A state inspection report offers new details on the hours leading up to a 12-year-old’s death at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents.
Staff at a North Carolina wilderness therapy camp failed to check that a 12-year-old boy was breathing during his first night at the facility, a state report released Tuesday found.
The boy, who has been identified in law enforcement records only by his initials, CJH, was found unresponsive around 7:45 a.m. on Feb. 3 at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents in the western part of the state.
In case anyone wasn’t aware, the ‘trouble’ many of these ‘troubled adolescents’ get themselves into is having a boyfriend or girlfriend that’s the same gender they are. Or, worse, saying their gender is not the one assigned to them at birth!
Often it’s those, and they’re heartbreaking. Sometimes it’s “just” het-cis relationships the parents don’t like. Sometimes it’s “Drinking While Evangelical” or other garden variety youthful rebellion. Sometimes it’s depression. Sometimes it’s just literally wicked stepparents. The overriding connection is always that they don’t need to be there and even if they have issues (and to be clear being LGBTQ+ is not a behavioral problem), the so-called solution will be much worse than the problem.
https://elan.school/rude-awakening/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeFWCzLNCmY
https://screenrant.com/the-program-netflix-documentary-details-events-missing/ (get your adblockers up for Screen Rant)
Folks, read that link there to elan.school. It’s heart wrenching.
No thanks ive already watched a documentary on it and dont feel like bouncing between impotent bezerk furry and helplessness.
elan.school is a fucking trip.
I read up to when he finally got released back when that was current, and havent caught up since
If you read the article, depression, ADHD, and autism are also reasons children get sent there for some reason.
I’ve been told countless times how my depression is akshually a demonic possession
“Nuh uh, God gave it to me so there!”
Complete with face scrunch and tongue stick-out bonus points awarded for best mocking mleeeh noise
So make a list of those people and never put any trust in them. They are people you can be polite to and not invest any time in.
or they didn’t sit there and quietly accept abuse
or tried to run away and got caught (and/or were found out before they even had a chance)
Or their parents don’t like their friend group (not uncommon amongst the more hardline religious families)
There’s probably plenty more I’ve forgotten since leaving reddit. The whole system is fucked and the “camps” shouldn’t be legal.
The OTHER fun one is what I recall being referred to as “gooning”, where the parents arrange for the kid to be picked up in the middle of the night, put in a vehicle, and driven to the camp. SOMEHOW that is legal and not human trafficking.
What the actual fuck? There is so much to unpack from this article. I googled a bivy; it’s basically an enclosed sleeping bag. Before bivys, they would put a tarp over the zipped-up sleeping bag. Why? What’s the point in enclosing a child on their first night? Maybe to break their spirit? Show them you mean business? I can’t think of anything positive that could come from doing that to them.
And the “counselors”… they should be equally held liable. They heard things they were unsure of, but never thought to go check them out? That’s negligence.
I’m pissed. Beyond pissed. Everyone in that organization needs to go to jail. I pray that NC does the right thing and closes this torture factory down.
Every “camp for troubled youth” I’ve ever heard of turned out to be a fucking concentration camp for kids full of physical, mental, and sexual torture and religious indoctrination. I wonder if this one also kidnaps kids in the middle of the night.
The entire idea should be made illegal.
Caroline Svarre, whose parents paid to have her transported by two strangers in the middle of the night to Trails Carolina when she was 14, said she was “in shock” her first day.
Yup, also one that does the middle of the night kidnaps for maximum trauma infliction.
Shockingly, the treatment guidelines for panic disorder also don’t inlude zipping people into small bags all night:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478076/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354045/
They should be shut down permanently, and those responsible for these policies held criminally liable.
Hey! Mine didn’t sexually torture me.
That part of the state is known for deep religion. Think venomous snakes and arsenic Sundays.
So I’ve worked at out door facilities (none that did this kind of work) and have had colleagues that worked these kinds of camps.
Basically, you get thrown a minimum of supplies and told figure it out. Not usually a tent but a tarp you are expected to construct into a tent. I knew of one outfit in Utah where kids would get sent in the middle of the winter. I consider it abuse, but if their parents sign the waivers… keep in mind that children are a form of property (for most intents and purposes).
I refused to ever work those kinds of camps and threw shade at my friends who did.
Yes, people like this consider their children to be chattel. It’s why you should ignore anything that someone who uses the words “parental rights” says.
Shade - now that’s praxis!
Founded in 2008, Trails Carolina is a for-profit wilderness camp that treats children with diagnoses such as autism, ADHD, bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, as well as those struggling with depression or unruly behavior.
Excuse me? You are sending your children with MEDICAL CONDITIONS to be scared straight by a FOR PROFIT company? How is giving them over to abusers going to help them?
Preying on ignorance is one of the largest activities in american society
Because they see the medical condition as a problem, and depending on the parents may not even acknowledge that it is a medical condition. So many of these types of parents see their kid as a burden that will lower their social standing by being weird.
Man, I want to run one of these “troubled teen facilities” the Christians send their kids to to scare them straight or whatever, and then give “how to pretend to fit in until you’re 18 and can escape” lessons along with “where to go, who to contact, how to support yourself once you have escaped” lessons. From the outside it looks like a good old fashioned Christian brainwashing center, we can even show you video of kids studying the bible, because they do, to learn how to fake being devout. But we’re actually about deprogramming and escaping.
Or, I wonder if passing this idea around and making it into an urban legend that some of them are like that would be enough to take the wind out of at least some of their sails.
I was sent to one of these with a hyper religious flavor
2.5 years.
Please tell me you have never spoken with your parents since.
Kind of. I broke contact in 2020. Now I’m about 6 months into transition and got a bit of hair work done, so I actually sent them one message today for the first time. No text.
Wow, that was a very brave thing. I don’t know you but am proud of you for that. I am glad that you are getting to be your real self. Best of luck, and don’t put up with bullshit.
Your hair looks awesome btw!! I hope you are living your best life <3
Ya know you look good, but your hair reminds me of one of my cousins circa 2004 and all I got to say is dont play with lighter fluid near a bonfire if ya want to keep said hair.
I do want to keep it XD ty for the advice.
You look amazing!
Me as well. Still got the physical scars from it. But hey the rest of my life whenever someone talks about how great Christianity is or Jesus I get to smirk at their innocence. So not s total lost.
Zip tied (probably against his will) in one of these… If he was even slightly claustrophobic it would be panic inducing.
The owners of this place need to be put against the wall.
What in the actual fuck?
I’m going to leave this here (it’s worth reading):
Elan School illuminated a lot for me about the troubled teen industry.
Elan.school is the web series of someone’s life account of the industry.
Netflix just greenlit a Mae Martin series that sounds like it’s about the same thing.
