
It didn't matter
because there's no cameras here.
Jeez. Considering what we've seen staff do
in the rooms with cameras…
[Dominick] Yeah.
[Katherine] You can only imagine
what happened in the no-cameras room.
[Dominick] They would take their hand
on the back of your neck, choke you.
Whatever they could do
to make you either stop moving
and just feel lifeless.
You're like, "Yo, I could die right now.
I'm about to die."
Like, "These dudes is gonna kill me."
This is heavy. I don't have to play this
if it's too much for people.
[dark music continues]
[Katherine]
If you didn't go along
with the program,
they had ways of breaking you.
Physical restraints, solitary confinement,
food deprivation.
[Katherine] The thing about you, Quintin,
is you never tried to work your program.
No.
[Katherine] You were level one
the entire time?
Eight months, yes. I never made level two.
[Quintin] It's hard to comply
with something that you know is wrong.
[Katherine]
Quintin was at Ivy Ridge
the same time as me,
but he spent most of his time
in worksheets and intervention.
Here's some footage
of Quintin being restrained.
That happened to him a lot.
[Quintin] They fed me two pieces of bread
and eight ounces of milk
for two weeks straight in this room.
For two weeks.
-Hold on. Excuse me.
-[Katherine] Yeah, no. Take your time.
[Quintin shudders]
You were on a chair.
Your ass had to be an inch on the chair.
Like, you had to be on there forward.
Your feet together,
knees fist-length apart,
and you had to stare at the fuckin' wall.
And a lot of us, like, couldn't handle it.
So, we'd start slouchin' and this.
And they'd point at a brick.
"Which brick did I just point at?"
"I don't know."
And they would…
There's another two hours.
Like, two hours.
-[Katherine] Wow.
-Like, I'm… I'm shaking.
I'm, like…
[Quintin] It was August, and I just…
I didn't give a fuck.
I was, like, so tired.
And I was… My head was down like this.
And all of a sudden, somebody takes my…
the back of my head
and pushes my chair
to where it slides back.
Like, to the point where he fucking shoved
my head between my legs to where it hurt.
Like, it hurt.
So, I was like,
"Oh, someone's fighting me." I pushed him.
And I was like, "Oh, that's a staff."
He threw me on the ground. Boom.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-It's just…
[exhales]
I was restrained.
My shit was bleeding and everything.
The nurse would come and check on me,
like, "You need anything?"
I said, "You got ibuprofen?"
"No. I'm not giving that to you."
And my shit's still bleeding like…
I'm swollen, like, "All right. Cool."
[laughing]
"Just leave me alone then
and get the fuck out of this room."
[Quintin] I'm still dealing with this.
'Cause I spent every night of my life
blacking out for, like, five years.
Blacking out was the most important thing,
so I didn't have to think
about any of that.
Like, the problems come back tenfold,
you know?
But I did everything I could
to chase that shit away.
Like, I don't wanna feel what I felt here.
I don't even want to be here right now.
But I'm here.
I really don't want to be here right now,
but I'm here.
I'm fucking weirded out.
I'm uncomfortable.
-[Katherine] Yeah?
-I'm shaking. Like…
[Sean] Fuck this place.
Yeah, fuck this place.
[Katherine] You know what, though?
This time, you can leave.
Yeah, I know.
And, yo, that's such a dope feeling.
-That's such a dope feeling.
-[Katherine chuckling]
-[Quintin laughing] Thank you for that.
-[Katherine] Uh-huh.
[Quintin] Oh man.
I, I, I… I didn't realize that. [laughing]
[Katherine] You can walk
right out of here.
Want to do it?
Let's get the fuck out of here.
-[Quintin] All right.
-[Katherine] You did it, man!
[Katherine]
Unfortunately,
there were no security cameras
on the girls' side of the program.
I really wish there were.
The stuff that went on there
was just as crazy.
[woman] Here's another skirt.
-[Katherine] Here's a ton of skirts, guys.
-[Alexa] Oh, hell yeah.
-Hold on one second.
-[Diana] There's a bunch of spare vests.
[Katherine] Why do I-- Why am I willingly
putting this back on again?
-I don't know.
-[Diana] A mouse chewed this.
-[Katherine] Embrace the trauma.
-[Diana laughs]
[Katherine]
What we went through
is horrible,
but some of it is just so absurd,
you can't help but laugh at it.
It's a coping mechanism, I guess.
Come to Ivy Ridge.
We'll fix your troubled kid.
Where's your vest?
Did you get in trouble for that?
Oh my God, you're a slut! What is this?
-[Diana] I am, aren't I?
-[laughing] I love it. I want to do that.
Just like a…
[Diana] At Ivy Ridge, I rebelled
pretty much in any way I could, you know?
The medication, I think, is the big one.
They were making me, like, zombified.
I don't feel good. And I was like,
"I'm not taking these meds."
And I just remember sitting
behind Sissy's desk.
They're like,
"You're gonna take your meds."
And Siss, um, got out of her chair
and stood over me.
She pushed me to the ground and then sat…
like, sat down on my chest.
Well over 100 pounds heavier than me.
And she was, like, smiling like crazy.
She, like, love--
She was like, "Ah!"
She was like, "I'm gonna break Diana."
"I'm gonna do it."
Like, "I'm gonna be the one
who gets these meds into her."
So, they held my nose like this,
and then had their hand over my mouth.
So, either they're going like this
or like this.
And so, it was literally…
I was grabbing for anything I could.
I couldn't breathe. I was going like this.
And then I started blacking out.
So, I was going in
and out of consciousness.
So, they got the pills in somehow,
and I took 'em.
I fought for a pretty long time.
But if I had continued to,
because I was blacking out,
I… I'm assuming
I would have not been here today.
[Katherine]
We found multiple
eyewitness statements
,
signed and dated,
detailing the incident
with Diana at Siss's desk,
and hundreds of other abusive incidents
that took place at Ivy Ridge.
But, unfortunately, there was
some abuse that was never documented.
Multiple girls have come forward
to tell me about sexual abuse
by a staff member.
Other staff members
corroborated this as well.
It seems to have been
an open secret at Ivy Ridge.
But since no reports were ever filed,
I'm not allowed to name them.
This is not only an adult,
but an adult in a position of power
over these kids
who could affect everything.
[Alexa] Well, the way
that she manipulated the girls
into wanting the attention
in the first place was really fucked up.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-I mean, it was very strategic.
It was really strategic.
Um… [clears throat]
-[Katherine] Like, how?
-Well, like, basically, um…
Once she had her sights on somebody,
it was a lot of love bombing first.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-You know? So with me, in particular,
it was like there was
so much attention paid on me,
and I was eating it up,
just being so starved for love.
And then, like,
things started getting very weird.
Um, so, at first,
it started with, like, touching.
And, like, nonsexual touch.
Very platonic, but…
And, again, in this, like…
this very, like, caring way, you know?
Where it'd be, if I'm crying,
it's something where it's touching.
Then it would turn into things like this.
You know? Or it would…
-But it feels like a mom.
-[Katherine] Yeah.
And then, um, what happened,
or what kind of happened after that is,
you get that love,
and you get
that adoration from this person,
and then all of a sudden,
you're shunned, completely shunned.
[voice breaking] And then you see her
do that to other people. Sorry.
But you see her do that to other people.
So you're like, "What did I do wrong?"
Like, "How did I fuck up?" You know?
"I was just starting
to be loved by this person,
and now they're looking at somebody else."
Then the next time she calls you in
and wants to take it a step further,
you're like, "Please. Please!"
Like, "Please touch me."
You know? Like, "Please show me
this love and affection 'cause…"
[sniffles] "…I don't have it."
You know, you can't even smile
at another human being,
and now you have somebody who is, like,
pouring so much, like,
predatory love and affection on you.
But the only thing you're able to receive
or the only thing you're able to feel is,
like, "I matter."
Like, "I matter to somebody."
[Alexa sniffling]
And it was not innocent.
[voice breaking] Um…
Like, the first time
that I was in the bed with her, I, uh…
[crying] Like, to be honest,
I can, like, still feel…
[stifling tears] Sorry.
[breathes deeply]
[sniffling]
I can still feel her,
like, breathing on my neck.
I can, like, still smell
what she smells like. [sniffs]
And then I remember
pretending to be asleep.
Literally just pretending to be asleep.
Like, "Please don't. Please don't."
[sniffling] Um…
[exhales]
[softly] Oh fuck.
[inhales deeply]
Yeah, so, um…
[sighs heavily]
There was multiple times that it happened.
Multiple times. [sniffs]
She's a fucking pedophile.
She ruined my life in so many ways.
[Maia Szalavitz] Any institution
where there is unchecked power
will tend towards corruption
and abuse over time.
And, unfortunately, if you're a pedophile,
these places are like heaven
because you can abuse kids
as much as you like
in public,
without any repercussions,
because, "Oh, those kids are liars."
"They're manipulators."
You know, "You can't believe them."
When I was researching this,
it was just, like, painful
because so many people
had just never been believed before.
And the kids are alienated
because they were abused,
and their parents
don't believe they were abused.
And if you're not believed,
it's really, really difficult to recover.
[Alexa] I think for years and years
you tell yourself,
"Maybe it wasn't that bad,"
or, "Maybe it wasn't wrong."
And when you reconnect with people,
and you see just how fucked up
everybody got for the same reasons,
that's when you're like,
"Wow, that… That was real."
-[Katherine] Yeah.
-"That really was bad."
Or, "That was illegal."
Or, "That was rape." Um…
Yeah. [sniffles]
And then I numbed it with alcohol
for years and years. [laughs]
But haven't we all, you know?
-How do you open this? Is it twist-off?
-[woman] Twisty.
-[Katherine] Here we go. This is…
-I was getting ready to get the…
[Katherine] What if…
You do the crime, you do the time.
This is what got me in here.
Mike's Hard Lemonade.
Got expelled from the Stony Brook School
with their zero-tolerance policy.
-So I was incarcerated for 15 months.
-Huh!
-[Katherine] Mmm! Forgot to cheers.
-To freedom.
-[Katherine] To freedom! Cheers.
-Cheers.
Ah!
Ooh!
It was worth it.
[laughs] It tastes so good.
This will be
the darkest Mike's Hard Lemonade ad.
[somber music playing]
I think the most difficult part of this
for the kids is being entrapped.
Basically, being imprisoned.
[Katherine] We always thought
about running away.
Ivy Ridge,
it's right on the St. Lawrence River,
on the Canadian border.
Our plan always was,
"If we just swim across the river
and get into Canada, we'll be safe."
But they would tell us that,
"Oh, if you ran,
the neighbors were allowed to shoot you."
[Quintin] I heard,
"The current's too strong."
-"You'll make it halfway and then drown."
-[Katherine] Yeah.
All the windows here were covered
with this mesh, metal grate.
And there were motion sensors out there.
So, you just…
There's just no way you could run away.
Even if you did manage
to get out of the building
and run off into those woods,
it's just miles and miles of nothing,
of marshland, of trees.
[Janja] I mean, imagine for a minute
spending months
and sometimes years like that.
You cannot get out.
You know you can't leave.
And you're in
this incredibly hostile environment.
What does that do to you?
What does that do to your psyche?
You know, to your mental health,
to your emotional health?
[Katherine]
"Dear family, I hate being
in a program for the holidays."
"The thing that upsets me the most
is sitting here in Ogdensburg
and wondering if my parents
are even thinking about me."
"If they even remember that I'm here
or if they're having a better time
without me there."
"I hope you'll remember me
this Christmas."
"Tell me what I am still doing wrong."
"Why am I not good enough
to come home yet?"
Oh, I remember every night.
This was when I'd be like,
"Well, I'm here another night,
'cause my dad doesn't want me."
"Well, he could come get me at any point,
but I'm here
'cause he thinks I need to be here."
And you had to have your eyes closed
'cause staff would come by and watch you.
So, you'd just lay here like this.
All the time.
And then--
Until the super loud alarm comes on,
and then up you go.
And then it's another day in hell.
[softly] Yeah.
This mattress is probably gross, isn't it?
[laughing]
["The Sound of Silence"
cover by Chromatics playing]
Because a vision softly creeping… ♪
[Katherine] That is one of the worst parts
of the psychological torture here,
is you don't know when you're going home.
So you kind of have this hope
that you could be pulled out any minute.
You're like, "My parents will miss me."
"My parents will want me home
for Christmas."
"My parents will want me
for summer vacation."
"My parents will want me."
And then you realize,
"Oh, my parents don't want me."
["The Sound of Silence" continues playing]
[Roderick S. Hall] For them
to be isolated like that, in captivity…
and told that their parents
put them there…
and told that their parents
don't care about them,
it's really setting them up
for some real disaster.
You know, I want to use an expletive here.
[laughs]
-[Katherine] Go ahead, please.
-Probably. It's a mindfuck.
[Katherine] Oh fuck.
I thought Ivy Ridge
was the only one of its kind.
But one day,
a bunch of new kids started showing up.
We were told
they're from our sister school,
Casa by the Sea in Mexico.
This was the first I heard
that we had a sister school.
"There are more of these places?
What the fuck?"
[Diana] Nikki!
-It's yours.
-[Alexa] What?
-[Nikki] What?
-[Diana] Your poem.
[Alexa] Oh my God.
Oh…
[Nikki] When I was 17,
I was in the psych hospital.
And my stepmom
and my grandparents come to visit me,
and they hand me this brochure
of Casa by the Sea.
And it's all this fun stuff
of riding horseback on the beach
and doing all these fun activities.
So, I was like, "All right, I need help."
My thought process was, um, you know…
I've been addicted to heroin.
I've been addicted
to pretty much everything.
I've tried to kill myself multiple times.
Now, I needed help.
[Katherine] Were they able to help you
with this issue?
No.
[Roderick] I got a phone call
from a parent
for a child I'd been working with
for about a year
in twice-a-week
psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
The parent told me that they decided
they were going to send this child
to a therapeutic boarding school.
And what I learned was
that they would not be involved at all,
that the child had to earn
the right to talk with them,
which raised a lot of red flags for me.
So, that caused me to begin to look
into this place called Casa by the Sea
in Ensenada, Mexico.
It's got a lovely name,
but it's a horrible place.
When I was coming off of heroin,
they just, um…
They stuck me into solitary, whatever.
And just, like, let me sit there
and, like, detox from this.
And, like, I had myself…
shit myself and, like…
[shakily] Already, like,
within the first few days,
the loss of dignity that you have…
I've been abandoned by my family
and have been put into this place,
obviously, purposely.
[crying] Because they gave me
this brochure
that said I was gonna be okay.
And I needed help.
And instead…
[Roderick] One of the things about it
is that I…
At the time I learned of this,
I tried to alert every legislator I could
what this was.
And this was, at the time…
Casa by the Sea was shut down
by the Mexican government.
[Nikki] Like, all these
federales
just come bustin' in
with their assault weapons.
And they ended up telling us
that it was being shut down.
So a shit ton of us came to Ivy Ridge.
[Katherine]
Apparently,
Ivy Ridge was just one program
under an umbrella organization
called WWASP,
the Worldwide Association
of Specialty Programs.
So, when Casa was shut down,
WWASP offered to relocate the kids
to other WWASP programs,
including Ivy Ridge.
[Roderick] These people had facility
after facility after facility.
There was the one in Jamaica,
Tranquility Bay facility.
There was one in Samoa.
There was one that was
in the Czech Republic at one time.
There was the one in Mexico.
There was one
in Costa Rica called Dundee Ranch
that was closed at one point.
[reporter on TV]
Three countries, Mexico,
Costa Rica, and the Czech Republic
have shut down WWASP operations,
citing their repeated abuse of teenagers.
[Katherine]
When the Casa kids arrived,
we were overcrowded.
Six kids were crammed into each dorm room.
Since there were not enough bunk beds,
kids would sleep on mattresses
on the floor and in the hallway.
Conditions were deplorable.
Foot fungus, pink eye, and viruses
spread throughout the facility.
Medical neglect was rampant.
But there was nothing
we could do to escape.
The things that would get you expelled
at a normal school
would just get you sent to intervention.
We were trapped.
Something had to give.
But if Casa was able to get shut down,
maybe we could get Ivy Ridge
shut down too.
["Whispers In the Hall"
by Chromatics playing]
[Katherine]
It was the boys' side
that planned the riot.
We were just talkin' about a riot,
and it actually ended up happening.
Little boy
The world just wants to trick you
…
♪
[Quintin] The goal with the riot
was to get everybody home.
It was to shut this motherfucker down.
Don't you know
That pain can make you stronger? ♪
-Now, this is where it starts. You ready?
-[Katherine] Yeah.
You don't have to buy into their lies
…
♪
[yelling] Riot!
[Sean] This is upstairs in the beginning,
when he's yelling, "Riot, riot, riot!"
-[Alexa] Yeah. Wow.
-[Sean] He's on the phone, bam!
So that one staff ran down
'cause there is altercation.
But as soon as that happened,
I pulled this fire alarm.
And the second I pulled it,
I can hear the doors downstairs unlocking.
[imitates unlocking]
-[alarm blaring]
-[Sean] The alarm is going off.
You saw the bright flash.
So, the sound in there right now
is the alarm we all know. It's deafening.
[alarm blaring]
[Quintin] So, I had a wooden bed,
where I kicked the fuckin', uh,
piece of wood underneath.
And I pulled it out.
And I came out here
and I just started poppin' light bulbs.
Like, these were all light bulbs.
And I just, "Pam!"
And I just popped it. Popped it.
I started hearing the windows breaking,
left and right.
[imitates glass breaking]
And I just remember going, like,
"Come on, come on, come on!
Let's go! Let's go!"
Like, "Get up! Let's go! Let's go!"
I remember someone wrappin' a T-shirt
around their face,
like, "We're gonna do this!"
["Whispers In the Hall" continues playing]
[Sean] That is Quintin, I believe.
-[Alexa] Shut up.
-[Katherine] What? That's Quintin!
-That totally is Quintin.
-[Sean] That very well could be.
[Quintin] It took one staff to kind of
hold us back for the longest time.
But then we realized…
there's numbers.
[laughs] And somebody pushed through.
And I don't know who went through,
but once that happened,
the whole hallway went downstairs.
I saw the overpowering of the staff
and the doors open.
I'm watching the runners.
It just got a lot darker
and a lot more screaming,
a lot more chanting.
-[Katherine] What was the chanting?
-Um…
"Fuck Ivy Ridge!
Fuck Ivy Ridge! Fuck Ivy Ridge!"
My homies and myself
have planned this riot,
so we had ideas.
I figured if we destroyed
all the computers and everything,
it would be done.
So, the original plan was
to go down there and fuck shit up.
But everybody beelined through here.
[Katherine] Why'd they do that?
Because they were hungry.
Everybody's ripping pots
and pans off this shit,
just trashing the kitchen.
I'm like, "Let's go, let's go, let's go!"
And there's nobody behind me. [laughing]
'Cause they're all in the kitchen.
And then we all get
put into the gymnasium.
-[Katherine] The gym?
-Yeah.
[Katherine] Man, it's so cool to know
what was going on.
I mean, I was in the dorms the whole time.
We heard the alarms go off.
We weren't sure
what was going on, you know?
They weren't like, "There's a riot."
Otherwise, we'd join in.
But, yeah, they tried to villainize
to make us scared of you guys,
so we wouldn't join in.
Can't you hear
The whispers in the hall? ♪
So, they take us into here, right?
My boy was like,
"Should I turn the lights out?"
I said, "Do it." He turns the lights out,
and it's a full-on riot after that.
It's like a pitch-black mosh pit.
I just remember hittin' people.
Like, hittin' people.
[Sean] It's like,
you remember tears and the chanting.
Just, "Fuck Ivy Ridge. Fuck Ivy Ridge!"
[Juan] Fuck Ivy Ridge! Fuck Ivy Ridge!
You got the police
and the fucking border patrol outside
and everybody ready to shut us down.
They threw a smoke bomb in here.
I remember that because that's
when they started escorting us outside.
[reporter on TV]
Students at
the Academy at Ivy Ridge smashed windows
and attacked staff members
on Monday evening.
About 30 of the school's 450 students
fled the campus,
located in heavily-wooded land
five miles west of Ogdensburg.
All the students were located
and returned to the facility.
Twelve students were charged with rioting,
assault, and disorderly conduct.
The teenage students
are being held here in the county jail
on $5,000 cash bail
and will face criminal charges.
[Katherine] Let's talk
about when you got sent to jail.
How was jail in comparison to the program?
Like a five-star Hilton Hotel.
I loved jail. Jail was freedom to me.
Like, it was freedom compared
to what we were going through here.
[Katherine] So the riot, you were hoping,
would shut down Ivy Ridge.
[Quintin] Yes.
[chuckling] But I was wrong.
[reporter on TV]
Spokesman Tom Nichols says
the school will be reviewing
the latest incident
and looking at procedures to prevent
a similar occurrence in the future.
[Katherine]
Since the riot didn't work,
our only other option
was to complete the program.
Does this sound crazy to you?
I haven't even told you
about the seminars yet.
[both] Palms up, palms down,
palms together, palms apart, palms up…
Seminars are the backbone
of the whole program.
[all shouting]
If you want to get the hell out of there,
you have to "do the program."
[Katherine]
It is behavior modification.
It is literal brainwashing.
The people that the program
most wants to influence is the parents,
not the kids.
And it was basically a cult.
[Janja] Parents buy into it.
They get duped into it.
"It's gonna change your life!"
[Alexa] It was the worst thing
that happened to me.
[Thomas] What concerned me most
about the program
wasn't the kids that got broken,
it was the kids who were successful.
[both] Palms up, palms down,
palms together, palms apart.
[darkly intriguing music playing]