Adopted and Locked Away: Kids promised 'forever homes' instead confined in for-profit institutions [View all]

*Note: This is a horror story. Do not read all the way through unless you have a strong stomach OR are prepared to raise hell.

She was 13 years old and scared of the dark when she arrived at a residential treatment center that had promised her adoptive parents it would help her heal — from the pain of not knowing who her mother was or why she’d given her away.

Kate plugged in a night light in the dorm room. She had needed one since she was sexually assaulted at another facility, she said.

Her roommate turned it off. She panicked. She ran and then curled into a ball, heaving, weeping. Three employees followed her — to comfort her, Kate thought.

Instead, they threw her face first into the carpet, she said, yelling that she was “OIC” — “out of instructional control.” For what seemed like an hour, they held her down, Kate said, one on each arm, the third holding her legs.

Kate would be institutionalized for most of her adolescence — until she could sign herself out as an adult. The Utah facility was her third stop in a sprawling network of loosely regulated, for-profit residential treatment centers, wilderness programs and boarding schools that’s become known as the “troubled teen industry.”

https://apnews.com/article/adopted-children-boarding-schools-treatment-investigation-e5d8dab2e4db1f2f4c5abbfaf0d97c52

It gets a whole lot worse. I was ready to cry by the time I reached the end. This "troubled teen industry" needs to be ended once and for all. I thank Paris Hilton for the Her work on it, but more needs to be done NOW.