Congratulations to all you survivors! This is an enormously huge win ❤️🥹👍

https://chrysalisschoolmontana.com/

Congratulations to Riley Board of the Portland Press Herald, whose reporting on the lawsuit alleging forced labor and emotional abuse at Hyde School in Bath, Maine, received a Publick Occurrences award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association.

The recognition came as the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram also received newspaper-of-the-year honors - a significant acknowledgment of the importance of investigative journalism and public-interest reporting.

For survivors of the troubled teen industry, this recognition is particularly meaningful. Former students have spent years speaking publicly about their experiences at institutions that exercise extraordinary control over young people’s lives. Too often, those accounts have struggled to receive the sustained public attention they deserve.

The lawsuit involving Hyde School raises serious questions about student treatment, institutional practices, and accountability. Riley’s reporting helps bring these allegations into the public record, where they can be examined and discussed rather than remaining unknown to the broader community.

Journalism like this matters because families making educational decisions deserve transparency, students deserve to be safe, and allegations of abuse and forced labor deserve serious scrutiny. Survivors deserve to have their experiences heard and investigated - not automatically dismissed because the institution involved presents itself as a respected school.

This award is also a reminder of the critical role local newspapers play in holding powerful institutions accountable. Investigative reporting gives the public access to information it might otherwise never encounter and creates opportunities for difficult but necessary conversations.

Congratulations to Riley Board and the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram teams. Thank you for bringing attention to this important story and for recognizing that reporting on allegations of institutional abuse is a vital public service.

For everyone following Hyde School and the wider troubled teen industry: this is an important piece of journalism to read and share.

📰 Read the article: https://www.pressherald.com/2026/10/09/maine-sunday-telegram-portland-press-herald-and-reporters-receive-top-new-england-newspaper-awards/

Hyde boarding school accused of abusing students, forced manual labor

Former students recount abuse and neglect at Hyde School in Bath

More former Hyde School students allege mistreatment. Others say experience was positive.

Hyde School asks judge to dismiss lawsuit alleging forced labor and abuse

Revisiting Hyde: Former students say abuse allegations reopened painful memories

Federal judge allows suit against Hyde School to proceed

I'm surprised no one has brought it up on this subreddit. His story is currently trending due to his new book and he was on a facility for 2 years from age 11.

Does anyone have experience with Fairmont?

This school is trash, they kidnapped my 10 year old and took him to an insane asylum without so much as a phone call, violating Florida Law. Can't even call mom? What the crap? What shocked me even more was there were multiple autistic children being pulled out of the back of cop cars..

All 9 girls who ran away recently from Pathway of Madison County were caught. I hate this for them. I’m afraid to know what happened to them.

Hi all, curious if anyone went to LKS and wants to discuss. Went there for a bit and hated it. Not going to speak for others but it was a terrible place imo, even when compared to other programs.

Pathway of Madison County has a long history of bad incidents. They also have a several decade long history of abusing kids. The previous names of this facility were Sequel Owens Cross Roads and Three Springs New Beginnings. Both were just as abusive as Pathway of Madison County. This place needs to finally be shut down permanently. Their reign of terror torturing kids since at least the 1990’s needs to come to an end.

How do they even help

I wish I could find someone to talk to about it who could relate to it. I know that's selfish but I just wish I could have someone I could talk to face-to-face who understands the ins and outs of this kind of shit without me having to relive every pain of it. Like I wish I could just have a support group, like how they have ones for other traumas like addiction or violence. It's really hard to find any support or understanding in people when they can't really truly know what its like to have gone through similar.

Like of course I have friends and people who listen but it really feels like no one really *gets* it.

They can't see how much it hogs the space in my mind, or how much fear is still instilled so deep within me when expressing any amount of emotion at all.

It feels like the fact they made us be so numb to expressing ourselves that uniquely isolates me when trying to find any kind of support I can relate to.

Anyone else struggled with finding support this way? Is it something I should even realistically pursue trying to get? Any advice is appreciated, thank you.

Hello, I'm using a new account because I am worried about friends finding me. I desperately need help. My son asked to go back to PHP, he was having sever trouble at school. I suspect he has adhd and his therapist thinks he has PDA. I have never been able to find actually help for him, it's all been shit. This program was decent but he got angry and said he had an impulse to hurt another kid in the program so they discharged him today and told me I had to send him to residential care. They called the mobile team, I told them I was scared and refused to send him there as I have heard only horrible things.

However, I need help. Desperately. Are there any PHP programs in San Diego that help for neurodiverse kiddos and impulse/anger issues who go zero to one hundred?

He has been suspended from school twice and he was failing, I am not sure traditional school suits him, but I am so lost and desperately seeking help.

Does anyone have recommendations for me to actually help him? Mental health care is such a joke in this country.

So I posted here before on my experience and how my life turned out I just gave a brief description. I was at a boys ranch called Shamrock Acres the a place in Utah called Sorenson's Ranch then a place in Montana called Spring Creek Lodge and finally in Mexico a place called Citrus Hills which grew into what I believe High Impact. To make this short I spent close to 3 years between these places in the late 90s as I got older I suffered from all sorts of mental health problems including scitzophrenia which led to the murder of my step mom. Is it now to late to sue for the abuse I endeared in these places which I believe was a direct result in the way my life turned out. Please any information would be appreciated, thank you

I spent 1990-1991 in SMTC.

I am trying to reconstruct what was real from fiction. Who were we?

My name is Chris and I was on Gateway and that intake unit, and I think Sunrise.

That place got dark. Before and after my time, kids were killed and it was covered up, later to come out in a Texas investigation, and in a twist of irony, an SMTC lawyer's own son was killed in restraint. He sued and cashed in. His son Brandon remains dead.

Does anyone remember Jean? Pookie? Scary? Brian, Danny (later executed by Texas), the Boy Scout Liberation Organization BSLO, an inside joke like all of us must have had.

Let us see if we can reconstruct our reality.

Hi! I was wondering if there are any book recommendations that detail/cover/discuss TTI. I know there are videos and documentaries which I appreciate but I have a difficult time processing information aurally which is why I ask. Does anyone have any book recommendations that deal with TTI in a nonfictional way?

My son got a letter that Acadia had a data breach that exposed all, literally all, of his record. Name, address, DOB, diagnosis, tests, treatment, insurance, medical number.... Every. Thing. This is HIGHLY troubling. He is still a minor and dealt with their abuse (doctors sent him not me) and now this!

Did anyone else get this? Any recourse here? This could be a life or death thing if someone steals his identity.

When I turned eighteen I hadn't had a math class in all of high school and middle school math was extremely inadequate, I got the highest in the math workbooks of anyone in my group at my middle school program but when I was eighteen I couldn't long divide, I didn't know how to ride a bus from point A to point B, or drive, I was so unused to talking at all that I kept losing my voice at my first job, I had almost no experience of normal socialization and wasn't even sure if saying hello was generally considered doing something wrong, when my roommate stole my money over and over I thought I must be counting wrong until my other roommate told me he had stolen from her and from someone else, I was so convinced that I was bad that when an aquaintance pulled down his pants and masturbated in front of me I was relieved because that meant I wasn't the bad one and didn't have to feel guilty or avoid interacting with him and so I could be less lonely, I delayed telling the doctor when my medication gave me hallucinations and made me randomly have electric shocks in my brain and collapse because I thought anyone official and educated wouldn't believe me about almost anything, I had panic attacks where I shook for multiple days, I had nightmares where I woke up screaming with tears running down my face and couldn't move, a boss forgot to give me my pay for the week and I assumed I was being punished for something and wasn't allowed to ask what,

I got abused over and over. I kept trying to go to school or educational programs but physical and mental disabilities and being behind and people hating me and me not knowing how to stand up for myself would combine so that for the most part, I wasn't able to progress and was just wasting money or picking up stalkers or picking up anger at community colleges and so on.

I was really into Little Shop Of Horrors and not quite as much into Come From Away and Matilda The Musical and Les Mis and I used to carry around Audrey II all of the time. Because it was a sense of being doomed from pretty much every direction around me but still dancing and singing and falling in love.

I also liked a lot of books that helped me take a perspective outside of normal human society, particularly the Collected Poems Of Mary Oliver and Hello Cruel World by Kate Bornstein.

I would try to frame everything as an adventure and I still have a lot of notes and pictures that I like from adventures I was having in very chaotic circumstances.

I haven't found someone who understands what I'm talking about exactly.

I have a friend who was admitted to the Embark in San Martin, California a few months ago (obviously am not going to state her name for privacy reasons). I have seen some not so great reviews about it on this subreddit and other places as well. Is there any way to figure out how she’s actually doing when/if I will be able to call her? I know at most (if not all) of those places, they won’t let the patient state how they really feel about the program. From what I’ve heard from her family she’s reportedly doing great and having the time of her life but from the reviews I’ve seen (talking about how the children seem to be in terrible condition) it seems like that might be a prompted answer from the patient. Idk if this is the right place to ask this question, so I apologize if its not, but I just want to make sure that my friend is actually getting the support that she needs from the place.

I entered my first abusive relationship just six months after the troubled teen industry. I was 17 when he hit me. I’m 36 now, and I’ve been in so many abusive relationships. I almost died as a result of DV right before I turned 30.

So, I wanted to take the time and platform I have as a mod now to talk about it because I have a feeling I’m not the only survivor here.

People have said things to me like: “you’ve been in so many abusive relationships, have you considered you’re the common denominator?”

Of course I have. In the TTI we’re brainwashed into this false sort of introspection that really means everything is always our fault.

But after decades of processing it all, I finally realized that people ask the wrong questions.

Instead, they should ask:
“Who taught you that it is a sign of love for someone to hurt you, to force you, to control you?”

“Where did you learn to normalize these behaviors and accept abuse as love?”

I think for many of us the answer is obvious.

It started for me with my mother. The programs she sent me to reinforced the way she raised me. I had encopresis before the TTI. My parents used to hold me down to force enemas in me “for my own good.”
I can see the logic there, a kid who hasn’t shit for weeks is damaging their body. But there had to be a better way. I remember one psychiatrist told them to give me Pepsi and bran muffins instead 😂

Going to the TTI, those restraints were better in comparison because at least there wasn’t an enema involved and I was fully clothed.

I went through a positive peer culture program first, where literally everything is framed as “care and concern.” Your friends rat you out because they care. The staff restrains you because they care. They deny you food because you’re getting fat and they care about your health.

I was still calling back into the Ranch when I was in my first abusive relationship at 16/17. I still thought they cared. I thought they’d be concerned. Within a year most of the staff who knew me had left.

There was a staff who I loved dearly and stayed in touch with when she left. In 2014, she lost her life to domestic violence and I swore I’d be more discerning but only six years later I almost died at my partner’s hands too.

These are just parts of my story, some of the parts I keep out of the bigger story because of the shame they evoke.

But this month, I want my fellow survivors to know it isn’t your fault. I went through so much therapy before and after the TTI and still ended up in abusive relationships. I kept wondering what was so broken about me that made me a magnet for this.

And then, I found this community. After nearly two decades I had just buried the trauma basically. At 18 I had tried to find a therapist to help me move past the TTI and there were none accessible who understood it. They told me to focus on boundaries. I got better, but still ended up in such horrible relationships… but finding this community woke me up.

I first became active here in 2024. I was engaged and we had just moved to a new city. I remember on moving day some DV shit happened and for once I actually fought back, something that goes against my programming for the past two decades. In less than a year, I was finally free.

I think the thing that finally set me free was understanding that I was brainwashed to accept abuse and violence, that I deserved abuse as much as I deserved love, as part of love in the TTI. Realizing that isn’t something that I really believe about myself freed me, in combination with making close connections with other survivors here who have had similar experiences.

I know this is long so if you read it all, thank you. If it resonates with you, feel feee to share your story if you’d like.

As always, I’m glad you’re still here.

The only real difference is the length of stay and the decision to go there in the first place. When I was there, a nurse threatened to pin me down and inject me because I didn’t understand how to take my meds. I watched adults swear at eleven year olds. They explicitly told us they were “preparing us for jail.” When one person acted up, everyone was sent back to their rooms for hours while kids screamed for their mothers. I have nightmares about the horror I went through, and I only stayed there for a week.

I do not say this to diminish the experience of anyone in this sub. I can’t even imagine how much worse pain you guys have experienced, and I wish I could hug you all. I say this to point out that teen mental health services are all just glorified torture chambers.