Back in June, I published an article about Elan School, a residential "alternative school" in Maine for "troubled teens". Elan engaged in horrific, systematic abuse against its residents, verbally and emotionally degrading them, physically beating them, keeping them in solitary confinement for months at a time, publicly humiliating them, and forcing them to fight one another in boxing rings.
Elan School had been founded by a charismatic, charming, and sadistic psychopath named Joseph Ricci, who had a long criminal record and a history of drug abuse. Ricci was a multi-millionaire and owner of the Scarborough Downs Racetrack, and he had many suspected ties to organized crime.
While Ricci painted himself as a "mentor" who could "cure" deviant behavior in teens, his ulterior motivations were sadism, cruelty, money, and power. To Joe Ricci, Elan was no more than a vehicle for him to abuse children without the law taking an interest in his activities.
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| Joseph J. Ricci (1946 - 2001) was the founder of the horrifically abusive Elan School, a "therapeutic boarding school" located in Poland, Maine. A charming, manipulative psychopath with a history of sadistic behavior and disturbing ideations, Ricci is truly one of the most evil people I've ever studied. |
In my article on Elan, I highlighted the fact that, although the school closed in 2011, it was not because they had been shut down. Everything Elan did to its students was legal, and it still is. It is a harrowing warning of the dangers of the under-regulated "troubled teen industry" - where supposed "alternative schools" con parents, abuse teens for profit, and get away with it.
My article focused mainly on Elan School itself, but today I'd like to take a look at the "troubled teen industry" as a whole, because this industry did not die with Elan. It's just as alive as ever, and it is still very under-regulated.
Days after I posted my article on Elan, another "behavioral modification" school made headline news. In July, 2019, it emerged that the Ranch For Kids - a residential behavioral school for teens in Eureka, Montana - had engaged in horrific abuse against its students - abuse that was very reminiscent of Elan. Students at the Ranch For Kids were physically beaten, kicked, body-slammed, spat on, locked in isolation for long periods of time, shot with nail guns, deprived of food and sleep, and forced to go on twenty-mile "disciplinary walks" without shoes.
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| Just days after I posted my article on Elan School, state officials in Montana removed 27 youths from the Ranch For Kids, a similar "therapeutic boarding school", after disturbing allegations of abuse at the hands of the staff became publicly known. |
So, clearly, this problem is not over. The "troubled teen industry" (and all the horrors that come with it) is alive and well. And it is long past time to expose this inhuman, abusive industry and the for-profit companies that actively enable it.
"Tough Love": A Short History
The "troubled teen industry" has a long and complicated history. It appears to have originated with a violent, abusive cult known as Synanon, which pioneered the idea of "tough love" and "attack therapy" - where harsh and ostensibly abusive treatment is used with the ultimate goal of correcting a person's deviant behavior.
Although this type of therapy was widely panned by the vast majority of the psychiatric community - many of whom decried it as destructive and harmful - it became popular with a very, very small set of child psychiatrists, and this was all that was needed to give "tough love" therapy the legitimacy it required.
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| Synanon was originally founded as a drug rehabilitation program, but it ultimately morphed into a violent cult implicated in several assassination attempts. Although it collapsed in 1991, Synanon pioneered the development of "tough love" and "attack therapy" - both of which are utilized by many behavioral schools to "treat" troubled teens. |
Although Synanon collapsed in 1991, it influenced dozens of other groups to adopt the "tough love" protocol. Many of these groups morphed into "therapeutic boarding schools" - a euphemistic name for behavioral modification schools for troubled teens.
One of these schools was the Elan School, which, as I mentioned before, I have previously written about. In fact, it is known that Elan's founder, Joe Ricci, had been associated with a Synanon splinter group known as Daytop Village in the 1960s, and it is believed he adopted some of their practices and applied them at Elan.
Other "alternative schools" and adolescent behavioral modification programs also emerged from the ashes of Synanon, such as CEDU, Cross Creek Programs, Diamond Ranch Academy, Tranquility Bay, and Majestic Ranch. All of these schools were later caught up in dozens of abuse scandals, and while many have since closed, few, if any, of the directors of these schools have faced criminal charges.
Many of these alternative schools utilized what are known as "teen escort companies" - services which literally kidnap teens from their homes - usually in the middle of the night - and bring them to the schools - experiences that have been known to cause lasting trauma to the teens abducted. These "escort companies" are not only legal, but they still exist today and are subject to very little, if any, regulation.
It is important to note that there is no centralized "troubled teen industry". It is a loosely-connected network of "therapeutic boarding schools" and similar groups that employ similar tactics and types of "therapy". This, unfortunately, makes it more difficult to target the industry as a whole, and is probably why the "troubled teen industry" has survived for so long.
However, in recent years, there has been one umbrella organization that has become a leader within the "troubled teen industry" - providing funds, lobbying power, and financial strength to behavioral schools across the United States: Aspen Education Group.
The Enablers: Aspen Education Group
Aspen Education Group is not the same as Aspen X2, the website which held my grades in high school. That is another depressing group called Aspen with a history of making teens feel miserable, but for an entirely different reason.
Aspen Education Group has actively enabled the systematic abuse and torture of "troubled teens" by giving legitimacy to long-discredited methods of "therapy" and by reorganizing and protecting behavioral schools that have been caught up in abuse scandals.Aspen has, in fact, founded and overseen numerous schools caught up in such scandals, such as Bromley Brook School, Cedars Academy, LoneStar Expeditions, SageWalk Programs, Excel Academy, Island View RTC, and Mount Bachelor Academy.
And that's not just my opinion. Since it was founded in 1997, Aspen has created numerous "therapeutic" programs that have been implicated in disturbing abuse scandals. It has faced over 11 lawsuits alleging abusive practices, and has been the subject of numerous ethics investigations in at least three states.
First, let's just look at Oregon's Mount Bachelor Academy, one of the many Aspen-run "residential treatment" programs that was caught up in abuse scandals. Mount Bachelor, like Elan, has become synonymous with scandal.
A lawsuit in 1998 alleged that students at Mount Bachelor had been deprived of sleep, subjected to constant verbal and physical abuse, and forced to do manual labor in near-freezing temperatures at night. That same year, a 17-year-old student at the school committed suicide after running away. Although the State of Oregon investigated the allegations, they ultimately cleared Mount Bachelor Academy of wrongdoing.
But the allegations continued. In 2009, allegations surfaced that Mount Bachelor had forced teenage girls enrolled at the school to engaged in "sexualized role-play" and give lap-dances as part of their "therapy". An investigation by the State of Oregon corroborated these allegations, but, after Aspen threatened to sue, the government's report was softened in language. Nevertheless, Mount Bachelor closed that same year after more than 20 former students filed a joint lawsuit against the school.
None of the staff ever faced criminal charges for the abuse allegations, and litigation in the case is still ongoing.
Mount Bachelor Academy was not the only Aspen program to face abuse lawsuits and allegations. In 2009, another Aspen treatment program, SageWalk, made headline news after a 16-year-old boy, Sergey Blashchishen, died during a wilderness therapy session. The boy had been forced to hike in the summer weather while carrying an 80-pound backpack, and, when he became dizzy and complained of fatigue, the staff told him he was "faking" his symptoms.
Eventually, overcome with exhaustion and heatstroke, Blashchishen collapsed to the ground. Staff did not notify emergency services until they noticed his heart had stopped beating. Blashchishen would ultimately die, and, although authorities opened a wrongful-death investigation, the SageWalk staff have still not faced any criminal charges.
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| 16-year-old Sergey Blashchishen died from heatstroke after being forced to hike in hot weather by a behavioral school owned by Aspen Education Group. The school staff never faced charges. |
This wasn't the first time such an incident had happened at an Aspen program. Back in 2004, at Aspen's LoneStar Expeditions program, a 14-year-old boy named Matthew Meyer had also suffered from heatstroke while being forced to hike in 90-degree weather. When he complained of numbness and exhaustion, the staff told him he was having an "anxiety attack", and when he began vomiting and collapsed, the staff poured water on him instead of taking him to the hospital. Like Sergey Blashchishen, Matthew Meyer died from cardiac arrest as a result of heatstroke.
The school did not tell Meyer's mother how her son had died, and the circumstances of his death were only revealed after a three-year lawsuit was filed by the family. Like SageBrush, none of the staff at LoneStar faced any criminal charges for Meyer's death.
And this is to say nothing of the sexual abuse allegations against Aspen's behavioral schools. Another Aspen program, Bromley Brook School, became the focus of state investigations after it emerged that several female students had been sexually assaulted by school staff. A 16-year-old girl later came forward and told police that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with a staff member at the school. The rest of the staff knew about the relationship and several others, she said, but took no disciplinary action.
Although the staff member in question was later sent to prison, Bromley Brook itself never faced any charges for failing to take action.
Another Aspen-owned behavioral school, Copper Canyon Academy, was also accused of sexually humiliating female students. Allegations surfaced in 2013 that Copper Canyon staff had, as part of their "therapy", forced survivors of sexual assault to re-enact their rapes in front of classmates. Other students have accused Copper Canyon of verbal, physical, and mental abuse, and many students have claimed they suffer from PTSD as a result of their experiences at the school.
A Risk Worth Taking
There are countless other complaints, allegations, and lawsuits against Aspen and its therapeutic programs for abuse, neglect, and deceptive marketing - too many of them to list here. Needless to say, however, while many of Aspen's programs have closed down, virtually no criminal charges have been filed against the staff of the schools or even Aspen itself.
In fact, some of these staff members have simply reorganized their defunct schools under a different name, and continue to receive "troubled teens" for treatment.
Needless to say, it is beyond clear that the "troubled teen industry" is still alive and well, and is still engaging in the systematic abuse and torture of teenagers under the guise of "therapy" and "behavioral modification". It is still subject to virtually no regulation, no oversight, and no accountability.
Behavioral schools like Elan, Copper Canyon, and Mount Bachelor come and go over the years, and while it is undoubtedly good that many of these abusive programs have shut down, we should not allow the deaths of places like Elan to give us false hope. If anything, the "troubled teen industry" still survives because such places can so easily shut down and reorganize. It removes what little accountability this industry is subject to, and enables the directors of these schools to escape with their money, rebuild their program, and start the vicious process all over again.
And this cycle of evil has all been enabled by companies such as Aspen Education Group.
Now, this is where I have to be extremely careful. Most of my articles are critical of individuals or organizations that are long-since dead, but are symptoms of an ongoing problem. This is the first time I have openly criticized an active organization, and I am taking a risk in doing so.
Aspen Education Group has been known to sue critics in the past, be they former students who have spoken up or activist groups who have raised concerns. In 2009, Aspen Education Group threatened to sue the state of Oregon after authorities prepared to release a report that was critical of the Aspen-owned Mount Bachelor Academy. Even though Aspen never pressed the case, the mere threat of this lawsuit was enough to make the state of Oregon edit their report to be more palatable.
Aspen Education Group is a multi-million dollar corporation with a highly-skilled team of experienced lawyers and spokespersons. I'm just a self-published author with a computer. Against Aspen, I don't stand a chance in court if they decide to sue me.
Now, I have vigorously fact-checked everything I've said in this piece. Everything I've said here has been corroborated by government investigations, legal briefings, press reports, and the countless accounts of former students of Aspen's "therapeutic boarding schools".
Yet, even with all of that, the possibility that I could be putting myself in legal jeopardy by writing this article is still quite high. I have honestly thought a long time about whether it is worth the risk to publish this article, knowing that doing so could open the door to a long, costly battle with a multi-million dollar corporation.
But, after much reckoning, I have decided that I will publish this article, because I know it is the right thing to do. Some things are more important than money, and one of those things is raising awareness about the existence of a secretive, under-regulated industry that makes money off of the systematic - and legal - abuse and torture of children under the guise of "therapy".
Children don't deserve to be used as pawns to line the pockets of vile, manipulative psychopaths like Joseph Ricci. They don't deserve to be forced into horrifically abusive programs like Elan School. They don't deserve to be treated as subhuman filth.
Children deserve love. They deserve care and compassion, and, most of all, they deserve to be kept safe from insidious, abusive organizations that prey on the fears of their parents in order to make money. They deserve the best care we can give them, and the existence of the "troubled teen industry" is indicative that we have failed to do so.
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