198. Chrysalis School Montana: My Troubled Teen Industry Experience
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In this week's solo episode, I am sharing for the first time what my experience in the troubled teen industry was like. I was enrolled in Chrysalis School Montana in 2018 while I was struggling with my mental health in high school, unaware that I was part of a larger system that takes advantage of teens and their parents.
In this episode, I look back at my experience in this therapeutic boarding school and discuss:
+ What therapeutic boarding schools are & why they aren't effective treatment options
+ Why I attended a therapeutic boarding school & initial red flags that my program was unethical
+ My experiences with adventure therapy, group/individual therapy, & academics while at Chrysalis
+ What day-to-day life looks like while attending a therapeutic boarding school
+ The most unethical experiences I faced while attending my program
+ Coming to terms with my experience after graduating & what that was like
+ How I realized that my therapeutic boarding school was part of the troubled teen industry
+ The role of educational consultants in the troubled teen industry
+ The disturbing lawsuit filed against Chrysalis after I graduated
+ Other options for teen mental health programs outside of the troubled teen industry
+ My advice for other troubled teen industry survivors
+ so much more!
Mentioned In The Episode…
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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!
Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.
You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She persisted.
lot of these experiences, especially as a survivor, are difficult to unpack because when you enter the program, a really big part that's told to you again and again and again is that you need to accept that.
And if you have not accepted the program, you're not doing the work and you're not ready to get to the next level. And so, they're normalized and if you question them, you haven't accepted it and then you lose your privileges. You can't talk to your family, all the things. . And that was a really hard thing for me once I graduated and went home and started working with a therapist was being like, wait, that wasn't totally normal.
And maybe that wasn't right, and being like, was that traumatic? And allowing yourself to kind of form your own opinions instead of just accepting what was being told.
hello, hello and welcome to She Persisted. I'm really excited you're here today, we have a really important episode. It's a little bit of a heavier topic, but I'm talking about my experience in the troubled teen industry and the 14 months that I spent at Chrysalis in Montana.
I wanted to give a little disclaimer before we get started, which is that these are just my opinions. They're my subjective opinions. They're not facts. I'm not speaking on the experience of other survivors, , or staff members at Chrysalis or Chrysalis as a corporation or any other affiliations I might have to anyone any organizations.
These are just my subjective experiences and opinions as an individual, and they're also not reflective of my parents or friends or any of those kinds of things. So. , that little disclaimer. And then I also wanted to give you a little bit of context on my intentions for this episode. And in the past five years of podcasting, I've become really aware of the way that you tell your story, especially when it's regarding challenges you've been through, whether it's mental health challenges or a difficult experience.
People can leave the conversation or hearing your story feeling really inspired and hopeful and validated, or they can leave it with a more negative, like, whoa, that was a lot to process. I don't really know where to go from there, but that was just a lot of emotion to experience and unpack. And so my goal for this is to do the former, which is to share my experience and hopefully you guys leave being like me.
So, wow, I have a lot more of an awareness of what these programs can be like, and that not treatment is created equal, and I now have more of an understanding of what goes on in these programs, because a lot of it is really unknown to the general population, and that you also feel like, okay, I kind of know where to go from here.
I know what questions to ask, or I know how I can navigate my own experience after leaving one of these programs. So that's kind of my goal with all of this. But to start, I am going to give a little overview of the program itself, just kind of talk about some logistics, paint a picture if you will, and then we're going to dive into, some of the red flags that come with programs in the Troubled Teen Industry and what that kind of looked like at this program in particular, talking about post graduation and what it was like to kind of wake up to these experiences and navigate them, unpack them in therapy, and then finalize with.
other options for parents and families and what you can do moving forward. , to start, the program that I attended was Chrysalis School, Montana, in Eureka, Montana. It's a therapeutic boarding school, and the idea with therapeutic boarding schools that makes them really attractive to a lot of parents and families is that When a teen gets intensive mental health care, a lot of the times that means that they're not in school.
Whether it's public school or private school, they're just no longer able to participate because their life is now completely consumed by treatment. And that's true if you're in an inpatient program. It's true if you're in a residential program. You're just no longer able to be at school.
and
Falling behind on your classes and falling behind your friends in your grade.
It has a lot of consequences, especially in high school, because you're kind of on a structured timeline of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year, go to college or take your next steps after graduation. And so there's not a lot of room for deviance from that structured timeline.
And so spending a week at an inpatient program. You have a lot of stress and things to catch up on, let alone spending more than a month at, , a residential program. It can be challenging to make up that work. And so what a lot of people do is they take a medical leave of absence. That's what I did for the first time.
second semester of my freshman year of high school. Where therapeutic boarding schools come in is that they're advertised as like the perfect happy medium. You can continue to get therapeutic support, you can make up credits that you've missed from treatment, and you can continue to do school while also getting therapy.
And it's almost like, too good to be true is how I would describe it when you're trying to do everything, something has to, has to give. And unfortunately, at this program, in my experience, it was that the academics were really not up to par, and the clinical side of things really also wasn't up to par.
Really was too good to be true. And so, Chrysalis is a therapeutic boarding school. At any given time, they have about 40 girls that are enrolled as students there. It's located in Eureka, Montana, where the population is 1, 500 people. So you are in the middle of nowhere, five minutes south of the Canadian border, and that is really by design.
A lot of these programs, on purpose, have set up in really rural areas, whether that's Utah, Montana, North Carolina, Colorado, , I've heard of some in Georgia, in these really rural, small towns, if not in the wilderness, because you're able to control for every aspect of these kids day to day environment.
And this differs really strongly from the top rated programs. mental hospitals and treatment programs, which are almost all attached to a major university, which is a lot of times in a larger town because there are all these different facilities attached to that university, whether it's from a research perspective, normally a hospital, it's just a pretty expansive ecosystem of academic and medical happenings.
. And the troubled teen industry is really the complete opposite of that. You will never find them attached to a large university or a hospital. They really are in the middle of nowhere and that's by design. It means that they can keep people from having relationships that they don't want them to.
It means that they can keep communication really on lockdown. They can control every aspect of the day to day and there's also the element of people leaving. When you are a teen, you don't really have a lot of autonomy about going to these programs and we'll get into that. And , when you're in a larger city, like say you went in the middle of New York, you like leave the building, you could catch the subway to literally anywhere and they'd never see you again.
That's not possible at wilderness programs or therapeutic boarding schools because you are in the middle of nowhere and unless you're ready to live in the woods by yourself, everyone in the surrounding areas knows that there is a treatment program nearby and if you see a kid wandering around by themselves without a phone, they've run away from that treatment program.
And so. , this is really something that, , is done on purpose, and it's a really interesting and unique trait of these programs, and they will spin it in advertising as letting you reconnect with nature and having a really healing environment, but it's something that's done, , I think for, for not the most altruistic reasons.
so I mentioned there's about 40 girls there from 13 to 18 years old.
This is not necessarily a voluntary program. You are signed in by your parents, and to enroll in Chrysalis, your parents have to sign over 51 percent of their parental custody. So for your entire length of stay, Chrysalis, or their corporate ownership, which they have a lot of different hats that they wear, which we'll get into.
Is your, legal guardian and your parent for, for that length of stay and they have power of attorney and can make all decisions on, your parent's behalf because they are your parent. They have 51 percent of your parental custody. And this is really extremely abnormal when it comes to mental health treatment.
This is a really unique thing. characteristic to the trouble teen industry and a really easy red flag to spot if you know to look for it. Because if you had a child who was 14 and had a cancer diagnosis and you were going to be going to stay at a hospital for an intensive round of chemo and they were like, this is going to be, for a couple of months, you're going to do chemo twice a week, and because of the side effects and how intensive of a therapeutic intervention this is, you're just going to stay at the hospital.
They would never be like, and now as part of this treatment intervention, , can you sign over 51 percent of your child's custody for the next few months? You'd be like, what are you talking about? That just doesn't make sense. And yet in the troubled teen industry, these programs tell parents that that's absolutely the norm and it's necessary for their child to receive care. And that's not true. From a legal perspective, from an ethical perspective, there's no legal or mental health grounds that any program needs your custody to be able to give you care, and any ethical program will never ask that of you.
And every clinician I've asked and talked about this to, , that works at a reputable program is appalled, jaws on the floor, like so confused that that's even something that a program would suggest and ask and let alone require. So, Chrysalis has parental custody of these 40 girls, underage girls, , at any given time.
They don't really have a standard length of stay. You'll find out once you're enrolled there, but they advertise it as being 10 to 14 months. I knew girls that were there for three years. I knew girls that were pulled after a couple of weeks. And so, there really is no average length of stay, but I only saw one girl during my 14 months there.
, that had a graduation in less than a year, , and she came into the program with really unique circumstances. So if you want to graduate from this program, expect to be there for longer than a year, regardless of kind of how you're entering the program.
And within your stay there, the students are moving through a level system, or as they call them, phases. And this is how you work your way through the program to earn a graduation. And They have since renamed the phases, but when I was there, they were orientation, acceptance, trust, action, stability, and transition.
You would spend an undetermined amount of time on each of these phases, working through a checklist, and trying to move to the next phase.
This is also something that is pretty, Abnormal in the trouble teen industry compared to typical therapeutic programs. It's not uncommon for different privileges to be structured and dependent on your therapeutic progress like if you were Starting residential program. They probably won't give you free access of your phone and social media on day one.
Similarly, if you just enrolled, they're not going to be like, yeah, go on that family vacation next week, we'll see you after that. But having such a structure for the entirety of the program that really is a level system, is again, very unique to the Troubled Teen Industry.
So to give you a little kind of idea of what to expect.
For acceptance phase, which is the second level, the value is responsibility, and you have to complete the following assignments. Share your life story with parents and family therapy. Complete a master treatment plan. Create a self care plan. Identify why you are in treatment at Chrysalis. Write a letter of accountability and process it with your family and therapist.
If you've done this, revisit your letter and process with therapist and family. This is something that only happens in the troubled teen industry, and it is so traumatic. You basically write down every single thing you've ever done wrong and read it to your parents. I remember being like, I am so sorry for being depressed and for being anxious and having panic attacks and not, like, it's wild.
Have a successful family visit, maintaining appropriate boundaries, create a timeline or other art therapy assignment that corresponds to life events and your life story, make a personal values list with your family, make a family values list with agreed upon definitions, create a list of your strengths and share it with a staff member, read Anatomy of Peace, and then the expectations are that you demonstrate an ability to utilize mindfulness skills and activities, Demonstrate willingness to experience unwanted or uncomfortable emotions and engage in uncomfortable tasks.
Build trust and demonstrate an acceptance of limits and boundaries. Engage in all classes. Actively engage in adventure activities. Participating not sitting on the sidelines or refusing. Demonstrate increasing self care. Full participation in workout and demonstration of good hygiene. Full participation in house circle, group therapy, individual and family therapy.
And show up for activities fully prepared. A lot of these are really ambiguous and there's no structure for them. So for example, make a personal values list. There's no worksheet for that. You were just expected to maybe write down some values and then you hope that a staff would check it off. And so each of these items you had to date, sign when you'd done them, and then you had to get a staff member to sign off that yes, you had done that.
And once you received signatures on all of those items, you then would apply to go to the next phase. You would fill out an application talking about why you thought you had exemplified the expectations for the existing phase, and then you would get written feedback from your parents, your therapist, your teachers, your house staff, your adventure staff, and then you get feedback from your peers, and I could be wrong on this because this whole year was a blur, but I remember we would write general feedback at group meetings every week about people's faces.
So it was really dependent on just like how people perceived you and not really as much attached to Any therapeutic outcomes or anything evidence-based. It was these really ambiguous things like are you experiencing uncomfortable emotions? Are you practicing more self-care? But also did you go to class?
And so as you can imagine, these really ambiguous expectations mean that there's a lot of unknown. as you move through this program. You have no expected graduation date. You have no expected timeline for when you were going to be off of orientation or off of acceptance. Some girls were on orientation for weeks.
Some girls were on acceptance for well over six months. Other girls got through orientation and acceptance within a month and a half. So you really had no idea what your life was going to look like, what your privileges were going to be, and anything about when you would be able to leave. There was so much ambiguity there.
So that's kind of the level system. you rinse and repeat every time you get on the next level. You do the things that are on the checklist. You get people to sign off, give feedback, and then treatment team, which is all the therapists. , someone from the school, someone from adventure, someone from the house staff, would vote on if you got to go to the next phase or not.
, another really unique aspect of the trouble teen industry is adventure therapy or wilderness therapy.
You guys have probably heard of wilderness programs where kids get kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night and put in the middle of the woods with none of their belongings to hike and eat minimal food for an undetermined amount of time. , there have been hundreds of kids that have died in these programs due to a lack of safety regulations and being put in physically unsafe situations or extreme medical neglect.
for your patience. And there's no scientific literature supporting their effectiveness, especially not any literature that's been done to compare wilderness interventions to treatment as normal or psychotherapy or DBT, , with outcomes after the child's just leaving wilderness. My understanding of the wilderness model is kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right?
Like, if you take everything from a kid and you break down all of these basic needs and then literally just give them. Maybe, questionably, shelter, which is the tarp over their head, and food, when you decide to give it to them, and have them doing this physical exercise all day, every day, with no friends or family communication time, you're able to rebuild these other things, like self and acceptance
you're putting people in really vulnerable situations, and then building them back up as you see fit with these really basic, important things as humans, which is physical safety and communication, and food and shelter, , really all up in the balance. , I can't speak to the subjective experience of wilderness therapy because I did not go to a wilderness program, but we've had people on the podcast before that have, and there's a lot of information out there online, , about wilderness programs and survivors experiences.
, So you can check that out if you're interested, but this kind of gets tied into these other programs within the Trouble Team industry in the form of adventure therapy. And so for us, two days a week, every week, Friday and Saturday, we would do adventure therapy. And during the winter, you would go to the mountain, you would ski or snowboard.
And then during the summer, you would hike, raft, rock climb. Water boulder, things like that. And you would do that all day, Friday and Saturday, regardless of if you wanted to or not. It wasn't a voluntary thing. Everyone did adventure. And your privileges were not only dependent on that. If you didn't do it, you'd get put on reflection and you weren't able to speak to anyone.
And you were also given a grade. So like in your GPA, in your school transcripts, there was a grade for PE and adventure. And so there's a lot riding on this. There's a lot of things being controlled. with your participation in this aspect of the program. we had the opportunity to add our experiences in a Montana group complaint a couple of years ago and I think one of the graduates put the, their experience of adventure therapy into a really succinct way to say it which is that, I was put in countless situations where I had to decide between my physical well being and getting punished for a lack of participation in the program.
And that kind of distills the adventure program, I would say And it's interesting because it's advertised as like adventure therapy, giving girls space to explore and find themselves and all these things, but there's no literature supporting Adolescents doing adventure therapy against their will.
There's so many benefits. If you're like, I love hiking and it helps me feel a sense of mastery and it gives me so many endorphins so I choose to hike on the weekend. I love that for you. Go do it. That's not how this works. in troubled teen programs, we were only able to get out of adventure if you showed staff your vomit or had a fever.
And if you weren't able to participate in those two circumstances, or you had an injury that like required surgery, you would be in PUPS, which was an acronym for People Unable to Participate. You basically just like sit inside all day. You couldn't really talk. , you could maybe read your book, but it was supposed to be like a negative experience by design.
And so the, the adventure therapy program is unique to different people. Some people really like hiking and biking and doing all of these things. , I think there's a really different layer and aspect to it when you're being forced to do it and you have no, choice or option in the matter. And it definitely was a unique aspect of the program because there was really no oversight or regulation and it was Just kind of do whatever.
I remember seeing girls forcing themselves to throw up on the side of the trails so that staff members would let them go home. We would hike and camp in pouring rain and it didn't matter what the weather was. If it was freezing temperatures, we were still shoveling bike trails campus. and being told cold is a mindset.
Girls would get injured, I broke my finger, didn't get any medical attention for that, girls broke limbs, one of them was skiing and fell off the side of like a ski trail and they didn't find her for a number of hours. I remember girls saying that they were suicidal just to get out and be able to stop doing adventure on the service trips we went on.
It's, it's just a really interesting position to, to put people in and of course we all do things that we don't want to do. , but I think. the adventure program is such a key pillar of a treatment intervention without any research backing its effectiveness and so. many issues with student safety, , to the point where the head of the adventurous program got fired for putting us in unsafe situations.
And then after this cohort of girls graduated, she has since been rehired. . So a lot of, , ambiguity and things that happen within the adventure program that are really unique to the troubled teen industry and don't happen in evidence based programs. The other aspect of chrysalis was the therapy and group therapy, part of the program.
, you were assigned a therapist when you were brought in. It was basically based on what therapist had room on their caseload and therapists were master's level. Some of them, I believe, were licensed clinical social workers. One of them was a life coach and had no licensure. So there was really a lot of variation in the quality of therapeutic care you were getting.
And one of the reasons my parents chose Chrysalis was because we were told that the clinical director, had DBT experience and we would be doing DBT as part of the program. And I did not receive anything related to DBT during my entire 14 months there. I think what you could describe interventions as, would be psychotherapy, therapy family based therapy that was mostly psychotherapy.
I'm really not clear on what style was being used even after years of psychology classes. , and the interesting element of therapy at Chrysalis was that you would have these group therapy where you were grouped with other girls that were struggling with different things similar to you. So, I remember at one point, there was, a group of girls that had struggled with substance use.
We had one about attachment styles. There was, equine therapy. So, girls would do horse therapy, which, again, not an evidence based thing.
And then we would do house groups, which really were one of the more negative experiences, I would say, because it really became more of a attack therapy type thing where we would be given a platform to give quote unquote feedback, and it really quickly became bullying. So one person would be like, I feel like this person isn't holding themselves accountable to doing X, Y, and Z.
And then all the girls would be like, I forget what they would say, actually. Echo, I think was what they would say. Echo. And then you have 12 people echoing that you're not committed to the program and , again, also not something that happens in non troubled teen programs.
, one of the more, general things that I forgot to mention is that there are no psychologists, PsyDs, or psychiatrists on their full time staff. They have a psychiatrist that comes, I think, every month, but they have no psychologists, no PsyDs, , to this day on their staff.
, we also would do one house group session a week, which was like a similar group therapy, where there was no therapist present. So it would just be house staff and the girls would kind of run it themselves. And again, we have that, , Really abnormal, interesting dynamic where there's this option for feedback.
, and bullying was definitely a part of the culture there. I'll give this one example of an activity we did in group therapy, which I think kind of explains the type of interventions we were doing, where staff made us participate in a group activity where students would rate the girls and line them up in a coordinated way. to how they were using their power.
If the girls thought you were a bad person, they would put you in the back of the line. The staff would watch as the students, one by one, placed the girls, putting them in first place, last place and in between. I don't think you could imagine how humiliating it is for a girl to demand you walk to the back of the line in front of your friends and the staff.
We also would do this one therapy in one of the groups where one girl would sit in the middle and just like do an individual therapy session while 12 other girls would watch. , also never experienced that except for a chrysalis, ,
Another fun therapy thing is that therapists would do these, like, satisfaction surveys, and I know everyone's, talking about tipping culture on the internet right now. This is basically the same thing, or, like, imagine you just have a really intense therapy session, you're crying, you're, like, so upset, you just, , talked about, trauma or something challenging and your therapist is like, here's an iPad, can you rate how this went?
You have to, like, rate your therapist. So awkward. , also something that I've never had to do at any other program or therapy office.
And then the next layer that I'm going to dive into, and again, I'm trying to just keep this brief and kind of explain somewhat what dynamics were, , without just rambling for 40 hours, but the next layer was the school. And again, this was a big draw for a lot of parents because it allowed your child to stay on track academically while also still working on their mental health.
But just like I said, it really was too good to be true and something had to give and the school aspect of things really was that. the academic standards that we were held to were extremely low. When we did credit recovery over the summer to make up classes that we'd missed when Girls that Bend in Wilderness or Residential, we were given credit for full semester classes when we'd done like six weeks of work online.
, one of my teachers, my science teacher my sophomore year, he was not a teacher in any way, shape, or form. He was the boyfriend of one of the adventure staff who had done one semester of medical school before he dropped out to work in the Forest Service, and because their normal science teacher had quit right before the school year, that somehow qualified him to teach us.
So, another fun example, one of my friends had an intervention. The interventions were, like, basically just, things you had to do when treatment team decided apparently, it was helpful for your mental health. She was not supposed to go to math class because she was too much of, a perfectionist and held herself to high standards.
So for a whole semester, she just didn't go to math class and they gave her an A and completely falsified her transcripts. And as you can imagine, when you spend time with her A year, two years, three years at a school that's run in this way. There are a lot of negative outcomes when it comes to reintegrating into a typical school system or a public school system or college classes.
And I think a lot of us have experienced that after the fact. I definitely know starting my junior year of high school at public school. I got like a horrible grade on my first math quiz because I had no foundation the math that we were being taught. Similarly with Spanish, I went into Spanish three my junior year and hadn't done like any of the conjugation or tenses that we were being taught because we were not in a normally structured licensed regular school.
And another funny thing, because this is such a small school, there's like between three to five girls per grade. So I'd like you to imagine you're at high school graduation, but you and one other person are the only people walking for your graduation, because that is what happens twice a year at Chrysalis School, Montana.
So that's kind of your overview of what structures this program, which is that we have this phase system you have to work your way through, and the key other pillars are the adventure program, you have your therapy aspect, and then you have school. I'm going to kind of rewind to when I got there and kind of give you guys a picture of what it was like when I showed up on this campus in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and then we're also going to talk about what the day to day was like and then move into larger issues.
So the first part is that you have to have notarized. transfer of custody from your parents to Chrysalis, so you had to pick that up in Eureka, or Whitefish on your way to getting dropped off. I remember when I got there, there was no one there, which if you've ever been in like an IOP or a hospitalization or a residential, there are always people there because it is a running treatment program.
Troubled teen industry, they do this really differently by design because kids don't want to be there. They're often there against their will. They're prepared for them to fight it or run away or have a breakdown. And so we drive up to this campus and it's like an absolute ghost town. There's no one in the house.
There's no one in the rooms. There's no one to be found except for two random staff members, , who were residential staff. So there's no head of school. There's no one that works in the academic side of things. Your therapist is nowhere to be found. And you basically just drop your things off.
And then they're like, all right, it's time to say bye to your parents, like 15 minutes later. And I remember we walked across the street. We took a selfie, , to commemorate the moment. And it was like, I didn't know when I was going to talk to them again or where I was going or where the other girls were.
I remember being really unnerved by the fact that there was literally no one else there. Because I think as it. kid and as a teen, you find comfort when there are others with you. You're like, okay, there's someone my age, like, it's gonna be fine. they're there. It's, it's normal. It's okay.
And that definitely did not happen. , I didn't see my therapist for a number of days, which is also really Abnormal in a treatment program, when you're hospitalized short term, you see your psychiatrist within like the first 24 hours as part of the intake process. That does not happen. There was no admissions, questionnaires, or tests that I did, no intake forms, none of that occurred to enroll in chrysalis.
The first part of your experience is that a staff starts going through all your bags and writing down on, a Google spreadsheet every single thing you've brought, and, like, this person has 10 socks, and this person has 13 shirts, whatever it is. And so everything is written down, and then I remember, like, Going and just being like thrown into the mix with the other girls and there really being no structure except for that You were just now part of the day to day activities and there was no formal orientation I wanted to get my privileges and be able to talk to my parents and so I was like Where is what is this handbook you want me to read?
Like what do I have to do to check off these things on this orientation checklist, but there's really no one orienting you or showing you the program or what to expect. You technically have a mentor. My mentor was out on a visit. , she'd been there for many months, so she was able to go home and visit her family.
So I had a temporary mentor for two days, and then she graduated, and then a while later, I had another mentor. But the mentor basically is just someone that is walking you to class and showing you how to do your chores, because you do a lot of chores at Chrysalis. And so, So, to give you an idea of your day to day, you wake up, I want to say at like 7, you do your house chores, your house chores have to be checked off by staff members, that they've been done to the proper standards, and you might be on like, chickens, so you have to go and get the chickens eggs and feed them and give them water and like, you're supposed to scrape the poop off their Corral.
Or maybe you're on car, so you have to wash a car every morning, and then on Sunday, you get to wash them all again. Or maybe you're on dusting, which was the easiest chore, where you just go around and dust the house. And so, we did a lot of cleaning on Sundays. We did a deep clean for like three hours. One time for adventure, we just cleaned the entire school for a number of hours.
, Cleaning was a big, part of the structure, and again, staff had to check you off on it. It was part of your participation, , within the program. If you weren't doing that, that was like a refusal and counted against you, and you also wouldn't win privileges like the one time a week we would watch a movie together if you didn't get your chores checked off every morning, every single day.
after you did your chores, you would eat breakfast. The staff would make breakfast with a schedule, so it was like Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, we would do eggs, which I literally could not eat eggs for years after Christmas because they would make like 30 eggs at a time and they were green and I just couldn't handle it.
And then Tuesday, Thursday, you would have oatmeal and then sometimes on Sunday, they'd make something special. Friday and Saturday, you got to make your own breakfast because it was adventure days and you would also pack your lunch for adventure, which was a sandwich. And then after you'd eaten breakfast, you would walk to school.
We walked to school every single day unless it was negative 10 below zero. If it was negative 10 below zero, they would drive you in the van. Otherwise, you would put on your fun yak tracks, which if you're like, what is a yak track? I've never heard of that. I hadn't either. It's these fun rubber contraptions that, uh, attached to your shoes and they have these little spikes on the bottom so that when you're walking on straight ice like you do in Eureka, Montana, you don't die.
So you put on your Yaktrax and you shovel yourself through the snow to get to school. Unless it's negative 10 degrees and then you get a ride. , after you go to school, you are at school from like 8am to 6pm. It's a crazy long school day. And part of that is that during the day, like right after lunch, we would have therapy block.
you would do group therapy, , after lunch for an hour. And then we also had P. E. after school, I believe almost every day. And P. E. really ranged. Like, sometimes it was Zumba, which the male staff would take videos of us doing Zumba. Sometimes it was , swimming in the lake. One time I was in this module where we would just go to the lake and the tech guy would point in a direction and we would swim that way for 30 minutes and then swim back.
It was so much fun. Not. , this was also graded. And so, your school day ended at 6pm because you're in Montana, it is pitch black, and you then walk yourself back to your house with a headlamp on. Because you literally need a flashlight. After that, you kind of wait and then it's basically dinner. After dinner, you are allowed to just hang out, but depending on your level, you would have to check in a certain number of minutes.
So if you're on orientation, every 15 minutes you go find staff and be like, hi, I'm alive. But if you were on action, it was like every 45 minutes. Girls would read, they would hang out. pretty much literally do whatever, but no one has any phones or any technology. So, like, you're basically just, sitting around doing whatever.
And then you would get ready for bed, do meds. Fun med anecdote is one time the tech guy was administering meds and he gave the wrong girl stimulants, so that was really fun. Staff would lose medically necessary medications on a frequent basis. It was quite an interesting experience. , , and there was no nurse handing out the medications.
It was entry level staff that got quote unquote certified on site to do that, , when they were hired. And then you would go to bed, and they would do room checks to make sure you were there. And depending on where you lived, you would have a house parent. I lived in the chalet, which was like this little cabin by horse house, which was one of the houses.
I lived there for a number of months, and we had no house parents. We were just like in a little structure by ourselves. All the time, which was really great and fun. , and definitely not up to code.
So that's kind of what to expect on a daily basis. On the weekend, instead of spending like eight hours at school, you spend eight hours on adventure. Sunday, you were cleaning, and then kind of like hanging out. It was a slower day. But lots of therapy every day, lots of activities physically, yeah, that's kind of the happenings.
I wanted to provide a little more structure on some of these things because a lot of these experiences, especially as a survivor, are difficult to unpack because when you enter the program, if you're, motivated to get through and get out, a really big part that's kind of told to you again and again and again is that you need to accept that.
And if you have not accepted the program, you're not doing the work and you're not ready to get to the next level. And so, a lot of girls, sometimes they would push against this and not accept it and be like, I don't want to be here, I don't need to be here, like, please let me go home. But once they get to the point of accepting, you don't question any of these things.
And so, they're normalized and if you question them, you haven't accepted it and then you lose your privileges. You can't talk to your family, all the things. And so, One thing that UnSilenced, which is a non profit that is working to bring regulation to these programs, what they've done, which is really important, is that they've outlined red flags specific to Troubled Teen programs.
And you won't see these at evidence based ethical programs, but you will see them within Troubled Teen Institute programs. And I think they're really helpful for survivors to see what of your, uh, lived experiences fall into these categories because there's not really a handbook of like, was I in a troubled teenage history program?
Was this traumatic or was this ethical treatment? It's, it's really challenging to navigate. And that was a really hard thing for me once I graduated and went home and started working with a therapist on an outpatient basis was being like, wait, that wasn't totally normal. And I don't really know how I feel about that.
And maybe that wasn't right, even though I thought it was and kind of unpacking that and being like, was that traumatic? Was it not? And allowing yourself to kind of form your own opinions instead of just accepting what was being told. And so I'm going to go through a couple of these.
The first one is the program recommends involuntary admittance. I don't know if recommends is the right term here, but there was a lot of girls that didn't want to be there, but because there was no physical option for you to leave and your custody was signed over, you were there whether you wanted to be or not.
The program uses a contract with terms that ask the parents to sign over their custodial rights or agree to not report child abuse. I can't speak to the language of the document itself because I didn't sign that, but they absolutely do require you sign over 51 percent of custody to enroll in treatment.
And the next one is the program employs mostly uneducated or untrained staff to handle majority of the day to day care of the children. This is absolutely the case. The vast majority of the staff you're interacting with were entry level staff being paid minimum wage. Their qualifications were that they had a high school diploma, sometimes they were just a few years older than you, and they were just looking for a job and a side gig in somewhere where the population was 1, 500 people.
And so even though you're like, oh, I'm at this treatment program, , You are not interacting with clinicians the vast majority of the time, which is how really unethical and unfortunate things happen, , like safety issues, children dying at some of these programs, a lot of abuse and assault, which we'll get into.
The program restricts family communication and parental rights. Chrysalis structured this that when you got to the program, you were allowed to write letters to your parents. They would fax the letters twice a week. And they would print out letters that your parents had emailed Monday through Friday.
So you were able to have outbound communication twice a week. But in the form of written letters, which were read by your therapist and staff. And then once a week, you would have family therapy, which I had a number of therapy sessions where like, I didn't even get the chance to get on the call with my parents because they were talking to the therapist.
, sometimes you would like get to say hi, how's your week going? But mostly it was just therapy and the therapist was there the whole time. And then once you got on trust phase, which for most girls, I would say was on average, three months in, you would earn the privilege to talk to your parents on the landline for five minutes once a week, monitored by staff, and you would gain five minutes every phase from there on. So until you've been there for about a year, you don't earn the privilege of being able to call your parents whenever or having a phone or anything like that.
So extremely restricted and limited communication.
The program denies the child the ability to contact law enforcement or advocates upon request or to report abuse. This is a really interesting thing because any program can say in theory like, oh, if a student comes to us saying that, They're being abused, we're mandated reporters, we'll call the police or let them do that.
But do they do that in practice is a really different story. And so, Chrysalis is unique in that their leadership and, former director, who has now been demoted because of the lawsuit that we'll talk about, they were very publicly and openly advocating against this bill in Montana to have a phone in all houses at these programs.
That is, In the event of child abuse, the child can pick up the phone. Phone does not call out to anything else. You can't dial. It's literally just only able to dial CPS in the event of child abuse. And they really strongly advocated against this, , because apparently kids will say anything to get out of these programs.
so,
Again, a red flag where it's like, is the ability denied if they technically say it's available? But I know during my time there, , there was at least one girl who came forward and said my roommate has molested me. And that was never legally reported, even though all staff members are mandated reporters.
And as we'll talk about in the lawsuit, when over seven girls were abused by a staff member, None of that was reported. They were not allowed to legally report it. And the staff that were legally required because they are mandated reporters never reported that to CPS or the police. So I'd say that red flag applies.
The duration of the internment at the program is ambiguous, creating an indefinite detainment. Absolutely. They'll say 10 to 14 months, but you have absolutely no idea how long you'll be there I remember being like maybe I can get through this by the time i'm done with the fall semester And then it was like, okay for sure by the time i'm done with spring semester I can go home for the summer and then I barely was able to go for the fall the next year They didn't want me to leave my parents were like, all right, this is enough.
We're done like We've, we've done the work. She's ready to go home. The program punishes the child by restricting social interaction, socially ostracizing them and or forcing silence. This was something at Chrysalis where if you had done something that was like a harm to yourself or someone else or basically just done something that they didn't like in a big way.
I don't give an example. You were put on reflection, which meant that you had to be quiet and you were only allowed to talk to staff if you needed to for at least 24 hours Or until your therapist took you off of reflection. So, like, girls had a sexual relationship with each other, and when staff found out, they were both put on reflection.
So I really would not say that's them being a harm to themselves or someone else. And in that case, you really would argue that they need more support and more talking to people, , but reflection is something really commonly used at chrysalis.
The program requires prolonged isolation from society. you would not go home, even for a couple of days, for months. Every single thing that you did was only within the structure and environment of Chrysalis. So even if you're on a hike, you are only speaking to and with girls from Chrysalis and staff.
You don't go to the grocery store. You don't go to the library. You don't go to the local school. You're in the middle of nowhere, Montana. Absolutely, there's that isolation from society element.
The program uses fear, shame, humiliation, and or intimidation as part of their behavioral modification practices. I think the accountability letter is a really good example of this. There was also a lot of sexual shaming for girls who were coming to the program with a history of that or one that occurred throughout the program and a lot of fear about being sent to higher care or having privileges dropped and not being able to see your parents or go home and talk to parents.
The program denies medical care, i. e. refusing to allow children to see a doctor or accusing them of attention seeking. There were so many girls at Chrysalis who had different medical issues throughout their stays there, and they were not given adequate or timely medical care, whether it was, like, inserted IUD, , torn meniscus, , One girl threw up like four times a day for months on end and nothing really happened about that.
One girl was walking around with a urinary catheter on her leg and didn't have regular access to a doctor. , I broke my finger, which is not like the most severe injury ever, but like if I was at home I would have gone to a doctor to get an x ray. , so that definitely was an aspect of chrysalis.
The program uses isolation, seclusion, solitary confinement rooms. We did not use those rooms in particular, but there was at least one girl during my stay there that was sent on a solo, which is a wilderness thing, where you are put in the wilderness by yourself with no one for 24 hours.
One girl did that for the weekend in the horse pasture after she had had sex on a visit at home. , and , that isolation, solitary experience is again, also not something supported by research. The program uses an over structured routine for the children, which allows little to no free time. I kind of walked you through our day.
There was really no time where you were not scheduled or doing something. The program uses attack therapy or group attack therapy on children. This was present in the group therapies that we would do and also the house groups, , which created a really challenging environment and culture to be around.
The program sexually shames the child as part of treatment. This was absolutely something that happened. a large majority of leadership staff were Mormon and had really strong opinions on sexual orientation and sexual behaviors. , one example in particular that I'll give you is that one of the girls was forced to describe a recent sexual experience that she'd had, not only in front of a therapist, a male therapist, but also in front of other peers dads during family week.
So they're in this group with parents and girls, and the girl is forced to sit there and describe that in front of all of these dads and peers and therapists. Not normal.
So we've covered a lot of the red flags and kind of day to day and overall, kind of what to expect. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about educational consultants because this is an interesting part of the picture and then we're going to talk about the recent lawsuit against Chrysalis. So educational consultants are basically these independent parties that families will hire to get a recommendation on what program to send their child to.
It's a really complicated landscape. It's like if you were to find a specialist but instead of looking in your Immediate area for someone covered by insurance. You were looking at every single medical provider in the United States, and that's kind of how this is because a lot of these places don't take insurance.
And so it's like the world is your oyster, but in a bad way. And so what educational consultants will do is they'll visit these programs or they'll research them, they have a better idea of what programs exist out there, and then they will recommend programs to parents. And educational consultants are known to be tied to the parent companies that own these facilities.
They're known to get kickbacks when students enroll in different facilities. Those are really common for kids to be at wilderness programs that are owned by a parent company, for example, Embark, which is what Chrysalis is owned by, and for students to be referred from like wilderness programs owned by Embark to therapeutic boarding schools owned by Embark to kind of keep students in the system.
I would never use an educational consultant for anything. If I was a parent, if I was trying to find a treatment program, I would absolutely not use an educational consultant to try and find a program for my child. , Again, the rule of thumb here is to look for something that is attached to a larger university or medical hospital.
You want to look for something that uses an evidence based treatment. That means things like DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for things like anxiety and OCD,
And they're following really specific treatment guidelines that are backed up in the literature. Any ethical evidence based program is going to be really resistant to removing a teen from their home unless it's absolutely necessary. That's the worst case scenario. Going to a treatment program away from home is like, I've exhausted all my options and so I have to go to residential or I have to be hospitalized.
I just can no longer be at home because I'm a harm to myself or others. And I'm not able to go to school or show up and do these different things because I'm just struggling in such a severe way that it's impairing my life.
And so, the bar to entry at these ethical programs is pretty high, because again, a last resort.
But basically educational consultants, They only work within the Troubled Teen Industry. They're not referring you to reputable programs. There's a much shorter list of programs that are reputable and attached to these larger, either medical systems or universities,
And the barrier to entry is higher. So it's not like any place you call, they'll be like, absolutely, we'll take your child. They'll be like, okay, can you send over a diagnostic information? Can we talk about the behaviors that are coming up? Like, we're not sure if this is a good fit for a City of Troubled Teen Industry program where it's like, sign on the line, yes, we'll take your child.
The other layer to add here, from the perspective of someone who's been in the industry, is just how much smoke and mirrors there are. We would do visits with educational consultants when they would come to Chrysalis, and the way it worked is that the leadership team would tour educational consultants around the campus.
the campus. They would take them to the house after we'd cleaned it in the morning while the students weren't there. They would show them the horses. They would show them the Montana wilderness. They would be like, here is another house from outdoors where girls live.
They would then select three to four girls who were on higher phases within the program, that had fully accepted it, were fully in it, and choose them to speak to the parents and the educational consultant. And if you said anything negative, you would not be put on future lunches with. the educational consultants or the parents.
, so even if the educational consultants or the parents themselves are like, I went to the program, I spoke to the girls, they said they had a good experience, there's a lot riding on them saying that. They're not able to speak freely. You are being shown a version of the program.
And also, if you were going to a reputable program, you wouldn't be able to talk to the girls there because it's a privacy issue. That's another really big thing as well, if they're referring you to parents of past graduates or parents of former students or students themselves.
HIPAA exists. The privacy around medical treatment is, there's a lot of laws making sure that your privacy is absolutely protected. And these programs really do not follow HIPAA very closely, which I'll speak to after I've graduated. , but, If they're able to give you names of students or parents, that is a violation of HIPAA, and also showing that if they're unethical in that respect, they're likely very unethical with regard to treatment and qualifications and how they're running their program.
It's like where there's smoke, there's normally fire.
So, post graduation, kind of building on HIPAA, there's a lot of guidelines around a clinician can speak to a patient, whether they're in public or after they've stopped working together, and it's really strict. Like, if I saw a therapist on the street, if I initiated contact and was like, oh my gosh, hi, it's so good to see you, they could then respond and be like, oh my gosh, it's great to see you.
But if I don't do anything, they are legally required by law to pretend like they don't know me. because they want to protect your privacy. Same thing with initiating contact. If I didn't text a therapist or reach out via email, they're not legally allowed to text or reach out to me because of HIPAA. And this is something that has been broken numerous times by chrysalis staff, whether it's reaching out on social media or sending messages unsolicited.
Especially, I've had at least one therapist do this on multiple occasions. And, again, I think this is a good illustration of if there's smoke, there's fire. If something as little as HIPAA, which is really respected in the medical field, if that's not being honored, then what does that say about the treatment you're getting and the staff they're hiring and the qualifications that they're holding their program to?
So, since I was at Chrysalis from 2018 to 2019,
has been sued and they've been sued for child sexual abuse.
This is public knowledge. This is something that you can find in court records because the lawsuit has been filed. I'm not going to read throughout the whole thing. Because, you guys can go and look that up by yourself.
but
It was a really unique experience to read this lawsuit. A, because so much of it depicts the day to day experience at Chrysalis, and how that environment and the staff created the opportunity for staff members to abuse the children and the chaos that was allowed to take place that made this the perfect opportunity for these children, unfortunately, to be taken advantage of.
Seeing that described from a legal standpoint, of why that's not ethical and why that's not okay was so incredibly validating because so many of these experiences are really ambiguous and objective and you've told yourself mentally that they're okay and you've been told that they're okay and if you don't believe they're okay you won't graduate and you will never leave and so , seeing this written out and seeing staff members named and seeing them describe the day to day and how that was really like a hostile, negative experience and traumatic experience for teens, let alone the negligence that took place from a child sexual abuse perspective was really validating and, interesting to read.
And so I'm going to share a couple of things from here that I think were distilled well and kind of add a layer to this. But, we talked about red flags, we talked about subjective experiences that weren't the most ethical and effective and, the highest standard of care.
And the nail in the coffin here is, a lawsuit against leadership staff and the school itself. addition to the staff member that they had hired and retained on staff that was allowed to, abuse these girls.
so to give you like a TLDR on the lawsuit, basically, a student came forward and said to staff members that she had an inappropriate interaction with a male staff member. She was an underage student. He had sexually had an inappropriate interaction with her.
And rather than firing him at that point, they moved him from horse house to lake house. the girl in this lawsuit was then admitted to chrysalis and no one at any point said that there was even the potential of an unsafe environment or the fact that they had complaints of child sexual abuse by another student and kept the staff member on the team, which by the way, all Mental health providers and the staff members at these schools are mandated reporters.
They hear even a whisper of abuse, they're mandated to report that to CPS. No one reported it, no one said anything, they kept him on staff and they switched him to Lakehouse. This girl is admitted to Chrysalis, she begins her stay.
And after this 14 year old began her stay at Chrysalis, she was abused a number of times by a male staff named Tyler Waitemeyer.
This staff member, was an adventure staff. He was hired in the summer of 2021, and he remained on staff until he went MIA and stopped showing up to work. Potentially fled the country, according to this lawsuit, in spring of 2022, so almost an entire year.
While he was an adventurous staff, he took on a number of roles that are just really common for staff to do because they're low staffed and struggle with employee retention, so he also was a residential staff, he worked as transport, so he drove people around if they had to, like, go to a doctor's appointment or something, and was also a substitute teacher.
Okay. Again, we talk about no academic qualifications. And for context, this staff member was a male in his early 30s.
And, As outlined in the lawsuit, this staff member physically, sexually, psychologically, and or emotionally abused at least five other female students between September 2021 and April 2022. I'm not going to get into the details because I know it can be traumatic for listeners. If you guys want to read the lawsuit, you're welcome to do so, but I'm not going to detail exactly what happened.
But when multiple of these five students reported these interactions to staff,
Nothing happened except for him moving houses. In fact, the house manager, who at the time was Amber Lee, told the student who came forward that they didn't understand how serious the allegations were and that the allegations could ruin the staff member's career. They instead told the girl to talk to the abuser's cousin, who was also hired at the school and later got fired for having a same sex relationship with another student.
And Amberleigh also defended the staff member's conduct on the basis that he was, quote, a good Mormon. There was no investigation done into the actions of the staff member. It was never reported to authorities as they're legally required to do so. And even when a staff member herself raised concerns about what was happening and later left Chrysalis because of all of this craziness and not agreeing with its policies, it was never reported to proper officials and he still was not fired.
initiated a relationship with a second underage girl at Horse House, he was then transferred to Lake House.
And at this point, the girl who is named in this lawsuit and is the one whose parents filed it, they spoke to their educational consultant and Corey Hickman, who originally was the executive director. They confirmed that they had not reported suspected abuse, but they were aware of it.
And Curseless Girls, you will know how, like, incredibly brave and courageous this is, but four other girls went to treatment team to talk about.
their concerns about how staff was handling this abuse and speak to them. And during that meeting, I'm reading from the lawsuit, the students recounted in detail how and when Chrysler School was aware of his abuse and how staff ignored, enabled, and perpetrated the abuse.
Just before that treatment team meeting, this is when he disappears and goes MIA. He tells the number of girls that He, like, wants to continue to have a relationship with them, and according to the lawsuit, he has maybe fled the country. At this point, the girl then tells her parents, the mom calls Corey when she learns that this has happened, and Corey says to the mom, you cannot believe these girls, they will even lie about their parents and teachers.
After this mom had heard that her child had been abused, and this is Cori's response, she speaks to the therapist, and the therapist recommends that she should leave program immediately. So her mom comes and pulls her from the program.
The student has spoken to three trusted teachers at Chrysalis, and they broke her trust and told students in class about the abuse that had taken place and what had happened between the girl and the staff member, and that teacher also accused the girls of lying and said that the staff member who had abused them was quote, a good man.
And so, there's a number of different claims that are made in the lawsuit, but essentially, the negligence of Chrysalis and their employees placed the student at an increased risk of harm, and it was a substantial factor in causing or approximately causing the abuse, and so they describe that as PTSD, sexual abuse, sexual assault, psychological manipulation, harassment, physical assault, past and future psychological pain and suffering, past and future anxiety and fear, past and future emotional distress, past and future loss of enjoyment in one's life and loss of pleasures, past and future embarrassment and humiliation.
past and future mental anguish, emotional trauma, anxiety and depression, future loss of earning capacity, past and future psychiatric care and psychological expenses, incidental and other expenses, and all past and future non economic damages recoverable under Montana law.
And so, essentially,
the claims for relief are that Chrysalis failed to provide a therapeutic environment consistent with how they represented it. They failed to provide professional services in conformance with the standards of care expected from mental health professionals. They failed to provide a learning and therapeutic environment free from abuse, harassment, and intimidation.
They failed to support suspected child abuse to authorities. They negligently and carelessly failed to implement adequate safeguards to ensure the safety of students. They didn't properly supervise extracurricular activities. They hired and retained unqualified personnel. They failed to enforce adequate policies and procedures regarding relationships between children at Chrysler School and their employees.
They failed to provide an environment safe from sexual assault and harassment,
and they failed to report the abuse when they were told, which, again, is required by law.
The last part from the lawsuit I'm going to read is titled, The Culture of Abuse at Chrysalis School, which begins with stating that this student was not the first or only student at Chrysalis School who was abused.
And within this section, it talks about a staff member who testified in the lawsuit and is since left to what she described as the toxic environment of culture and silence and abuse at Chrysalis after she reported concerns about witnessing the staff's inappropriate physical contact with another student.
During her employment at Chrysalis, it became painfully aware to her that Chrysalis and its employees lacked proper training and protocol to run and operate Chrysalis or to provide a safe environment for students. According to the staff member, the environment at Chrysalis is more akin to a juvenile detention facility in a therapeutic cave in.
also detail some of the different day to day practices at Chrysalis, which kind of allowed for this culture and these things to take place. And I think a lot of former chrysalis students can relate to, and at least I experienced within my year there, which was that chrysalis, in addition to the abuse perpetrated by the staff member, the student was subjected to other abusive, harassing, and oppressive conduct at chrysalis school, including bullying because of her sexual identity.
Chrysalis tolerated open sexual conduct, including intercourse between students on campus. In public, even allowing two students to have sexual intercourse openly on a bus. This happened on a plane when I was there, and that was three years before this. Crystal's school also tolerated theft of students belongings on campus, including their underwear and other clothing.
There was also theft that happened multiple times, and we were strip searched because of it, which caused one of the staff members to be fired when I was there. Additionally, during the student's time there, there were several instances where the student would have to sleep on the sofa due to inappropriate roommate conduct and lack of enforcement of and shared sleeping spaces. After the student told this to her parents, they had a meeting with Chrysalis school staff and brought up the open sexual conduct, theft, lack of students access to exercise and healthy food and the attendees. of that meeting were the educational consultant therapist Kristen Fitzsimmons, who's the academic director of Chrysalis, and after that they did not change any policies, provide any further training, or otherwise address those concerns, which I think is really quite synonymous with a lot of survivors experiences.
So, I know, very legal heavy, lots of information there, but
I know for me to hear that and see that in writing and have it explained in such an objective, fact based way, it took away a lot of the ambiguity of a lot of these experiences that I'd had that I didn't really know how to articulate and then a lot of the things that are hard to remember because you normalize so much and forget so much within the span of an entire year.
So that's the lawsuit. I will keep you guys posted on kind of what happens next and where that goes. , but I did want to share that because again, we go back to where there's smoke, there's usually fire. And I think the lawsuit is a really great example of that, that even years prior, a lot of the things that were being allowed to happen and the conduct that was tolerated and the policies in place really created an environment that allowed this to happen.
So I wanted to wrap this up by giving parents a couple of other options. I know I've said it like 67 times during this, but I really recommend looking for a program that is attached to either a hospital, a large hospital, or a university rather than an independent treatment center that is only overseeing themselves because they're held to a higher standard of care there's a lot more oversight from a government and state and just internal perspective.
Definitely look for a psychologist or a PsyD if possible. I have had great experiences in the past with different social workers and master's level therapists, but making sure they at least have some psychologists and PsyDs on staff and psychiatrists is really important as well. I had a phenomenal experience at 3 East McLean Hospital.
If you're struggling with suicidal ideation, self harm, depression, those types of things, that is really the best of the best when it comes to an intensive DBT program. And, when in doubt, look for the red flags that we talked about in this episode, and so much information about the Trouble Teen industry, other survivors, government inspections of chrysalis, like literally anything and everything you could want to look for after kind of dipping your toe in the Trouble Teen world, you can find it on unsilenced.
org. Again, they're a non profit that's working to bring more regulation to this industry, and you should definitely check out their website for those red flags, what you can do to help, what. more oversight looks like, what steps are being taken to get to that point, and resources for survivors. The last thing that I wanted to mention was what was helpful for me kind of healing from and processing waking up to this experience.
I was really lucky in that my chrysalis experience was sandwiched by two really ethical and effective treatment experiences. I went to McLean before Chrysalis and I had a really great foundation of skills and a relationship with my parents and resources. And then after I left Chrysalis, I got the opportunity to work with a really amazing dialectical behavioral therapy psychologist on an outpatient basis.
And she's really been really helpful in helping me process through these things and, and bounce things off of her and be like, I don't know what my emotions are around this. I don't know if this was normal. It took me a really long time to be like, That wasn't normal, and no, a child hasn't died at this program, and no, there's not an active lawsuit, and the police haven't been called, but I don't think this was ethical, and I don't think this was right, and this was really traumatic.
It took me a really long time to, like, say that, and accept that, and be like, I, I can say that, even though, again, kids haven't died at this program, where there are so many programs in the troubled teen industry that are a lot worse, so. kind of taking your time to process through these things and form your own opinions is really important and having a clinician that you really respect and,
That has that understanding of what is ethical and unethical treatment. I, I know of some people that are still working with their therapist from Troubled Teen Programs and I can't even imagine navigating the trauma of treatment with the treatment provider that was there when you were going through that.
So that's something that I would really recommend. I've also found it really helpful to start a running list of all the memories and things that I think of, where I'm like, that's not right, or that was just crazy, or how was that allowed to happen? That was absolute chaos and insanity. And it can be like random things, like the tech guy giving the wrong person stimulants, or when a girl brought an unclean animal bone into the house just for fun, Or when I got put on an English muffin ban because I asked a staff and they said no, so I asked a different staff if I could have a snack and they said yes, and then I had apparently manipulated people, so no English muffins for a week. Random things like that. It helps you remember those experiences and have that categorical list of like, These are not things that anyone should have to go through when they're just trying to get mental health treatment and support.
And these are things that I don't feel right about and I don't think that these should have happened to me. , and not having just to rely on your memory because it's a really confusing experience to navigate, especially when you fully bought into this experience and been so invested, , and just, you know, put your head to the ground and kept chugging and kept going until you got that graduation.
I would also say it takes time. Definitely not putting too much pressure on yourself to process through something or unpack it and just knowing that it's really, really painful. There's been a lot of tears and a lot of anger and a lot of sadness and just not understanding why these people still have this program open or why they think what they're doing is okay or how they even can
know,
sleep at night knowing that there's all these girls coming back and saying, this was traumatic. This isn't okay. How do you do this? and they're still enrolling girls in these programs. And so there's a lot of really confusing and overwhelming emotions. And I think focusing on your own experience and being like.
My experience, I didn't feel that this was ethical or okay. A lot of things happened that weren't right and that I shouldn't have been subjected to. And if other girls had positive experiences at the program, I'm so glad for them. I wish that everyone had that experience and A lot of girls have had really negative and traumatic experiences, and for that reason, we need more regulation and more rules and more oversight so that there are more girls that have positive experiences in mental health treatment.
give it time. Give yourself a lot of grace. Allow yourself to feel all the things. The list has been one of the most helpful things, and also talking to other survivors, especially in the beginning. I got on the phone with Meg Applegate, , who went to Chrysalis, like, 20 years ago. She came out with her memoir,
called Becoming Unsilent, so I'll put that in the show notes, and she talks about her time at Chrysalis when it was under different, , leadership, but a lot of the things carried through and were very similar, and I remember getting on the phone with her and being like, no, it's pretty much the exact same, and these were all the crazy things that happened, and yes, they still do this, and yes, I absolutely remember , this experience and adventure or on the international trips or whatever it was, speaking to a survivor and just being able to go through those things, be like, yes, oh my god, I forgot that.
That was so crazy. Can you even imagine that? And if any of you guys want to reach out or talk about anything after this, definitely let me know. I'm always here. but finding a survivor to talk things through and process With has been really huge and i'm really grateful to the girls that i've been able to lean on and call at random times And be like, here's the update or this is what happened or I just remembered this or this is so crazy and so Yeah, i'd say speak to someone who gets it.
It's really really hard to explain to someone who wasn't in the program You can absolutely lean on them for support and they can validate and be like that's crazy. That's not okay but But being able to speak to someone that is also waking up and healing from this experience is really, really helpful if that's possible.
And then, another thing as well, if you're struggling to communicate this to your parents, which I had a really challenging time with as well, because your parents aren't in this program. on the day to day like you are. They didn't have insight into what your day to day experience was. They were given like little specks of information and probably not told all the information.
They were only told what they want to hear. And I really do think that parents are victims of these programs as well. They were lied to, they were forced to sign over custody, and they were isolated from their child And not able to freely talk about what was happening at these programs and so they were also taking advantage of just like the kids were and so I think it's a healing process for them as well to be like, Oh my gosh, It's not their fault because they didn't know better.
They were doing the best they could. And all around, it was a negative experience. So give them time. Give them grace. The lawsuit coming out was something very concrete to be like, this is not okay. And these people that talk to you that you've trusted, here's them being quoted saying absolutely horrible things and covering up abuse.
, and, , In the direction that the Troubled Teen Industry is going, we're going to be hearing a lot more about these lawsuits and a lot more about these regulations and a lot more of these programs getting shut down, and so that's incredibly validating and healing and also some great objective evidence to bring to the table in addition to those subjective stories, if you feel comfortable sharing those, but it takes time and I'm still navigating all the things and going through all the process and going through all the healing when it comes to my time at Chrysalis.
But this has been a whirlwind of a very long episode, and if you made it to the end, thank you for listening. I'm sorry for my rambling, but I wanted to try and give as much information as possible. Again, if you guys want resources for survivors or information for parents, educational information, all the things, you can go to unsilenced. org. That will be in the show notes. Thank you guys for listening, and I hope this was helpful, or even just an educational experience, and I'm really I'm proud to have been able to share it with you.
And I've mentioned this in other episodes, but I was also able to share my Chrysalis experience in the New York Times. Maya Salovitz featured me in one of her op eds, so I'll put that in the show notes, which was really just a very full circle. proud, incredible moment to be able to speak up about that on a larger platform.
So that'll be in the show notes. Definitely let me know if you guys have any follow up questions or you want a part two or even just like a TikTok series answering questions or any thoughts. Tell me all the things. I'm always here and yeah, I'm gonna wrap this up because I've officially been talking about this for two and a half hours today and my throat hurts.
from talking so much. So, I hope you guys have a great rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon.
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