The Program starts small and intimate, with director Katherine Kubler sharing the story of how she got into a school that turned out to be, in everything but name, a prison. In Ivy Ridge, Kubler and her peers were physically assaulted and subjected to cult-like practices, with most of the kids leaving the institution worse off than better. But soon the diaristic approach gives way to a complex and well-researched investigation of what is known as the “troubled teen industry.” As it turns out, there are plenty of other institutions like Ivy Ridge that scam desperate parents into spending thousands of dollars to incarcerate their kids and hand them over to faux educators. There are times when Kubler’s anger (understandably) gets the better of her and the storytelling, but ultimately, this is a well-made and important account of an overlooked atrocity.
Years after being sent to a disciplinary school, a woman still haunted by her experiences exposes the corruption and abuse of the troubled teen industry.
Katherine Kubler and her peers share their experiences at the Ivy Ridge Academy, a harsh correctional facility masked as a troubled teen school. But the more they dig into their past, the more they realize how outsized, sophisticated, and harmful the scheme actually is.
Kubler talks to psychologists, cult experts, lawyers, and even lawmakers to strengthen her case against this unseen and ongoing form of child abuse, but it’s her conversations with parents, including her own, that truly stand out. It’s easy to get mad at them for enrolling the kids in the first place, but as the documentary points out, they are victims too. Subject to lies and deceit, and later on overwhelmed with guilt, it’s hard not to feel for them too.
I didn’t know much about teen disciplinary facilities, nor did I feel like I should, until watching this essential account about the subject.
