Investigating the Troubled Teen Industry: The Shocking Toll of Abuse in Residential Treatment CentersInvestigating the Troubled Teen Industry: Behind the Scenes

September 5, 2024

By Courtney Wise

Parents and guardians, this is not the kind of place you want to entrust your children to. Far from the kind of professional treatment you would receive at a reputable hospital's psychiatric residential treatment center, isolated and poorly staffed troubled teen centers are more like youth prisons, or worse.

But first we’d like to share another public response from a reader to our article on troubled teens. Yesterday, we were honored to discover that Paris Hilton, herself a survivor of the troubled teen industry who is leading the movement for change, thanked us on her Twitter account for our exposé (see below). “Loved this read,” Hilton wrote. “Thanks for the investigation @mindsitenews…so grateful for the people who shine a light on our work and the movement.”

In this edition, we'll also talk about an experimental cancer drug that shows promise for discovering a treatment for Alzheimer's disease in humans, and much more.

Let's start with the story of how MindSite News editors, two longtime journalists, first discovered the troubled teen industry:

How My Brother Almost Ended Up in a Teen Trouble Center Run by a Sex Offender

MindSite News editor Diana Hembree became interested in this industry for troubled teens when her brother got in trouble decades ago for drinking Jack Daniels in high school and being chased by the principal. The potential consequence—a stint in a remote reeducation camp in northern Georgia—was far more dangerous than anyone expected. But first, a detour to Mississippi:

“A few years ago, as part of a national investigation into corporal punishment in schools for Parenting magazine, then part of Time Inc., Rob Waters and I investigated the founder of a Christian school and residential treatment center for troubled teens in Mississippi who was notorious for beatings and other cruelties. A prominent local attorney said he had shut down that school and others in what he called his “crazy preacher case” on kidnapping charges. But like so many other abusive religious treatment centers, he said, this one kept reappearing under new names. I’ll never forget what the center’s reverend said when asked about the beatings at his facility for troubled teens. He told us that yes, he did have to beat up the kids, adding seriously, “I dip the switches in salt water first, so it hurts more.”

“The pastor’s words brought back an old memory: My brother Bill, who was a real troublemaker in high school, almost ended up in a center for troubled teens in northwest Georgia himself. My mom and dad drove us to a place called the Anneewakee Treatment Center in Douglasville, which was supposed to be a wilderness therapy camp. I thought we’d see boys hiking or laughing or maybe playing guitar, but all we could see was a few dingy shacks and dirt, and a quiet teenager digging holes with a shovel. Bill, our parents, and I listened as the founder, Lou Poetter, an unpleasant-looking man who kept eyeing my brother, talked at length about how the center would “set this boy straight” and “make a real man out of him.”

“I remember feeling a chill as he spoke, and about to beg my parents not to send Bill there. But when Poetter finished his tour and asked when my brother would arrive, my father replied curtly, ‘He’s not coming here.’ He later told me that he and my mother had felt a strong sense of foreboding about the man and the place, as had my brother, who told me he had never been so relieved as to see the desolate encampment disappear into the distance as we drove away.

Fast forward to today: I recently came across a mention of the Anneewakee treatment center on law.com: It turns out that 110 former young “patients” have sued the facility for physical and sexual abuse, child labor, and educational deprivation that occurred at the facility from its inception through the 1980s. Lou Poetter, the man we spoke to at Anneewakee and whom the legal article called “one of Georgia’s most notorious sex offenders,” pleaded guilty to 18 counts of sodomy against his prostitutes and died at home a few years after serving a 20-year prison sentence.

This partly explains my deep interest in wilderness therapy camps, a topic my friend and colleague Paige Bierma also worked with me on for a harrowing article called “Death Trip” about a wilderness camp in Utah for the now-defunct Vibe magazine. She later revisited the story in a short update for another outlet.

So it was only natural for Rob and I to want to cover the troubled teen industry and explore an alarming new trend in the sector, along with a recent Senate report that calls psychiatric residential treatment centers “taxpayer-funded child abuse,” characterized by horrific physical and sexual assault, emotional abuse, forced restraint, isolation, and even death. In our article “Troubled Teen Industry Is ‘Taxpayer-Funded Child Abuse,’ Senate Report and Paris Hilton Say. Where Are the Regulators?” reporter Art Levine discusses the alarming misuse of federal funds and the catastrophic failure of regulation.

We were also pleased to be able to cover a movement led by survivors of the troubled teen porn industry, led by celebrity model and businesswoman Paris Hilton, who have been calling for reform and the closure of scandal-plagued teen residential centers. If you missed Art Levine’s article on the survivor movement, you can read it here.

—Diana Hembree

Behind the Story with Art Levine

Art Levine is the author of Mental Health Inc., a 2017 Newsweek article about the appalling conditions at a sadistic boot camp for troubled kids in Alabama (above), and a contributing editor at Washington Monthly. He wrote the two-part series on the troubled teen industry for MindSite News and plans to continue covering the industry. As Levine puts it, “Since I began covering mental health issues in the early 2000s, I’ve found that there is perhaps no institution mired in scandal, death, abuse, and sexual assault that is as impervious to reform as the troubled teen industry.”

Read his “Behind the Story” piece for MindSite News here, which honors Paris Hilton and other courageous survivors for alerting the public to the abuses that take place behind closed doors in the troubled teen sector. “Without the voices, information and first-hand evidence of survivors,” he says, “I would not be able to investigate the ongoing scandals that make up much of the reporting I have done for MindSite News on this issue.”

More news on the troubled teen industry

Another day has passed, another abuse in a residential center is making headlines. Here are some recent stories:

— HuffPost's September 3 article “Abuse Is Common at Utah Facility for 'Troubled Teens': Report.” The Elevations residential treatment center in Syracuse, Utah, allegedly abused its young patients instead of providing them with treatment.

— How the Troubled Teen Industry Preys on the 1%.” A previous Town and Country article fails to mention that Medicaid funds are used to funnel thousands of at-risk children, including foster children, into residential “treatment” centers where abuse is common. However, its insight into how wealthy families are lured into these arrangements is quite pertinent.