#296 Meg Appelgate - Why Parents Are Being Lied To About Teen “Treatment”

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I'm happy you're here. This is, uh, man, these are so heavy. Yeah. We've really been diving into the kid stuff. Actually, we've been diving into it for a couple years. Yeah. You know, it started with one of my best friends, Ryan Montgomery, and it's just spiraled into. There's a lot of evil shit going on. I know. I feel like evilness is, just, like, follows the kids. And anywhere there's kids, you're gonna find people who don't have the best of intentions, and they just flock to them. Man, you know, it's. I finally have come to that conclusion, and everybody always talks about it. You know, that they're gonna be where the kids are, but it doesn't register. And then, you know, when I interviewed Elizabeth Phillips, who connected us, that, I don't know, for some reason, that interview is what made it click. Mm-hmm. And I just realized, you know, hey, we. Like, that whole thing was about Camp Canicook. Mm-hmm. You know, the biggest. Yep. Supposedly the biggest Christian camp in the world. And I was just thinking about it, and I was like, "Man, this is. I mean, it's great. We're. Hopefully nobody ever goes there again." Right. But they didn't get all the pedophiles. They don't have a record. They're normal people in society with jobs, and you just. For whatever reason, that interview made me realize, like, holy shit, like, these people are everywhere. They're. Nothing's gonna show up on a background check. They appear to be normal, hardworking, caring people. Yeah. And they insert themselves wherever there's gonna be kids, whether it's a P.E. coach or a. Whether it's a P.E. coach, a cheerleading coach, a swim coach, a. Yep. Church camp, outdoors camp, Boy Scouts, girls. It doesn't matter. And I'm not saying Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts camps or whatever. I'm just saying wherever there's kids, there is a very, very high possibility there's gonna be pedophiles. Yeah. I mean, institutions forever have hidden predators. You know, that's just. Whatever. That's happened. If you add kids, institutions that have, you know, are tailored to helping kids, it's even more. And then, unfortunately, if you add religion into that institution, it makes it even more likely that they are using that as a cover-up. And we see that within the troubled teen industry, too. A lot of times, if, you know, if someone tells me I'm a survivor of, insert program name, and that program is a religious program, almost always the abuse tends to be more severe. And it's also harder to hold them accountable. Because a lot of times, there are 501 s and nonprofits, and they have exemptions from licensing, and, you know, they have more leniency from the behaviors and the practices that they're allowed to utilize in their programs. Man. Yeah. Well, I wonder if I'm gonna get sued for this one. I keep getting all these damn ceases. I saw that. I saw that, right, like, a couple days. Which one? I know. Well, yeah. I saw the Canada Cook camps, and you came on, like. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a day after, two days after it aired. Yeah. And you were like, "Yeah, I just got this from them." And I was. Got another one. Did you really? Got another one from them. I haven't even responded to it yet. I haven't. Actually, I didn't even read it. I just sent it right to the attorney. I'm like. Now, it's like the running joke here. Now, when a FedEx envelope shows up, we're all taking bets on whether it's a lawsuit or not. It's always a lawsuit. You know, I. You know, I. Yeah. To be honest, I was nervous coming on the show, but then I saw your response to that lawsuit, and I immediately was like, "I feel okay now." Right on. I feel safe. Good. Right? Because it takes someone strong to stand up to these people. Like, they can be scary. They can throw some heavy words and documents your way and try to scare you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And I can't tell you how often this happens. They victim blame and try to silence survivors, silence people who give the survivors a platform. It's sick. It's crazy. I know. It's like. Not. Just from. Even if you take the morales out of it, you know, the morals and how fucked up it is, it's like. Dude, this isn't a good look for you. No. That's what I don't understand. Like, from a PR standpoint, it's horrible. You're coming after people who are trying to protect. Kids. Right. And you're protecting pedophiles. Right. Like, what? I. How do you think this is gonna. If you take everything I have and you sue the shit out of me and I'm all done, you're still protecting pedophiles. It's a bad look. I know. I know. It really is. But. It really is. It's. No. It's bad. Even. I see it happen to survivors, too, where they'll talk about their story and all of a sudden, they'll have a cease and desist. And it's just like. It's their experiences. It's insane. Like, it looks so horrible. Just say nothing. I mean, you look really bad by trying to do this to a survivor. Well, you know, I couldn't. I gotta give my attorney, Tim Parlatore, credit. I couldn't do it without him. He's a fucking bulldog. I love that. And he's. He's like my. One of my guardian angels. It's just. When I'm doing the right thing, he's always there to back me up and go after these fuckers with me. That's good. Yeah. You need a bulldog when you're going against these people. I know. Deeply. He enjoys it. Deeply connected. Every time I send him one, he's like, "Oh, this is gonna be fun." I love it. So. Thank you, Tim. But. Well, Meg, let me give you a introduction here. Meg Applegate, founder and CEO of Unsilenced, a nonprofit launched in January 2022 to serve past, present, and future victims of institutional child abuse. A survivor of the troubled teen industry, abducted from your bed at age 15, and held in abusive facilities for three and a half years. Author of "The 2020 Flashback." This is a 2004 memoir, "Becoming Unsilenced: Surviving and Fighting the Troubled Teen Industry." A leading advocate who testified as an expert in the Montana State Senate in 2023, helping pass HB 218 to increase oversight and regulations over TTI programs. What are TTI programs? Troubled teen industry programs. Troubled teen industry. You accompanied Paris Hilton and her team to Washington, D.C. in 2022 to push law of makers for federal regulation of these unregulated facilities. Wife to Ben and mother of four children. And like I said, Elizabeth Phyllis made the introduction here. So thank you, Elizabeth. She's. Yes. She's amazing. Another amazing human being. Yeah, she is. That's crushing these people. And I look. She's getting all the same letters I'm getting for that episode. Is she really? Yeah. So it's good to be. She's probably used to it after the. I know. She's. It's good to be in battle with Elizabeth. Another letter from them. But. But. Well, before we get into the heavy stuff, everybody gets a gift here. So. Ooh. The Jones League gummy bears. Oh, yum. You're gonna love them. What made. Are these from here? What are they? They're from Michigan. They're made in the USA. No way. It's just candy. All the bad shit. I mean. Sugar, red dye. But they fucking taste amazing. So they're good. That's what you're saying. They're good. That's what I'm saying. My kids will fight over these. Right on. Thank you so much. I'll give you three more bags so they're not fighting. Thank you so much. All right. I am going to. I've got a three-parter. First of all, my book. Oh, right on. And signed, obviously. Perfect. Thank you. Of course. And then I wanted to bring a little bit of where I am and then where I've come from. Right? So I'm in Orange County, California. California is known for See's candy. And so I had to bring some See's candy. Good. I love candy. Yeah. No. It is so good. Should I open it? No. No. No. No. No. No. Should I open this? If you want to. If you would like some deliciousness, you can go ahead. It's amazing. Let's do it on the break. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then this is. I was doing some research and I noticed you were born and I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. I was adopted, so I only lived there for 10 days. But we have a family farm that's been in our generation for. In our family for like two generations. My grandpa and my grandma basically had my mom and two uncles on the farm. All the time. And one of their favorite things to do was to go look for arrowheads and they would go on the farm and go through the freshly tilled dirt and find thousands and thousands, right? And so one of the things about the TTI or the troubled teen industry that most people don't know is they started back in the 1800s as Native American boarding schools where where they would steal kids from their families, try to assimilate them into American culture, and strip them of their culture completely. And that's really where the behavior modification, taking kids from their families, putting them in a different place, in an institution, started from. So it's kind of an enmeshment of where I come from and kind of giving, you know, honor to the troubled teen industry as well. So this is one of the Arrowheads that was found. It could be 1,000, 2,000 years old. And it was probably found in the 1940s, late 1940s, early 1950s. And it's a legit, legit Arrowhead. - Very cool. - Yeah. - And this is from Missouri? - This is from Stover, Missouri, which is only about an hour and a half away from where you grew up. - Right on, man. Thank you. What else do you know about me? - That's pretty much it. Only what Wikipedia was able to give me. - Oh God. - Wikipedia. - Right. - Thank you. - Of course. - That's awesome. - Thank you so much for having me. - My pleasure. - So one more thing to crank out here. I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account. And they're the reason that I get to sit here with you today. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. And this is from actually a previous guest, Dr. Dan Schneider. What is the single most important change, legal or cultural, that would actually prevent teenagers from experiencing what you went through in the troubled teen industry? - A re-understanding of adolescence and a moving away from pathologizing adolescent behaviors from being bad into a place of understanding and figuring out how parents can get the support they need to be able to help that child versus looking at teenage behaviors as something we need to fix, right? I think that a lot of the things that end these kids up in facilities in the first place is not understanding that if a kid is drinking, doing drugs, skipping school, getting expelled, those kinds of things, it's not just the behavior. What is the behavior covering up? Or did they have some kind of childhood trauma? And trying to figure out where it's coming from, but also re-understanding that those kinds of things are so normal. That is a very normal thing to, to be able to do, right? To, to do in adolescence. And the research shows that actually doing nothing and letting that phase out, most kids stop smoking pot by the time they get into the workforce, because it just makes sense. If you want to make money, you got to have a job. And if you want to have a job, you got to stop doing that stuff. So really re-understanding which adolescent behaviors are truly problematic, which ones truly need a inpatient stay, and which can be treated in community-based, and how parents can get help behind the scenes to learn how to parent in a different way for that child that may have a different set of needs. Right on. I think this question is going to be answered throughout the entire interview too. So I will expand on that, but thank you. Yeah. So yeah, you know, so you were adopted? I was. That is something I've been, my wife, I've been covering all this, like I just said, I've been covering all this kids stuff, this horrible shit that's happening to kids, and my wife told me the other day, she's like, "If you really want to get into the nasty shit, go into the adoption industry and the foster care plan." For sure. And we have a neighbor that's a substitute teacher, and she talks about some of the kids that get bused into this public school here. They're in that system. No showers, no clean clothes, ripped up clothes, the smell. I mean, you can just tell they're not being taken care of. It's fucking sad. And are they in group homes or foster care? I don't know. I don't know yet, but I'm almost scared to do it because I think that's going to be the worst one, but I have to do it. Get used to more letters. I have to do it. Yeah, I'm sure I'll get, I'm sure one of these days I'm going to frame all the lawsuits up. Get a bigger mailbox. Yeah. Return to sender. But yeah, man. So. So if anybody listening knows someone to talk to about that, I'd love to hear about it. Yeah, I know quite a, quite a few people in the adoption world. It's kind of a parallel industry as well. You know, it's definitely for profit, just like the treble teen industry. Lot, well, too few regulations as well. And then there is a whole subset of people that believe that, you know, we just, we're giving a child and we're giving it to a different family. Well, what about the future child or the child's feelings about that? You know, open, closed adoptions, like in Missouri, I don't know if you know this, it's extremely strict. So in Missouri, there is no such thing. As far as my understanding of an open adoption. They are all closed. What's an open adoption? Open adoption is when you decide to adopt a baby, but you're keeping the relationship open. And what that looks like can be different. So it could be like yearly visits, or I will send you pictures of the child as they grow. Once a year, you'll get like a yearly picture. Oh. To the biological family. To the biological child, to the family, right? So the child can have some contact. Sometimes open adoptions are like, you know, you have a full relationship with your biological parent, right? In Missouri, it's not allowed. And I grew up deciding, oh, when I'm 18, because you're an adult, I'm going to go meet my family. Lo and behold, in Missouri, you have to be 21. You have to be 21? 21 to find your family. And you can't just go and find it. Everything is completely locked up. So I had to petition. I had to hire an attorney, petition the courts to open the documents. And then before they open any documents to give me names, they have to contact my birth family and ask them, do you want me to open up and tell her anything? They had to say yes. And then we couldn't even have information. We had to talk through the courts for three months. And then once they unsealed it, then we could have contact directly. It's very strict. So you did it? I did it. How was that? It was crazy, you know, because I grew up in a family where they're amazing, but I don't look like them. You know, no one's ever looked like me. And it's, you know, you grow up wondering what it's like. Like, do I have personality traits of anyone, you know? And the crazy thing is, I found out I had a full sister. So they literally gave me up for adoption. And then 18 months later, had my sister. Same mom, same dad. They were not married. They just had another baby. So I have a full-blooded sister. And I only found out about her when I was 21. Have you met her yet? Yeah. Yep. Where is she? She's in Blue Springs, Missouri. My whole family is in Missouri. With your biological parents? Mm-hmm. Yep. What's that like? I mean, 21-- so you go 20-- when did you find out you were adopted? Oh, I remember being two and knowing I was adopted. My parents were very open about it. So I don't even remember a talk. I just knew I was always adopted. So I don't even remember. But I always knew I wanted to find them and know them. And I just had to prepare myself. I didn't know anything about them at all. Names, nothing. So they could have been drug addicts. They could have been dead. So I had to really prepare myself before I got the information. Am I ready for what I'm going to find out? How curious are you as a child? Very. I mean, do you think about it all the time? Mostly when I was mad at my parents. I get punished for something, or I'm grounded. I'm like, boom. My real mom wouldn't do that, I'm sure. Or I'm going to go live with my real mom one day. It was more of like an escape. I wonder and stuff. I wouldn't say I thought about it a lot. I never felt like I fit in to my family. And that's not their fault. It was more me projecting it onto myself. I just didn't feel like I fit in. They're very high achieving. And my brother never had any issues as a teen. And I was the one that struggled with everything. -Mm-hmm. -Socially, school. Everything else was easy for my brother and for my family. -Is he biological to you? -Yeah. So he's biological to my parents, yeah. How was the relationship with a sibling who's biological and once adopted? I didn't really-- It was like a normal one, I believe. Like, I feel like there was no resentment or anything of him being not adopted or whatnot. He was six years older, though. So the only thing was the age gap kind of-- He was in college, and I was like 10. Or whatever. So I was like 11. So I was-- felt like an only child for some part of it. But, you know, we're close. He's-- He was just more annoyed 'cause I was such a big difference in years. I was this annoying young sister, you know? -Right on. -But it had nothing to do with, like, being biological or not. I was just really annoying. Guys spend a lot of money upgrading their truck, their gear, their office setup, but they don't invest much in themselves. The way you show up matters. How you carry yourself, how you look people in the eye, the impression you leave-- that's confidence. That's why I use Caldera Lab. It's high-performance skin care built for men. It's not complicated. It's just something that works. It's a simple routine. The clean slate to wash your face, eye serum if you need it, the base layer to hydrate, and the good to handle everything else. 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And if you mention my name, you'll get the first month free. So what was, I mean, what was it like meeting your parents after 21 years? It was, you know, you learn in psychology, nature versus nurture, right? And it's like the perfect experiment for that. That's what it felt like. I knew nothing about my family at all. I just knew names at that point and email addresses. And I'm sitting there and I've, you know, I went to college. I lived in Europe and I had these crazy cool experiences and I was fortunate enough to have. And they lived much differently. And, you know, it was interesting to sit there. And despite all of our different experiences and how we grew up, my sister had an itchy nose. She went to itch her nose and she went like this to itch her nose. And I do the exact same thing. So it's just like crazy weird stuff like that, that that was obvious. In our genes somehow of how we itch your nose like this. And it's like, who does that? And I looked at her, I was like, that's so weird. It's so weird. And even like little looks, she'll, you know, be looking and telling a story and I'll be like, oh, I look like that. I look like that sometimes. I've seen that on a picture, you know? And it's, it was a cool sense of like belonging. But then also it gave me a sense of what I would, would have been like and my life would have been very similar to my sister's. So it gave me a look of what would have been if I hadn't have been adopted and what, you know, I obviously know what it's like to be adopted and to kind of compare that. And it was just really, really interesting. Man, I'll bet. Was it emotional? Yeah. I mean, second to like getting married, it's up there on the experiences of like nerves walking in, you know, like, oh my gosh. What were you expecting? Honestly. What have you, what, like. What, what was your, what were you, what did you paint? I didn't have any. I don't think I, I think that that's what was scary is I, I, I had taught myself to not have any expectations because they, I could have been really disappointed. I had fears, but really no expectations. What were the fears? I had fears that maybe they would like latch onto me and maybe try to like, I'm trying to think if I lost a child and then finally got to meet them, like I would be globed on to them because they're my child, but to them, like you're not their parent, you know? So I was worried about them not being respectful of the relationship being in my court and I needed it to be in my court and I decide what this relationship looks like because I'm the one having to deal with two sets of parents. Um, and thankfully they were so great about that. Like has, it has never been an issue. They've never stepped on any boundaries. They know my mom and dad are my mom and dad. And so. Thank God that that didn't happen, but I think that was one of my fears, man. Or like getting taken advantage of, like, you know, are they going to want money or those kinds of things? I think I worried about, thankfully it hasn't been an issue. Do you still keep in touch? Yeah. Yep. Did the relationship develop fast? Yeah, I'd say it developed fast and then it kind of evened out. Like you're trying to make up for like lost time and then it kind of evened out. Right on, right on. Did you ask him why? Um, they put you up for adoption. Yeah. So my birth father actually didn't fully recognize that I was his at the time. Um, and so when the courts were like deciding if we should talk or not, he was like, oh, I want a paternity test. And then we did the picture exchange. And so he saw a picture of me. He's like, oh no, she's mine. He wasn't worried because I looked so much like my sister and he knew the sister was his. Um. But my mom would have been taking care of me and I had an older, uh, half-sister who was already living with my grandma because things were really tight. And so she was just not in a position to have another kid and she just knew that she wanted something better for me. And so it was one of those true, like, you know, I'm doing this for my kid. Of love. Yeah. It's out of love. And I think it was probably one of the hardest decisions she's ever made and she's talked about that. Yeah. Like, man. I can't imagine. I mean. Me neither. I have a friend. Uh, I don't want to mention her name, but she's been through hell and back. She's a veteran. And, uh, she, she put her daughter up for adoption and she sent me like, she stalks her on Facebook. It's so fucking sad. Aww. It's so, just rips her heart out every time. But. It's such a selfless thing. Man. I couldn't imagine. I could not imagine. So you got adopted. How early? Uh, so it was set before birth. So my parents helped with the prenatal care and all of that stuff. Uh, she gave birth and I had to stay in the hospital for like 10 days and it was over like Labor Day weekend too. So it was a little longer. So I stayed alone in the hospital for like 10 days before my parents could come and take me back. And, uh, they lived in Wisconsin at the time. So they picked me up in Kansas City, 10 days old, went to live in Wisconsin. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So what was childhood like? Just really a standard for that generation, honestly, like playing outside, um, lots of love. Um, just really happy. I had a really happy childhood. Um, I was a very opinionated little girl. Uh, nothing's changed. Um, I was, I've always been a fighter. Um, but yeah, no, I think that I was a very active kid, really into sports, uh, before it was cool for girls to be into sports. Um, so I was very much a tomboy and, um, my mom loves to tell the story of, you know, I was really into soccer and we were living in Phoenix, Arizona at the time and girls don't play soccer back in 92. So, uh, I had short hair, like a boy cut and the team, and no one knew I was a girl until they were like, okay, let's play some shirts and skins. And I was like, no, no, they know my shirt. And they're like, why? And they're like, she's a girl. And so, yeah, I'd liked sports a lot, but I was definitely a tomboy for a good time. Yeah. Yeah. But really just normal childhood. Um, definitely had that experience of like playing outside till the street lights come on, come home, have dinner, lots of outside time. So were you a hellion? What's a hellion? Did you get in a lot of trouble? Uh, no, not as a, not as a little kid, not as a little kid. So the way, okay. As a teenager. Yeah. Yeah. That's a different story. What were you, what were you getting into as a teenager? Well, I say trouble, honestly, I'm just going back to what I was saying. It's just normal teenage behavior. Right when I hit puberty, probably starting around 13, I started getting interested. This is right around the time of AOL. Remember with American online? Oh man, we're about the same age. Yeah, probably. Oh yeah. And once you get AOL in the chat rooms and AIM, like stop. ICQ. Do you remember that one? No, I don't remember. I don't remember ICQ. That was the, that was the shit back in the day. Yeah. And LimeWire and downloading out. Yep. Mm-hmm. Right after NAPS. So, you know, honestly, I struggled socially. Right. And at that point I was, I'm autistic and I wasn't, I was not diagnosed back then. All I knew. You're autistic? I am. Yeah. So back then girls weren't autistic. You know, autistic was really, it was a stereotype of what you'd see in a level three, you know, autism kid right today. But back then, you know. girls are already, like, way higher masking, and, um, Um, so it just got missed. And so I struggled socially with making. I would make friends, but then I'd want to keep being their friend in a very, like, intense way. And they'd, like, back up. And I wouldn't know why. Like, why are you backing up? I don't. So the social situations. You get super attached. Yeah. Like, you're my best friend. Why are you playing with someone else? Gotcha. You know, it didn't make sense, right? And so I had friends, but it was just easier to meet people online. I think that was the start of when my parents were like, uh-oh, you know? And granted, they didn't know anything about online back then, and it was a scary new place. I definitely met people from AOL, and I probably shouldn't have, you know? You were meeting strangers on AOL? Yes. Yeah, I was. What kind of strangers? Thankfully, they were all my age and actually ended up being my age. But it could have been a potential really bad situation. And so they had a right to be worried about that stuff. And that's kind of how it started. And that's how it started, just trying to find my place, right? I didn't feel like I fit in in my family because I struggle and no one else does. And then socially at school, no one, you know, I can't, like, make friends as easy. And why is that? I found a place in online, and I was able to, like, feel like I had a social life, you know? So that's how it started. And then, you know, I had issues with school because I had ADHD as well. And so we kind of moved school, school, school, school, school, private school, private school. So there was that issue. And then I went to high school. And I decided then we're going to go to a public high school, which I had been in private for a long time. And I went to Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California. And within the first couple months, I was starting to smoke pot. And I found myself in, like, the counterculture, you know, the kids that would skip out on second period and go smoke pot in the alleys and stuff like that. But I felt like I fit in. Like, I felt like I had friends, finally. And they weren't judgmental. And I wasn't, I was really, really bullied for a lot of years. So there was a lot of trauma with that, too. So I found people that weren't bullying me. And they just so happened to make different decisions than my parents were okay with. Do you think you, do you think you craved being accepted because of adoption? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the, I had so little internal validation for myself. I just kind of sought it everywhere, right? And I just wanted to feel like I belonged, no matter what. And that abandonment wound, I mean, I can't, I can't underestimate how severely prevalent that is as a, an adopted kid. I can't imagine. Even if you're not aware of it, it's there. That's what that, yeah, that's what I was, I'm just curious a bit, if you, have you adopted kids? No, I had all mine. And that's another thing. That's probably the reason why I had four kids. And, you know, I'm like, didn't have anyone that looks like me, well, I got four that look a lot like me, so. Right on, right on. I mean, what I'm asking is, do you, do you think it would have been better if you did not know you were adopted growing up? No, I think that would have affected my relationship with my parents. Um, I am an extremely honest person and I'm big into transparency and if I would have found out that they were withholding that information, I don't know if I ever would have forgiven them. Wow. Because all that work that I would have done as a kid and having to, yeah, it was painful to go through abandonment and stuff like that. But imagine thinking that wasn't an issue and in your twenties, you have to go through it. Like I would much rather get that out of the way when I'm forming my identity and my character and who I want to be in the world and my profession. Like, I'm glad that was out of the way. I think that would have wreaked havoc on my emotional stability. That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. So, how did the Troubled Teen, Troubled Teen Institute, what is it? Troubled Teen Industry or TTI as we call it for short. Yeah. So, you know, we've got the behavior of sneaking out, you know, I think I drank a couple times and I smoked pot. I started having sex and that was something my, my parents were obviously not okay with. They were, you remember modems and having to get internet and you have to have the modem? Well, they would lock the modem in a cabinet. Because I'd be on AOL at like 11 o'clock at night, but I have the, you know, these skinny little wrists. And so they had chain bolts on the cabinet and I'd just, just reach around. Holy shit. Plugging the wire in the back and then, and reach it out and then lock it back up. And my, you know, so I was doing all this stuff. I had snuck out of the house a couple of times, never overnight, never running away, but just like go smoke pot on the golf course, you know? Mm-hmm. And there was one incident in particular that really, I feel like led to. To me getting sent away. They could have already known I was going to be sent away at this point. I'm not sure, but there was, so I was at Newport Harbor High School. I had a really good friend and we decided to skip out on the rest of the day at school. And we decided to walk around Costa Mesa, Newport, Newport Beach. And we had this guy that was sitting outside of a 7-Eleven buy us some beer in exchange for bagels. I think he might've been like homeless. What a great trade. Yeah. Yeah. I know, right? His name was Len and I say that because I'm calling him out. His name was Len. He ended up kind of following us around and he, so we only bought a six pack and granted, yeah, we're like 150 pound little girls, but having three beers shouldn't have equaled the amount of inebriation that I got. And we were in an alley before I completely blacked out and I remember him showing me a knife. And it wasn't like a, I'm going to hurt you with this. It's more like a underhanded threat to kind of like, look what I have. I want you to know that I have this kind of showing it off. And it stuck in my head as I now know he has a knife and I'm scared. Right. But then I completely blacked out. And when I came to, I was laying on the floor or the grass at a nearby park and my pants were around my ankles. And I came to, and I saw my, my really good friend, Stacy kind of slumped over his lap. He's sitting down and she's kind of like this completely passed out. And I started saying her name, you know, get up, get up, get up. And then all of a sudden a policeman starts walking. He had to have seen something completely inappropriate, but I, you know, I pulled up my pants. Stacy was able to, you know, come too. And the police came. And the policeman, he ran off the, the Len ran off and the policeman decided to go to us and figure out why we're not in school versus running after the 33 year old man who was just in a park in the middle of the day with two young girls, you know? So then we, you know, he talked to us about where we live, why we're in school. I thought it was so smart when he asked for my address, I just gave the wrong zip code thinking that he wasn't going to be able to get ahold of my mom. He did. So on the way back on our walk home to school, Stacy and I talked about what happened and we were really scared of getting in trouble. And we decided, because we wanted to tell someone what had happened physically, but we were scared because we had drank. And so at that point, we're like, we made a pact. We're like, okay, we're not going to say anything about anything, but if we get in trouble, let's just tell them that he made us drink, right? Let's just say that he took a drink. He took us, like, he made us at the payphone, he showed us the knife, we know he has a knife, let's just say that he made us with the knife drink so we don't get in trouble for drinking because that was the big thing in our head is we're going to get in so much trouble for this. We felt, we felt we were going to get in trouble for everything, even being sexually assaulted, like, I thought I was going to get in trouble for that. And lo and behold, I, you know, get picked up from my mom that day and she said, where were you? And I just started crying and I told her the truth. I told her what happened in the park. And next day, the FBI is at the school and they're taking our statements. A couple days later, I'm giving them my clothes to do forensics, and a couple days after that, we're in, like, one of those places you see on TV, you know, like, SVU almost, where it's, like, the two-way mirror and you're with a psychologist and, you know, she's asking me, with the bear, show me what he did with the two bears, and I have to, like, act out this whole thing in this, like, trauma-informed center. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. because I was wearing a short shirt, you know? It was-- It was like, I somehow did this to myself, and it wasn't a true predator, which he is a predator. You know, so there is that feeling of, "Well, I lied about how I got off campus, so I'm-- I don't get-- Like, now I'm a liar." And they went so far as to tell my parents I wasn't abused and that I made it up. And my parents didn't know I was abused until about a year and a half ago, when I decided to talk about it, and they said, "Wait, that actually happened?" I'm like, "Yeah, it happened." Um, so they dropped all charges. They searched for Len. He-- They found him living in a hotel a couple blocks away from where he met us. He was not arrested. He was not charged. Um, and because of the zero-tolerance policy that California had in the schools, Stacey and I were expelled because we drank alcohol during school hours. We were not on school campus, but because we consumed alcohol during school hours, we were expelled. And so then I didn't have anywhere to go to school. And that is when I think things shifted for my parents. You know, granted, at that point, they thought I-- What-- I had lied about being abused, too, right? They didn't know the truth. Um, and about-- I think it was probably three weeks later, I was woken up in the middle of the night by two strangers about 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. in the morning, and they said, "You're coming with me." And I said, "No, I'm not." And they said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." And the hard way involves handcuffs. And that's kind of the beginning of the end for me. So you had-- Your parents didn't tell you anything? No. They were advised not to by the-- by the program that I was gonna be sent to. They advised that I know nothing because I had a propensity to run away. They advised doing it in the middle of the night. It was too off-duty police. Police officers, male and a female. And they advised that just do it in the middle of the night and with force. Holy shit. Yeah. So, 2:00 a.m., I said, "Well, can I go to the bathroom?" And they said, "Well, we have to watch you." And I was like, "Okay, can I get dressed?" How do you know you're not being kid-- Hold on, wait, they watched you go to the bathroom? Yeah, they watched me go to the bathroom. Um, and I said, "Well, can I get dressed?" And they're like, "We have to watch you, too." So I changed in front of them. Um, at this point, you know, I didn't know what was going on. First, when they first woke me up, I thought I was being arrested, 'cause I'm like, I smoked pot the night before, so I'm like, "Oh, no, I'm gonna be arrested." Uh, but when I saw my parents at the door watching it and crying, I knew that I wasn't being arrested and I wasn't being kidnapped, because why would they watch me being kidnapped, you know? But I was, I was being kidnapped. It was just, uh, they condoned it. But, uh, and then the last thing I remember is I said, "Can I at least pack a bag?" And I forget if it was the guy or the girl. They said, "Your parents already did." And I snapped. As soon as the parents already did, that they had not only known about this, but they had my bag packed all ready to leave. And I just started screaming at them. And I remember my mom crying, saying, "We're not abandoning you. We're not abandoning you." And I'm like, "Yeah, you are. You actually are. And I hate you, and I'm never fucking talking to you ever again." And they. took me by the arms, uh, took me out to a black SUV, threw me in the back, drove me to LAX. I wasn't allowed to know where I was going. This is back before, you know, you had, like, actual tickets that you had to have in the airport, you know? I wasn't allowed to see the ticket. They, they faced me away from the gate so that I couldn't know what gate I was going to. And I remember vividly not knowing where I was going until I was on the plane, and the captain came on and said, "You're on a flight to Boise, Idaho." And that's when they gave me two letters. One for my mom, one for my dad. And I remember just disassociating so hardcore. I don't even remember what the letters said. And I don't remember the flight, probably the layover. I, I don't even know, I just remember arriving at Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho. And. my life was changed forever. Holy shit. So when do you figure out. wow. When do you figure out what this is all about? You know, it was kind of a slow process 'cause I, uh, I didn't understand like, the only thing I'd seen on TV is really like kids being kidnapped. So, you know, I thought I was being kidnapped, but like, here I'm at, like, this, what looks like a hospital, you know? And I just remember walking in to the, you know, these big magnetic lock, like, very heavy, like with the noise of opening, and then. And it opened and it closed behind me. And I just remember thinking, like, things are never gonna be the same. And it's truly like when my childhood ended, is when I was like, I was 15. Like, when those doors closed at Intermountain Hospital, I knew the second I walked in there, without knowing, that I wouldn't be leaving. Like, I'm not free to leave. Like, this place was locked down. And I, you know, they immediately took my shoes, took all my clothes, and had to search through everything to make sure I don't have any contraband, or, God forbid, pencils, right? I wasn't allowed to have pencils 'cause you can self-harm with pencils, and no conditioner or shampoo 'cause it has small amounts of alcohol. So, they had to search, like, literally everything you own. And it was in the middle of winter, and they took my shoes, because I had to check the shoes, but it was over Super Bowl weekend. So, I didn't have shoes in the middle of winter for, like, four days. Um, and it was just a complete. tornado. Like, it just felt like everything you know for 15 years is just completely different. And all of a sudden, the people that usually protect you are not, and you're with strangers, you're not allowed to contact them, you can't contact your parents, you have no use of a phone, you-- you can't even have pencils. Um, and I remember having to write a letter home, and I couldn't 'cause I didn't have pencils, so I wrote it in crayon. And-- 'cause that's the only thing I was allowed. And I remember writing, "I'm so sorry for being a bad daughter. Please take me home. Please, this is not the place for me." And all the other kids in this program were just. very troubled, like, dealing with big issues, you know? Before-- before we move on, so what-- what-- what are these-- what are these things? If I wanted to find one, what am I looking at? Residential treatment centers, um, therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness therapy programs, boot camps, group homes, um. It's all for kids that are getting in trouble. Yeah, for either kids that are getting in trouble. Group homes are more for, you know, foster care or child welfare kids, um, being able to have a place for them, right? Like, group homes. But, uh, they're using behavior modification, and, uh, they're a residential setting, and, um, oversight is non-existent. And so, you know, these kinds of-- these kinds of practices are happening in these facilities at large-- at a large scale. Very large scale. Military boarding schools, would that fall under? So that's-- so it's a little bit of a gray area. Um, you know, military boarding schools, if there is a therapeutic component, which I don't know of any military boarding schools that have, like, a therapy-- like, you have a therapy purpose, and it's a part of a treatment plan. So that's really the difference. So we wouldn't even consider those to be-- it's an institution that can potentially harm and abuse kids still, but is it a troubled teen industry program? We would probably say no, because there is no aspect of therapy involved in the program. There's definitely behavior modification, though. Um, and that is gonna have long-term effects in that kind of way, so. -Shit. -Yeah. How long do kids usually go to these for? Depends on the type of program. So wilderness programs are shorter-term, but they're a very big pipeline into the longer-term, like, therapeutic boarding schools and stuff like that. So wilderness therapy can be anywhere from six to twelve weeks out in the-- out in the wilderness. But like I said, it's very, very rare for me to hear of a survivor going to a wilderness program and then going home. Like, it's almost always gonna be recommended after that time that they need secondary care and that they get sent to-- and then a list of referrals that they probably get kickbacks on-- on these therapeutic boarding schools. So it's definitely a pipeline into it, even though it's not long -term. -So nobody really gets out? No. I mean, if you go into the tribal gene industry at 15, um, it's-- there's a chance you'll be there until 18. And just the way that these things work. I was going in at 15. I stayed 'til 18 and a half. -They got me to stay half a year. -They talked you into staying. They talked me into staying. Yeah. -Holy shit. -Yeah. So you had no idea-- nobody-- nobody told-- no-- you had no idea that it was gonna be three and a half years? No. I-- in Boise, Idaho, I was only there for six months. And I thought until probably a month before I left, I was gonna be going home. And I didn't find out I was gonna be going to my next place until, like-- like I said, like, about a month. And I was so upset. And that was a therapeutic boarding school. And I knew that was-- I knew at that point, I'm probably gonna be there 'til 18. Holy shit. So what-- what happened? -What happens when you get-- what's daily life like? -Kind of depends what the program is. But for me, I was-- I'm not even sure, Intermountain, like, what their licensing status is, if it's psychiatric or if it's residential treatment center. I'm not sure. Um, but really, I think about it in terms of their job was to strip away all my autonomy. They thought that Meg has an issue with control. Let's make sure Meg knows that she doesn't control. anything in her life let's take away all of her ability to make decisions and make it up to chance so one thing a couple things they did with me to make that happen is something called random draw and desk space random draw meant that any of the activities you do as a group like going outside for pe or going to the cafeteria or going to therapy or ot or any of the things you program during the day i had a bag that had 10 pieces of paper in it and there were nine no's and one yes anytime i was able to be with my peers in any way shape or form i had to pick from that bag and if it said no i couldn't go but if i got the one yes i got to be with my peers and go to therapy and do all the stuff with them if i got a no i was stuck at my desk and that was desk space so for all day and i had to be writing essays on all the thinking errors and that i have in my life and and all these other crazy things so it was about making sure i had no choices and no say over what happens to me that's that's what they wanted to teach me at intermountain hospital and it worked holy shit yeah do they tell you what they're working on or i mean it's just yeah no i mean it's more like oh here's your treatment plan and you're like what what's this so it's prison yeah yeah oh straight up there's a we call it the qr it's it's the quiet room it's a padded fucking room with a door that locks from the outside and a bulletproof glass that's this big and then there's a bed in the middle with straps you you misbehave they take you down in a restraint they pull down your pants they stick a needle in your ass and shoot you up and make you completely pass out carry you into the room strap you down until you until you wake up like they did this i saw this daily strip you down naked strap you down like to the bed strap you down to make sure that you're not gonna go anywhere it's a padded room what the fuck oh yeah what were you doing when you got the injection i see i i've tried to get injected once i thought i was like this sounds like fun i'm gonna try to do this because it was so boring every day so i'd actually tried once and i was like i'm so angry and i like grabbed it something and like threw it across the room and they're like knock it off and i was like oh okay because i wasn't one of the aggressive ones but there were kids that had anger issues and would create a safety issue on the unit and then you would hear a code be called over the speakers and then you would i have always remember this the chains of people running and their keys the noise of them running with their keys and um most of the guys from the other units would come to assist with the restraints and they would put the kid on the face down on the floor one of the big guys had a knee in the in the middle of the kid's shoulder blades then a staff on each arm a staff on each leg and if they didn't calm down you know the nurse would just come over pull their pants down and give them what we called booty juice damn yeah damn and i never had it done but i saw it a lot and even just see i mean i can't imagine the trauma of having it done but even just seeing it know that knowing that that's happening to kids in the world like i'm just watching it it's a normal thing to do but it's a normal thing to do it's a normal thing to do it it's a normal everyday occurrence which is super up what are you living in uh it's like a unit it's like a one hallway and then there's another hallway over here and that's like there's two different main units um and then there's lots of magnetic locked doors and it's usually two people to a room you have a roommate and then there's a sensor in the middle of the room so that in the middle of the night if that sensor goes off it's like they'll come running in because it's to make sure that no one hurts you hurts each other in the middle of the night like it's alarm goes off if you cross to go to the bathroom it's it's wild you're not allowed to have any toiletries any makeup in your room um it was super super traumatic um and oh on top of that they just diagnose everyone with bipolar disorder and it took like two days and they're like oh yeah here's some anti-psychotics and you got you got diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar disorder and you're like oh yeah here's some anti-psychotics and you got you got diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar disorder and it took like two days and they're like oh yeah here's some anti-psychotics and you got you got diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar disorder and it took like two days and they're like oh yeah here's some anti-psychotics and you got you got diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar diagnosed in two days yeah bipolar and medicated like heavily medicated and medicated like heavily medicated and medicated like heavily medicated with what saraquil trileptol with what saraquil trileptol with what saraquil trileptol um i was on like 1600 milligrams of um i was on like 1600 milligrams of um i was on like 1600 milligrams of trileptol and like holy i was on a lot trileptol and like holy i was on a lot trileptol and like holy i was on a lot of drugs i came in there at you know 125 of drugs i came in there at you know 125 of drugs i came in there at you know 125 pound 15 year old i gained 60 pounds pound 15 year old i gained 60 pounds pound 15 year old i gained 60 pounds in six months from the drugs from the in six months from the drugs from the in six months from the drugs from the drugs drugs drugs holy yeah i remember it was like a race holy yeah i remember it was like a race holy yeah i remember it was like a race against time from you you got to get against time from you you got to get against time from you you got to get your meds from the med station right you your meds from the med station right you your meds from the med station right you got to check the cheeks and got to check the cheeks and got to check the cheeks and everything it was always a race against everything it was always a race against everything it was always a race against time at the end of the night when they time at the end of the night when they time at the end of the night when they gave me the meds or in the you know in gave me the meds or in the you know in gave me the meds or in the you know in the middle of the day because they gave the middle of the day because they gave the middle of the day because they gave me stuff that made me really sleepy then me stuff that made me really sleepy then me stuff that made me really sleepy then too but i had to take the meds and get too but i had to take the meds and get too but i had to take the meds and get to my room before i passed out and so i to my room before i passed out and so i to my room before i passed out and so i remember remember remember every night my hand dragging on a very every night my hand dragging on a very every night my hand dragging on a very textured wall as i tried to go textured wall as i tried to go textured wall as i tried to go to make it to my room and i'd start kind to make it to my room and i'd start kind to make it to my room and i'd start kind of getting loopy of getting loopy of getting loopy and like not be able to make it because of and like not be able to make it because of and like not be able to make it because of how strong these medications are how strong these medications are how strong these medications are it was it was really bad even my journal it was it was really bad even my journal it was it was really bad even my journal entries i've got entries i've got entries i've got journal entries of me being like it's the journal entries of me being like it's the journal entries of me being like it's the middle of the day and i'll say middle of the day and i'll say middle of the day and i'll say these are wild if you just dope them up these are wild if you just dope them up these are wild if you just dope them up holy shit how many kids are in there oh holy shit how many kids are in there oh holy shit how many kids are in there oh there's quite a few there's quite a few there's quite a few uh probably on like one unit there would uh probably on like one unit there would uh probably on like one unit there would be like be like be like maybe 30 or 40 and so there's a couple maybe 30 or 40 and so there's a couple maybe 30 or 40 and so there's a couple units so i'm guessing around then a units so i'm guessing around then a units so i'm guessing around then a couple hundred couple hundred couple hundred maybe it's probably maybe like 60 total maybe it's probably maybe like 60 total maybe it's probably maybe like 60 total out of the two different adolescent out of the two different adolescent out of the two different adolescent units units units that's my guess geez and this is an that's my guess geez and this is an that's my guess geez and this is an outdoor outdoor outdoor indoor only you only go outdoors for indoor only you only go outdoors for indoor only you only go outdoors for about 30 minutes like a day about 30 minutes like a day about 30 minutes like a day so there's like a high like huge fence so there's like a high like huge fence so there's like a high like huge fence around this place like you're not around this place like you're not around this place like you're not getting out so it's legitimately a getting out so it's legitimately a getting out so it's legitimately a prison yeah it is i mean if actually if you look at juvenile justice prison yeah it is i mean if actually if you look at juvenile justice facilities you have more rights you look at juvenile justice facilities you have more rights there than you did at this facility there than you did at this facility like you have a right to phone calls at like you have a right to phone calls at like you have a right to phone calls at a juvenile facility you can go and make a juvenile facility you can go and 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code sean for 20 off your order ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ When do you talk to your parents for the first time? I don't -- I was so traumatized and so doped up there. I think it might have been, like, a week or two. Um, but I never, ever, ever, ever spoke to them in the six months without a therapist on the phone listening. Like, the entire time. So. I don't even remember any family therapy, to be honest. I don't remember therapy, period. I knew I had a therapist 'cause I remember what they looked like. But I don't remember actual therapy or working on anything. Or family therapy at all. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I just don't -- I was so disassociated that entire time. To just survive. What do you remember? I remember learned helplessness. Just feeling like whatever I did wasn't gonna change anything. And that's what they wanted. I mean, that's the whole point. why I was on desk space and random draw, right? Is to teach me that I'm not in control of my life. And I need to just give in and let people make the decisions for me. And so, it's this feeling of nothing I do is gonna get me out of this. And so, I just have to kind of, like, ride the wave. But when you're riding the wave, it's not even a rideable wave. Everything you do equals a consequence. Every-- They set you up to fail. And so, you know, they have a level system. Almost all these places have, like, level systems or phases. And it's a very important part of behavior modification. What do you mean a level system? So, like, if you're on level zero, you don't get these privileges. And then if you get to level one, then you get to go and, like, watch a movie on Friday night. So, they basically incentivize kids to wanna work the program by giving consequences for bad behaviors and privileges for good. To incentivize you to be better and work, right? But what that does is, like-- Okay, to give you an example, we had a tracking sheet. And this tracking sheet was our lifeline. It was our entire day and our behavior for every 15 minutes during the day. So, every 15 minutes during the day, we had to have a staff member do an initial, and it was a zero to 10. Anything at six or above was fantastic. And they'd put their initials on six. Anything under that would add up to, even within one day, losing a level. So, if I forget for a total of, I think it's, like, 45 minutes, giving my tracking sheet to that staff to sign off for my behavior, those 45-minute period, because it's 15, 15, 15, that would equal losing a level. So, if you mess up for 45 minutes and just forget to hand in a tracking sheet, you lost a level, and now you're back at square one. So, it was so easy to backtrack that you just learned-- you just feel like giving up. All the time. And it's just so easy to fail that you just-- you just don't know what to do. So, I remember that there. Um, and feeling just really, really lonely. Just really, really isolated, um. - No relationships? - No. Other than therapists? Yeah, and I don't-- like, I don't even remember their names. So, obviously, they weren't very, like, memorable. And, you know, the kids that I-- my roommates and stuff, I just remember being scared a lot, um. How many roommates do you have? I had a-- well, one-- two at a time, but I switched a bunch. So, I had a bunch of different roommates throughout my time there. Uh, one of 'em, I remember she was, like, 12, and she used to eat cigarette butts. Uh, and so, like, I'm seeing this-- these things happen, and, like, yeah, Pyke is a legitimate, like, condition, and it's-- but I've never seen that as a 15-year-old. And you're seeing it, and you're, like, you're scared. And I-- what's going on? And I had another one who was 17. She had schizophrenia, and she would, like-- she would wake up in the middle of the night, and she would be, like, screaming at her dead boyfriend. And it's just very scary to be in that kind of environment and feel like you have no control. You can't leave when you want. And your parents sent you there. So, it's, like. that abandonment, obviously, -like, coming through, right? - Mm-hmm. So, all of that together just made for-- I was very-- I think I was very depressed, to be honest. Yeah, I'll bet. But I didn't know it 'cause I was so medicated, so. I mean, it was bad. Do you remember the first conversation with her parents? Nope. Do you remember any of them? Nope. I was-- I was so. gone. I don't think my brain was, like, connected to my body for that time. I was so medicated. Um, and it-- it's, like-- I don't-- I didn't learn anything in that six months at all. No school. There's nothing in there. Oh, the school was horrible. The school-- the-- the school teacher in my apartment in my opinion was so abusive. Like, he was so mean and so aggressive. I barely got any school done. I had to do the catching up at my next program. Um, but even then, it was, like, self-taught, and I'm just reading and doing tests. There's no teaching, right? So, it was-- but, yeah, basically no school. So, that six months, I had to make up later. - Shit. - Mm-hmm. And so, what's the pipeline? I mean, what-- so, you're there for six months. You're not learning anything. We're-- What's the next place? What-- what-- why did you even move on? - Right, well-- - If there's no-- if there's no curriculum and there's no program. - Yeah, well, 'cause it wasn't about school. -. other than just - S-Space and drawing numbers out of a bag. - Wasn't about school. And you gotta remember also that, you know, yeah, I'm going through what I'm going through, but my parents are being told, "Oh, Meg's doing so well. She's-- she's really progressing into a way. I think she's gonna really be ready for this next program." And here are some programs you should look into, you know? I think she needs a secondary place. Uh, the secondary place that I went to uh, re-- it's a unique place because they require you have pre-placement somewhere else. So, whether it's at Wilderness Program, RTC, a residential treatment center, somewhere like that. You can't-- It was very rare that a girl would just go to the program first without being somewhere else first to kind of learn the, you know, the program rules of, you know, like, they're not gonna get the wild ones. They're gonna get the tamed ones, you know, that have already been through a little bit of it. Um, and so my parents are being told that I'm doing great and I'm ready for the next phase of my treatment journey. So, there's just a big gap in what parents are being told, what they are told is happening, and the therapeutic practices that are happening in these facilities, and really what happens in practice in these facilities and what kids are experiencing. And you can't ever tell the parents because of the monitored communication. Holy shit. Yeah, it's a total institution. So, how do you know that they're telling your parents that you're doing so great? Does this all come afterwards? That comes back, you know, in my 30s when we start talking about this stuff and realizing, like, "What? That's what happened? I was told something different." Um, I have a letter from my psychiatrist at the time, and he was really old back then. Uh, he was probably, you know, a practicing psychiatrist. He was probably 75 back when I was in Intermountain Hospital. And he wrote this crazy letter to my parents saying the type of bipolar that she has and she's pushing back, against treatment, and she keeps saying, "I'm not bipolar," um, "and she's wrong. And if we don't do something, she's gonna end up an unmarried, pregnant, single mom." And, like, all this weird stuff. Like, it's legitimately in a letter from the psychiatrist to my parents, warning them, "If I don't continue with this, that's where I'm gonna end up." So, it's just, like, fear-mongering. Like, they're scaring parents into thinking, "Oh, your kid is gonna die, they're gonna end up pregnant, uh, running away." Whatever. Do they come see you at all in person? They allowed-- Well, they hold visits over your head. So, if you're doing bad, they'll be like, "I'm not gonna let you see your parents tomorrow if you don't do A, B, and C." But they do allow, um, parents to come and visit, and you're allowed off-site for a bit of time. But, like, no overnights or anything like that. So, my parents would come-- I think they came twice, I believe, in the six months. Twice in three and a half years? And, no, in the six months at the-- at the hospital. Um, at the second place, I ended up once you get good and programmed, you get to go home, on a home visit. And I was still going back and doing my thing, acting good, and still not saying anything to my parents. They don't let you do it until you're-- they can trust that you're not gonna. say things. How do they know that you're not gonna say things? They have instilled fear enough to the point that they just trust that you want to be perceived well by your peers and by them. Everyone wanted to see-- like, everyone wanted to be the favorite of the two owners. And so, they just had-- they just had a way of knowing. They-- they-- this was your family, and they made-- they made the whole program your family. And would you turn your back on your family? So, it's like, when they become certain that Chrysalis, which is the name of the second program, was important enough to you that you weren't gonna turn your back, and they were pretty certain, that's the trust phase, that's, you know, that's level two, and then you were allowed to go home and do home visits. So, I did have home visits throughout the three years I was there, and my parents came up when they could, too. But it would be, like, probably evened out to, like, every six months. So, they completely brainwashed you. Yeah. They did for me, at least. And, um. Now, did it work? Did it work? Did-- I mean. -Oh, yeah. -Did you want to go home? -Or did-- did you consider them your family? -I did. It was a very confusing feeling, because they made-- so, the way that Chrysalis worked for me is-- after speaking to a lot of people, it works like this for a lot of people, as well-- they kind of break you down to make you hopeless, and then they help build you back up, and when they build you back up, they make you so reliant on them, and their approval, and your peers' approval, and then they've instilled in you that Chrysalis is a family. They, you know, they talk about the other girls in Chrysalis, "Those are your Chrysalis sisters." We call them that, "Chrysalis sisters," and this is my Chrysalis family. And so, when you've used those, that kind of language surrounding where you're living, it's like your family. Would you do that to your family? Would you turn your back? Would you lie? Would you run away? Like-- And if I do that, I know I'm kicked out of Chrysalis. I know I'm gone. What then? Then my parents won't even accept me back, and then I lose my whole family. And this is my whole-- this is everything right now. So, they kind of-- it's like a trapped feeling that you end up getting. Um, and it's-- it's-- it's very odd. So, Chrysalis-- is, at least at that time, a very small program where there's only like 10 girls. and you all live together in the middle of nowhere in rural Montana, next to the Canadian border, in a log cabin, in the middle of the woods. And the two people are married. They're your therapists. You share a bathroom with them. -You live in the same log cabin with them. -What? Yeah. Like. Yeah. See, that alone makes you go, "What?" Right? -A married couple. -A married couple. in the middle of the fucking woods with ten girls. Yep. And they're your therapists. And we're a chrysalis family. Yep. So, definitely already red flags with, like, relationship dynamics and separation of, like, patient dynamics -with therapists, but-- - But I hate to, like. I mean, fuck it. I'm just-- I mean, what-- I mean, what are your parents thinking? A camp in the fucking woods in a log cabin in Montana in the middle of nowhere with ten girls and a married couple? Yeah. I've asked my parents that, you know, also. No red flags? Yeah. Definitely red flags. But it's like, think about it, if you're talking about, like, "Well, Meg has always wanted family, and this is, like, her second family, and we're gonna be there for her. It's providing a sense of community and family, and I'm not there 'cause we're in California, and we can't be there." Uh, but I did talk to my dad, and he said that when he visited, he saw, like, weird stuff, like, weird dynamics. And he said he remembers seeing, like, a girl sit on Kenny's lap. And, you know, or Kenny's-- he put his arm around a girl and, you know, hug her. And he remembers thinking, "That's a little-- that's a little weird, but maybe I'm off. I'm gonna go ahead and look at Kenny's wife and see what she looks like. How is she responding to this? And that should tell me if I'm wrong." And he'd look over at Mary, and she'd be like. Like, and so he's like, "Oh, well, maybe this is-- this is good. Like, she doesn't have red flags. Why would I?" And so it kind of fed into that belief system that it's-- this is how these people are. This is how these programs work. And according to them, they did work. So he had no other information. And it-- it didn't take long for me to start categorizing the things that were happening to me that I now think were extremely traumatic and-- and, in my opinion, abusive, um, to just be the way it is. And so it's like it wasn't abuse back then. Like, I-- it's hard to explain that it wasn't categorized as what it was. Like, it took so long. I mean, what-- so what you're saying, how can we-- so what you're saying is you didn't recognize it as abuse because you had never experienced anything like that before everybody around you, all the other nine girls, are experiencing the same thing. They've already brainwashed you. So you have-- this is just-- this is everyday life for you. You have no idea that what-- and I don't even know what's going on yet, but-- Yeah. It-- it-- yeah. I'd say that's pretty accurate. And you don't realize this is abuse until-- Like, 33. Took a long time. What was going on? Like, when I was 33 and-- Mm-mm. Oh, back then. Yeah, um, so one of their biggest therapeutic practices was something called Circle. And the name alone should just, like, tell you what we're going to be working with here. But Circle was group therapy. And we would quite literally sit in a circle with all the girls. And it would be sometimes up to four hours long, anywhere from, like, two to four hours long. And it consisted of one of the girls being in a hot seat. And you would have to hear from your peers for a very long time everything you did wrong, anything that you did that was wrong that week, or maybe you were moody or maybe you stole a glass of milk and you're not allowed to have a glass of milk, or extra packet of oatmeal, or just whatever. You would hear from your peers how disappointed they were in you. And remember, these are your chrysalis sisters. These are like family. This is everything you have. This is your lifeline and your community. And you're hearing all the ways in which you fail and all these negative things about you. And then Kenny would start talking. And as soon as Kenny started talking, you'd get really nervous because-- that's when it's gonna get hit home, right? It's gonna go even deeper. And the kind of things that I would hear in these circles are like, you know, that I need to change who I am. And if I don't, no one's ever gonna love me. And I'm not gonna be accepted in society. And I have a chance because I'm only 16 and I can change my personality still, but I have to work really, really hard. And I'm abrasive, and I interrupt people, and I'm a bad friend. You know, just things that when you're a teenager and everything's based on social interactions and stuff that just make you super subconscious. Like, it's just self-conscious. I mean, it's like you start doubting your confidence and who you are. And that was when I really felt learned helplessness, where nothing I did was gonna ever stop this. And that's when I learned I just need to work the program. And I'm just gonna let them influence me. And as soon as I did, Kenny started being happier with me. And that was the incentivization I needed 'cause I just wanted to feel loved. I was-- I did not feel loved there for so long. And all of a sudden, when I started working the program, they started paying attention to me. And then they started calling me a leader. And then I started moving up the levels and getting more progress. And there's nothing like feeling like you're belonging to, like, brainwash you. You know, I finally felt like I belonged. They knew that that's what I wanted. That was their in for me. Was there any sexual abuse? I don't-- I have heard-- not by me. I heard-- I've heard stories, definitely between the peers. There was stuff going on that wasn't stopped, like sexual relationships and things like that, which in a youth facility, like, that should never be happening. They should be watching TV. They should be watching that, obviously. Is it boys and girls or all girls? Just girls. It was all girls, except for Kenny. Obviously, he's a man. But I have heard some other whisperings, but nothing that is, like, nothing that is-- not during my time. There was a lawsuit that came against them recently for a staff member that had allegedly sexually abused some of the minors. Mm-hmm. But-- um, but it really happens. I can't tell you how often I hear about sexual abuse in programs. I mean, I can imagine. And it's just like-- it's, like, so commonly heard by me when I'm talking to survivors that I'm surprised I didn't see it firsthand. Sheesh. But I will say-- You did, and you blocked it out. Right. Unless you were doped up. Were you still doped up at the cabin? Yeah, they continued the medication. I think that they took me off some of the-- like, Seroquel, I believe they might have, like, gone down on some of the medications to help me function. But I begged to go off, and they wouldn't let me. I will say, though, that while I don't know how comfortable I am saying, like, I went through sexual abuse at Chrysalis, I do believe that there were very problematic relationship boundaries between the therapist, like, Kenny and Mary, and ourselves. Like, and I think that's inherent just in living with your therapist. Like, it's hard to have, like, professional boundaries in that sense as it is. But, like, to give you an example, Kenny used to have, like, wrestling matches with us. Like, we'd have-- Wrestling matches. Wrestling competitions. Yeah. And I loved it because it meant he was paying attention to me, and he was OK with me and not mad at me. And so I liked it. It's weird. Like, one-on-one wrestling? Yeah, like, in the grass. And, like, everyone watching and rooting people on. Remember that. Very strange. And, like I said, I would see girls sitting on his lap, giving hugs, and, you know, at the time, you just, like, that's my Chrysalis family, family hugs. And it's-- that's how you see it. But, you know, when I grow up and I have my own kids and I think about, well, if one of my kids was to go to the therapist and sit on the lap, would I be OK with that? Oh, wait, that's weird. And it took me having my own kids to actually realize that that's-- that's inappropriate. Holy shit. Yeah. How long did you stay at this place? Three years. You were there for three fucking years? Yeah. Didn't you run away? No. And I never even thought about it. I saw girls run away, and I saw what happened. I saw how Kenny responded when girls ran away. And they cut off-- remember, this is your whole family. If you run away, you are dead to them. These are, like, even your best friends, and, you know, you think that these girls are your lifeline. And all of a sudden, I remember a girl would leave, and Kenny would come up and say, "She's a POS," or whatever it is, "an idjit." He would call girls "idjit" or "idiot" or whatever. I remember him saying once. And she wasn't working the program, and we weren't allowed to talk about them anymore. But they were our family yesterday. And all of a sudden, we had to cut them out completely. And we weren't allowed to talk to them. They weren't approved. They weren't on the approved list. So we couldn't write them. We couldn't call them. So-- How long would you be on that floor if you ran away? -Is there a way out of it? -No, you're gone. No, you will never come back to Chrysalis. They made a deal. very clear kenny would say all the time chrysalis girls are expected to stay in their beds there aren't any bolts and chains on these walls shit yeah if you ran away from chrysalis you were gone no matter what and it was scary that's scary because it's not just running away right you're also 14 miles from the nearest gas station so and it's in montana you know i missed the bus once and i had to ride 14 miles on my bike in the middle of winter to school because when you're on level two you're allowed to go to the public high school which is a whole nother level of making sure you're not going to say anything how do they yeah they let you go to a public school which actually i've never there aren't any tti facilities that i know nowadays that i know of that do that um but once you're on level two you are allowed to go to the public high school but when you were there you were allowed to go to the public high school you're in eureka montana population 1200 so everyone knows kenny everyone knows you're a chrysalis girl and everyone knows what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do so he's got lots of people watching and he would have people reporting back right and then he's got people in the school that are approved and unapproved so if you've ever smoked pot drank go to keggers or anything like that you are not allowed to talk to them and if you're seen talking to them you're going to be the subject of a circle later on that night and you're going to get confronted about it right so you were taught away from the program setting to still live program rules and you had to live by the program rules at the school same as when you went on a home visit you had to live by the program rules you could not listen to rap at home doesn't matter you're not at chrysalis but you live by the program rules so you better not put on that bikini you wear a one-piece just like at the program so they had to be sure that you were going to live by the program rules at home or wherever you were before they could trust you doing that so you had to be sure that you were going to live by the program rules at home or wherever you were and the way that they grew that trust was seeing you hold your peers accountable so it was all about accountability and peer accountability public accountability calling out your friends so putting them on the spot it's a cult they took a page out in my opinion it was wow wow the effect of it made me uh experience what cult survivors have experienced and i've had to you know deprogram as as we call it um you know these these kids are ages 12 to 15 when they're going into these programs that's very very young and the kind of treatment and the kind of tools you're using can have long lasting effects you know and i don't think that's truly appreciated by them shit yeah did you stayed you stayed until 18 and a half 18 and a half what what did they what are they telling people that are turning 18 that are getting ready to leave and go out into the world yeah so sometimes okay so there's different levels there's one back when i was there it was one two three and then graduate right not very many people graduate and i ended up being a graduate i got the whole ring they give you a ceremony and you get a butterfly ring and it's it's really weird um but so when you let's say you're at level three and you're going to turn 18 in like a like six months they could potentially have a plan for you to graduate around the time that you're graduating high school and turning 18 stuff like that i was so the i was 18 at the start of my my senior year so i'm really old for my grade so i was wanting to go home to my parents for all of senior year because i would have been 18 two days before school started but while it is my choice because i was 18 it was never truly told to me that it was my choice like that i have that right as being 18 and i wanted to please them so badly and i wanted to please my family so badly i that's the one conversation i vaguely remember is talking to my mom and dad about wanting to come home and they said you know i just it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you've had you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like your senior year usually you know some time to make friends and i worry about that transition i'm not sure it's a big transition to just do one year like Is there any preparation for people that are leaving? Like, before going and mourning? I mean, when you're getting ready to check out, when you're turning 18. I mean, some programs, I'm sure. So one of the things we have is a home plan. That's something that you usually have to complete. But in my opinion, it's just a bunch of bullshit. It's a bunch of making sure your parents are implementing the same rules as the program at home. And then a lot of times in these home plans, the repercussions of not following the rules that are set by your parents equals, like, you getting kicked out of the house. And, like, the same kind of stuff that's going to be super damaging to, you know, that if you were in the program and it happened, it's happening at home. And it doesn't end up doing much good. But many of these kids end up turning 18 and leaving. Sometimes they give them 10 bucks for a bus ticket. Sometimes they don't. And a lot of times they're just thrown out into the world. And I'd say that they kind of prepared me to go to college. I went straight from Chrysalis to college, which was interesting. But, I mean, they kind of told me, I guess, a little bit what it's like. But I was not prepared. I mean, they didn't tell me that circles aren't a normal thing you do with your friends. You know, so I went out thinking, you confront people who you're friends with. You hold people accountable on a daily basis and let them know exactly what they're doing. And how they need to fix it. And that you're disappointed in them. Make people feel shame. That's how you get change. And criticize everything. Like, that's what I was virtually taught. Or what I was able to get out of it. Why did you leave? Was it for college? Yep. So I graduated the program. I graduated high school a couple days apart. And I went home for the summer. My parents were still in Chicago at that time. And then I went. I was so brainwashed. I went. Back to Montana for school. Wow. Yeah. Did you go back? Yeah. Did you go back to see them while you were at college? Oh, yeah. I went many times. What was that like? It's this feeling of, like, empowerment. Like, I remember feeling like, ha, I've been there. And I almost, like, felt this, like, I'm a leader now. I thought about going back to be a staff member there. That is how into it I was. Until they. So I told you about approved and unapproved, right? That applies also to girls that are ex-Chrysalis girls. So they heard there was another Chrysalis girl who went to my college, the same college, and we were friends. And somehow it got back to Mary and Kenny that I was drinking alcohol. And Mary reached out to me and emailed me and said, I've heard that you are drinking and partying. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity to hold yourself accountable. And, like, think about it. That's my therapist. My therapist is reaching out past any kind of, we're not in treatment. I'm over 18. She's reaching out to me to hold myself accountable for drinking alcohol in college. And I remember feeling so much shame. And my response on that email, you're right. I'm so sorry. I knew it was a bad thing to do. And I'm going to turn my life around. You're right. Because if you did any drugs, like, if you had smoked pot once and you went to Chrysalis, you're in AA everywhere. Every week. NA. Every week. So I was told for four years, I was an alcoholic and I was an addict. And so I had to go to meetings. I had to have a sponsor. I had to work the steps. And, you know, it didn't take long for me to realize, like, I'm not an addict. But I had to play the part. I had to, you know, I had to do everything that they said. So I got to college and realized I'm not an addict. And so I think I can partake in this in a responsible way. Well, I had to go back to, I'm an addict. Okay, I'm an addict. I had to, you know, I believed it. Again, I wasn't even under their full control. Wow. Was it hard to make friends? Yes, really hard. You know, I remember, like I said, I make friends easily. And then it starts getting a little rough. Like, I had a hard time reading the social cues, right? I get along with so many people and it was fun and we go do fun things. But then I had a hard time reading, like, one of my friends was supposed to leave, like, reading the room. And so I remember there was a time I tried to, like, get a bunch of my friends to do a circle because, I mean, that's what I was taught. They're like, "What the fuck is a circle?" Yeah, they're like, "What is with this chick? Like, what's she doing?" Yeah. So it was a big, it was a big, like, "Why didn't they prepare me better?" kind of moment. Like, there was no point in time in any circle where they're like, "Okay, guys, I know this seems kind of weird. I know it's going to seem a little off. And this isn't something you're going to do when you leave. We're practicing A, B, and C, you know, and we're working on working the muscles of being able to advocate for the whatever there's none of that they were basically telling us that this is what the world is in order to be successful you need to be able to confront people you need to be able to criticize people you need to be able to be honest and not let people get away with things and it's everything they drilled into me it just carried over into college do they do they have any oversight do they have any federal state government no there's no federal over anything any any any type of oversight at all nobody's coming and checking on the facility from a federal standpoint no there's no federal legislation that oversees the regulation of these facilities so everything is left up to the states now montana is really interesting actually um montana when i was there the programs were all you're gonna get a kick out of this the programs were all overseen by the department of labor not the department of health and human services department of labor and they were i don't quote me on this i believe they were inspected once every four years once every four years three or four years maybe it was two i i forget but before um it wasn't until 2019 that montana passed a law moving the oversight of uh these programs in montana to the department of health and human services 2019 holy shit to give you an example of just like how powerful just that shift in oversight is we had about 19 programs in montana at in 2019 when that law was passed when it was passed it didn't take long for it to be passed it didn't take long for it to be passed it didn't take long for it to go down to nine and the rest of them shut down because they couldn't pass licensing and those had been operating for decades damn yeah meg let's take a break when we come back we'll we'll get into when you started to realize everything that you've been taught is not how it is yeah the best investors don't rely on 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clients investment advisory services offered by stash investments llc and sec registered investment advisor investing involves risk want more from the sean ryan show join our patreon today for more clips and exclusive content you'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode plus unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions our new srs on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else in the best part patreon members can ask our guests questions directly your insights can help shape the show join us on patreon now support the mission and become part of the sean ryan show's story all right meg we're back from the break you're in school getting a psychology degree correct yeah i was but you learned a lot getting that degree with uh with everything that you've been through it's almost as if i wanted to understand what i went through like there was this part of me as like there felt a lot of stuff in my childhood that was like undone and i wanted to not only understand what had happened but also understand why i am the way i am and then also understand people because i still had that social aspect that i didn't understand and so i think studying psychology was more like i obviously am not understanding the social dynamics here i'm going to study it so i can be better at masking and make friends easier shit i mean when you talk about your abandonment issues i mean abandonment from your biological parents sure he felt abandoned from your adopted parents abandonment at the actual facility yeah abandonment by the 10 girl the nine other girls and kenny and whatever her name is yeah it's a lot of abandonment and actually now that you bring it up i guess i've never we have all these stages of waking up and i'm having like a little wake-up moment that you're right the three years in chrysalis was probably the most amount of abandonment i felt and it was from mary and kenny because i was so desperate for their approval and i've talked to so many girls during that same period of time and everyone wanted to be kenny's favorite and he had favorite girls and the favorite girls got the most attention um kenny would do kenny would do this thing when he was happy with you and like his favorites he would come up behind you and he would like grab the back of your neck like right here and he would squeeze really really hard and it hurt but your excited at the same time because it's like ow but oh my god kenny's kenny's happy with me and so you felt pain along with happiness and he would do the same thing if you were sitting next to him in the suburban if this was like my knee he would go like this and he would squeeze that part above your knee that like is ticklish like you know where you're really ticklish and it hurt because he's like squeezing hard but it also meant he was happy because he would never do that he doesn't touch the girls when he's unhappy with you that means i'm doing something right and so when that wasn't happening i was devastated and or when he's doing it to other girls and he's mad at me um the kind of things that were like said to me uh you know i remember listen to this one i remember being at the table and we were all eating dinner we all ate dinner at this gigantic wooden table in the in the dinner in the dining room and you had to eat what was offered and i was the pickiest eater you could ever meet i had never had salad until until i arrived at chrysalis so like this was this was a a culture shock for me and they were forcing me to eat salad and i'm sitting there and i would try to put all the salad in my mouth at once and chew it and with like holding my nostrils and then i would drink it like i'd swallow it like a pill but this time i gagged and i ended up throwing up on my plate and he forced me to eat it because holy you have to eat what's on your plate and he he said that i was being dramatic i just threw the photo food up and then he made me eat my throat yeah or it could be as simple as like i'm putting this was in my journal and i didn't remember this so thank god i have three and a half years of journals i was eating pancakes and i was just going like this with the syrup over it and it accidentally went over the plate onto the place mat and kenny yelled at me and he called me a pig so like simple things like that that you hear on it on a daily basis and they just kind of chip away like oh he's mad at me oh such crazy disappointment i wish kenny would like me and i don't know what it was but it was about kenny everyone wanted kenny like to be on his good side could you talk about the shame that you just felt on the break yeah um you know we took a break i go into the bathroom i'm touching up my lipstick and i just was looking in the mirror and that's when it hit me like right in my solar plexus i felt this like bubbling up of just shame and guilt and i had just finished talking about chrysalis and and marion kenny and the effects that it's had in my life and i all of a sudden was like oh you know mary and kenny are gonna probably see this and they're gonna be so disappointed and this is this is over 20 years over 20 years ago and i still have that knee-jerk reaction to want to please them and even through my advocacy work you know i do all these great things i help pass the law or like you know these things that i'm proud of and there's always that part of me that wonders well i wonder if if they see this on the news i wonder if they'll be proud of me i wonder if they'll hate me i you know i can't stop thinking about them it feels personal yeah yeah like you're personally attacking them and it shouldn't feel like that because all i'm doing is talking about my experiences um from having relationships with them and and how it still impacts me and it shouldn't impact me like this isn't it weird how the human psyche is like you yeah you feel you feel like you're a part of the human psyche yeah i feel like i'm part of the human psyche yeah i feel like i'm part of the human psyche yeah i feel like i'm part of the guilt like you're somebody over that wronged you yep exactly i think we're more apt to do that almost for the people that have harmed us the most like the like the abusive relationships i've been in so you're the one that put yourself in this situation with me but why the do i feel guilty it's almost like because the relationship is void of any guilt or remorse so it's like you're trying to fill the place maybe this should have remorse in this kind of interaction or in this relationship so i'm going to make up for it because it's weird that it doesn't exist i i don't know do you talk to any of the girls that you're in this place with i'm in contact with quite a few of them what do they think i mean most of them are knew it was bad when it was back then. I'd say out of the girls that I know I was probably the worst brainwashed. I probably got it the worst. And one of my really good friends, I won't say her name, but I love her to death. She was friends with me from getting out of the program all the way till now. And she knew it was bad when it was there, but I didn't. And I remember 15, 17 years later starting to wake up. And I remember calling her and I was like, "Hey, so when we had Circle and like Kenny and Mary would say these things, or they'd shame us about all this stuff, like, was that like not okay?" And she goes, "Yeah, that was abuse." And I'm like, "Why didn't you say anything to me?" And she was like, "You weren't ready. I've been waiting for you to be ready." Because who is it for her to say like whether I should have a feeling about it or not? And I probably, if not, I probably wouldn't have a feeling about it. If I was programmed enough, would have been like, "No, you're wrong." And it could have affected us. You have to be ready. You have to make your own decision about your experiences and forcing someone to come to that. Oftentimes, whether it's a cult survivor or just any kind of experience you're not ready to handle yet, you're going to run. You're going to run away from the person that's trying to force it on you. And so she did the right thing. But there were also people, Kenny had a favorite and she was the favorite forever. And she was talked about all the time for many, many years after she left. And unfortunately, what was it? Maybe two and a half years ago, I saw on Facebook a rant by her in the middle of the night. And it was on her Facebook feed and there was probably like 80 posts in like 12 hours. And it was definitely a rant and there was a lot about Montana and about hurting kids. And I said, "Shit. She woke up." And there was that part of me that was like, "Oh, no." And I didn't do anything. And I just kind of was like, "Oh, wow. Okay. I guess maybe she's waking up. I'm assuming she's talking about this. It means that." And then a couple of months later, she ended up passing away. And I don't know the full story. I don't know if it was a drug overdose or suicide. I'm not sure. But those are both very common in the survivor community, substance abuse issues and suicide. So she's no longer with us. And she marked the fourth, I think, the fourth chrysalis girl that's been lost. And so when you have that many staring you in the face, you really start to realize things. So that was kind of a sign for me since she was the most brainwashed in my mind. Once I woke up, I realized, yeah, she was definitely. And so seeing her wake up right before was eye-opening. And I know a couple girls that have come after me and said that everything I'm saying is wrong and chrysalis saved their life. And it probably did. I mean, I'm not saying people can't have good experiences at all. I validate that 100%. They both can be true at the same time. Someone can go through an experience and not be traumatized. And another person you're sharing your space with can. And so I do know there are some girls that are completely thinking nothing was wrong the entire time, whether they believe that or it's cognitive dissonance. Who knows? How fast in college did you start to realize things maybe weren't the way they were supposed to be? I didn't. I just changed what I was doing. No, I just changed what I was doing because it wasn't working and kept masking. Even with a psychology degree, you didn't realize? It took me having my own kids and knowing what I would and wouldn't want my kids to go through and have. And like relationship dynamics, I wouldn't want to be there with certain relationships. So it really took me. And this is the way that I explain it. I had no self-confidence at all. I faked it. I appeared to others to have confidence, but I did not. And so when you have no self-confidence and you're thinking about whether something's abusive or not, if you don't hold yourself in high regard, then not a lot of things are gonna be abusive because you deserve it. Because you're not a good person. You're not lovable. You're not likable. So it's not a big deal. But when you have kids, you take yourself. It's not about confidence with yourself. You love your kids and you want the best for your kids. And so you have a much higher bar of what's gonna be not tolerated. And so once you're able to separate yourself, it's not about you being treated. It's someone you love. It's a lot easier to see. And then once you see it and you realize it, you have to think about every single memory. And then you have to kind of play it in your head like a movie and recategorize it. And you're like, "Oh, that was abuse. That was abuse. That's not fun. Untag. Abuse." Wow. Yeah. So how did this stuff pop in your head when you had kids? Because you're not sending your kids to these places. Hell no. Yeah. Hell no. I think the first thing that I realized was the relationship dynamics between Kenny and Mary and me. And I think it was one of my kids got a therapist for the first time. And we were going to sessions and seeing how they would react. And then a memory would pop up about Mary and Kenny about something that happened in that session. And would I have want that to happen to that kid that was in the therapy? And I would be like, "Oh my God, wait. What else did they do that I'm not okay with?" And then you make parenting decisions and thinking about what if I would make the decisions they made for me for my kids. If I was to say, "Well, Jackson, you had a glass of milk and you know that we don't have milk unless it's cookie day. And so now you have a consequence. You need to go outside and you need to put rocks into a wheelbarrow and just move them from one side of the yard to the other. And that's your consequence." So if I started thinking about things that they did to me in Chrysalis or had me do and thinking about doing it to my kids. And that's when I realized like, "Oh, that's really fucked up. Would this cause CPS to be called on me?" And for a majority of the things, I'd be like, "Yeah, if this was happening to one of my kids or one of my kids' friends, I would call. I would make this call." If I knew a therapist is having wrestling matches with one of my kids, yeah, I would call. Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Well, I'd probably do more than call. Right. Right. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. So how did this turn into what it's turned into? As far as- What you're doing. The book. The book. Passing laws. Yeah. So you had these, you just had like a series of epiphanies. I did. I did. You still have them? Yes. I guess so, because we just have- Yeah, I just had another one. The true waking up really came in periods. First, it was the first suicide that happened, right? Right. Losing the first program friend. And I started recategorizing some of the things, and I thought about it as like, "Oh man, you know, Chris Lewis was kind of fucked up." You know, like, "Oh, some of that stuff was kind of fucked up," like in my head, and just how I experienced it. But it kind of stayed still in a little pocket of, it wasn't abuse. That name didn't come until much later. It was just kind of like, "Oh, that's fucked up." And then the second part was when Paris Hilton's documentary came out. And I hear this from many survivors, how much This Is Paris allowed them to really, truly wake up. And the reason why is, again, it took me out of myself and my own experience, because of my confidence being so low. So, in This Is Paris, it's really the first time the industry got talked about. And the fact that there isn't just Chrysalis, and at this point, I had no idea. There's a lot of different programs. And not only are there tons of different programs, it's a $23 billion a year in public fund industry. And wait, oh, there's private equity backing it? What? Oh, wow. There's a community of survivors? Wait, huh? So, once that aspect came into it, it was like, I remember breaking down, crying my eyes out. I was like, eight months pregnant, I remember, with Bentley. And Ben came in, my husband Ben came into the room, and I'm sobbing. And he's like, "Do you want me to?" I'm like, "Just go away. Just go away. Oh, my God." And I was just like, freaking out. Because that's the time I was like, "I was abused." I was like, what happened to me is not okay. And it's happening in a much larger scale. This is not just about me. And I woke up in that way, but it still stayed in that container. It still was like, right there. And I'd start Googling things, you know, being like, I didn't have a troubled teen industry like, named to it yet. But it was more like, boarding school hurt, boarding school trauma. I had no idea how to put any of this stuff together. It stayed like that until my husband, who's a recovering addict and alcoholic, had to go to an inpatient stay during his recovery. And all of a sudden, I got this call from an unknown, like, restricted number. And it was Ben. And he said, his voice was shaking, and he said, "I'm being abused." And I was like, "What?" And there was that part of me that was activated, that little kid, that 15-year-old, where I was, like, no. Like, abuse? Like, I gotta do something to help, right? And I told him what his rights were. I said, they can't, you know, they can't do this. They can't do that. Just stay where you are. I'm on my way. And I had Bentley, who was like, six months old at the time, I had my nanny meet me on the side of the highway to transfer Bentley into a car seat in her car, to take him so that I didn't have to go pick Ben up with him. And on that drive is when that last part of the major wake-up happened. And it was me realizing that in that moment, I was being the adult that I needed back when I was 15. And I was going to rescue someone from institutional abuse and feeling helpless in the way that I needed to be. And that's when I realized that that's what I want to be. That's what I wanted to do, and that's my purpose. I want to be what the kids in the facility need and who I needed when I was there. Hope. Um, and purpose. Knowing there's a life after the pain that they're in right now. And that's when I made the decision that I wanted to do something about it. And that's, you know, going to pick Ben up. They'd already kicked him out of the facility and he's, like, on the street. All because he wanted to move facilities, by the way. That's it. He just didn't want to use them anymore. And he wanted to be transferred somewhere else. And they had this big issue, wouldn't give him his records. I mean, it was-- it was bad. Um, and a perfect example of the institutional abuse that's going on within the rehab world, right? So, that made me realize I need to do something about my world. And that-- I think it was probably a couple months later, I decided that I was going to start a non-profit. And then, obviously, a lot of therapy and a lot of EMDR, maybe doing four hours a week for six months before I was able to be sure that I could be grounded enough for this work. 'Cause you obviously hear about a lot of stuff. -But that's-- -Did EMDR work? Oh, yeah. EMDR was a lifesaver. It honestly-- honestly was. It allows you to touch on the things that are, like, the most traumatic for you without talking about it. So, you don't have to use the words that may be triggering, the adjectives, the feelings. All you do is you think about the way that it makes you feel, and then you, using rapid eye movements, are able to kind of re-tag that again. So, let's say a certain experience in your past makes you feel, "I am not worthy." That's the negative. And so, as you're watching the light go back and forth, the bilateral stimulation, all of a sudden, you'll feel that "I'm not worthy" turn into, "I mean something." And all of a sudden, it's not about the experiences, it's about the way you feel about the experiences. They're re-tagged, and that was what was so powerful is I don't have to think about the bad shit. I just feel differently and more empowered -about the bad shit without touching it. - Interesting. Yeah. It-- It-- Honestly, for people with CPTSD, PTSD, it's a-- it's a godsend, for sure. I've heard a lot about it. I've never done-- Yeah. And it works fast. If you're a quick-- Like, I was a very quick processor. And if you're a quick processor, you can, like, get over things very, very quickly. And it's all about, like, your feelings around certain circumstances. - Wow. - Yeah. How did this all affect your relationships with men? You know, I think that it made me very-- You know, I mentioned earlier, like, it's a-- They're kind of grooming us to be, like, perfect abuse victims. I think that I went on to try to find guys that treat me like Kenny. And I think I looked for men that are aggressive and, um, make me feel like I'm not enough, so that I have to work for approval. I think that that was a pretty big carry-through. - You're looking for your normal. - Yeah. - And I-- - Attracted to what's normal. Yeah. Exactly. - Which isn't normal. - That's what was modeled for me. I mean, and that's the sad thing, and probably why all the girls wanted-- - Your normal. - Right. That's why-- But I think that's why the girls wanted Kenny's attention so much. They're girls. And during that time in adolescence, it's really important to have a male father figure, because that's teaching us how we should be treated, what to look for when we grow up, and that male relationship really matters in that time. So, you know, it made me-- So you sought out abusive relationships. Yeah. I think-- I think I instinctively did. Because I was mimicking the way that I felt about myself. It didn't make sense to be treated well in a relationship if I didn't feel like I deserved to be treated well. And so I think I instinctively was-- by no way was I, like, "Hmm, I'm gonna choose that guy over there because he's gonna treat me like shit." It definitely wasn't conscious. Um, I would just realize I kept falling hard for the people who treat me like shit. Or, you know, treat me like an option. And that's it. How do you change that? By gaining confidence. By realizing I don't need anyone. And really, it took my whole-- It's kind of another phase at the wake-up. My whole world tumbled. And my health was failing. I had had, you know, 12 surgeries. I'm losing organs like crazy. My body is, like, shutting down from all of this-- What do you mean you're losing organs like crazy? I mean, I-- I was so sick for so long. Like, I had appendix burst. I lost my tonsils from getting constant strep throat. I lost my gallbladder. I, you know, I just kept having these things go wrong. Constantly sick. And it wasn't until I really looked at the abuse and everything that I was ignoring that that stopped and that went away. And, you know, I still deal with autoimmune conditions from having being-- having an activated nervous system for so long as I did. But, you know, all the issues really started to resolve once I started to stop pretending that I didn't go through something really horrible. Um, and so once I was able to do that, it-- You know, I had a-- I call it the trauma spiral of 2018. And it really forced me to-- I was having really bad anxiety and super bad panic attacks. Like, we're talking. horrible panic attacks. Daily. Daily. And it got to a point where I was agoraphobic, I was scared to leave the house. Um, I was scared that if I had a panic attack in public, no one would be able to help me and I would die. Like, it was really bad. And it took having a really traumatic, um, experience in 2018 of everything. It was like a storm of bad things. Ben broke up with me. Um. And then all of a sudden, it was like this trauma. And I had a panic attack for two months. Straight. Non-stop. -Two months straight. -Damn. Two months straight. Um, I had to take Benadryl around the clock just so I could, like, function. And, uh, because I was so panicked all the time. And that was really the base. That's when I started doing things that are healthier for me and making better decisions, working out, weight training, you know, better food choices, and started building up my confidence. And then I think, one, once I. Really, once I started on silence and I found my purpose, um, and-- which is really turning my pain into purpose. That is my purpose. And, um, putting it to good use and trying to change the world for the better, that's when I started gaining a lot more confidence. And with the confidence came my ability to just feel like I am worth it. And that other part of me and needing someone to treat me like shit kind of went away. And it was slow, but it went away. - You've been through two abusive marriages. - Yes. So, yes. Ben is my third marriage, yeah. How long do the other ones last? Uh. Well, the first one, he proposed after, like, two weeks. So, obviously, you know, I was a mess to say yes to that. But, uh, that lasted-- It was on and off, 'cause a lot of times women go back, right? Because, you know, of-- We believe what they told us, and we believe, you know, we've got really bad. We don't do well when we're alone in those beginning stages. And so, that, in total, two years, I think. But, like I said, I left for a good six months, had the baby-- had a baby away from him, separated, and then I went back. So, there was a lot of time that we weren't actually in the same house together. Uh, but I think, like, two years, two and a half total. So, not very long. How about the next one? Around the same, like, two and a half. Around that. -Damn. -Yeah. And so, but it really-- It was after the second one that I really start-- I just realized, like, I gotta start working on myself here. I'm making the, you know, same decision over and over again. And, um, I was choosing guys who was choosing me instead of choosing me so that I can become the person that gets to choose who. Like, you know, I just wanted anyone to make me feel special and make me feel like I mean something because of all the damage that all those adolescent years did to make me feel like I'm nothing. I was told so often how little I am. And how, you know, who I am is not lovable. It's really hard to counteract that. The Lemonati has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons? Not a coincidence. Big Lemon has been pulled out of the closet. They've been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. Now lime comes first. 7UP. Flip the sip. Milo's Pro Rewards members save more with member volume discounts on eligible orders through a quote of $2,000 or more. Not a member? Join for free today. Vine with any other discount, including but not limited to contract and or special pricing. Details at lowes.com slash terms. Subject to change. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a miracle that, you know, that you've moved past it. The puritans have moved past it. Yeah. You know, I have. And, you know, I can sit here and say that I do mean something and everyone means something. And the fact that I believed that for so long, you know, it's sad. I can't get that time back. But, you know, I can sit here and say to the people that feel like that, like, you can't feel different. And yeah, you just have to you have to believe in yourself and believe in the people that believe in you and stop. Stop listening to the to the people who you think their words have weight. And they really they really don't. Have you ever been contacted by any of these facilities? For speaking out? No. That's surprising. Yeah, I know. It is surprising. The I also work with a ton of attorneys and, you know, with building our attorney directory, I've got a lot of attorneys that I work with and think I'm great. And, you know, so, you know, it's just like, all I do is talk about my experiences and take other people's experiences and verbatim put them on our socials. So there's not, really, much they can do. You know, I've gotten subpoenas. I, you know, have to deal with those just because of that's the nature of litigation going on in the industry and having an archive with program information on it and stuff. But no, I've never, Kenny Mary have never reached out to me, except for in college. And I'm really surprised, like Diamond Ranch Academy hasn't come after, you know, after Taylor Goodridge died there. I spoke out a lot, me and her family, we went, we went crazy about talking about what happened to her. I've never been reached out by them. What are your parents? When did you tell your parents? I told them I come out, I told them, like, literally not that long before on silence was started. So they didn't even get that much time to be like, Oh, shit, like this is going on. She's about to start a nonprofit. But it was in probably the end of 2021. And right before, right before I started on silence, I started talking about it. And at first, my mom and dad were like, I remember the first time I said abusive. I think I used the word abusive. When I talked about chrysalis, I said something like, yeah, chrysalis was abusive to me. And my mom and dad were like, Well, wait, Meg, you know, like, like, that's a really powerful word. And I said, Yeah, it's a really powerful word. Do you want to hear why I say that? And I started talking about it. And you could see the light coming. They're like, Oh, my God, because they had the realization. That all the things that they were being told by the staff and Mary and Kenny were not actually happening. And that the things that were bad that were happening, we weren't allowed to tell them and they had that realization. And because all they we haven't talked about chrysalis. So all they knew was what they were told, obviously. So it took me saying I went through this stuff. And they're like, Oh, shit. And what people don't understand is that even though they didn't go to chrysalis, they had their own wake up period. Like they had to wake up to they were programmed. They were brainwashed to do you blame them? No, my God, no. My like, my dad is the chair of our board. Like he's one of my biggest donors. And he's one of my biggest advocates, my mom and dad, like they, they are one of the first people to be like, Oh, I'll write a letter to Congress. I'll write a letter to the, you know, lawmakers telling them they need to pass this bill like they don't want what happened to me to happen to other kids. And thankfully, they're like that, because that's hard to find. To be able to say, like, Oh, I messed up. I listened to the wrong people. And my daughter is hurt because of it. But instead of denying what happened to me, they're like, Okay, let's fight this. Let's fight this together. You know, and it was it was a very powerful moment, right after unsilent started, you know, Paris Hilton, her team, and unsilence and a huge group of survivors, we all went to DC to advocate for a federal bill. And my dad was on the lawn next to me with the megaphone. Talking about how parents are deceived. Parents are lied to. And that is a very powerful moment to be sitting there. And he was him and my mom were the ones who made this decision, but they're taking responsibility. And they're standing there and they're advocating for me and for all of their survivors and all of their parents for change. And so it's very cool. Yeah. Wow. Are you and Paris working together? Yes. I mean, her team and I. So this happened to her too? Yeah, yeah. The interesting thing is, is if you watch This is Paris, she uses when she's talking about when she was abducted, because she was abducted as well. You can see that in the documentary. So that shit's totally normal. I mean, it's not normal. No, it's not normal. But get this, the same thing that was said to her was said to me, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. How is that possible? How is it possible that two different companies, probably two different companies are using the exact same, verbatim language? And I guarantee if I talked to someone that was abducted last week, it was along the same lines what they heard too. So yeah, Paris went to multiple facilities, actually. Yeah. So Paris has done lots of hard work in legislation. So she's worked a lot in policy work. So when needed, I collaborate with their policy team to help with certain states. And whether it's the language, like, I help with the language, I help with the language, I help with the language, I helped on the project of Montana with HB 218 and helping pass that law. But then also, like, helping get the community together. They're working on a lot of different states right now, and different policy work, and a bunch of them. And how do you get survivors randomly when you don't have notice, and you need them to call their senator, or write a letter, and they need it from that exact state. So having, you know, I kind of work with them with helping with, all right, let's get survivors together. Let's find as many people from Michigan. Let's, you know, so in that way. Open movement. Yeah. And, you know, we, you know, she had a recent documentary come out, came out like a month ago, and we put on a showing for that for the survivor community. And, you know, they care a lot about making sure that what Paris is doing is reaching the survivors. And, you know, I'd help amplify that and make sure that, because we're all in this together, you know, like. How many girls are in this right now? How many, how many kids? In facilities. That's so, that's one of the hardest things to be able to determine. And it's part of the reason why legislation, why, why the stop, stopping Institutional Child Abuse Act was, or the stop Institutional Child Abuse Act was passed by Paris, is there's no data. Like, there's literally no data. And so the only way to get an understanding of how many kids are in facilities at this point, because we've got private placement, right? So parents can drive their kids to a facility, or child welfare, or juvenile justice, or through the educational system. And school districts, school district dollars are going to fund kids to these programs. So there's so many different pipelines. And so the only way to really know is to do FOIA or grandma requests for ICPC data, which is Interstate Compact for the placement of children. It's the piece of paper that, basically for any adoption, any kid crossing state line, any kid going to a facility, there has to be a document that states this kid is crossing state lines. It basically protects it from being trafficking, right? Because you've got to say this kid is passing for their safety, to this facility, this is where they're going, this is the permission, you know, to have that all good. So you'd have to FOIA or grandma request that for every single state. And a lot of them are, you know, kind of segmented in weird ways in the agencies in the state. So sometimes it's like per county, so you might have to do it per county. And then for every state, it's a different agency. You'd have to do that in the entire, like, country. And the timeline of getting those back could be sometimes six months, nine months, the year's almost over. So now the data, you know, so it's just so difficult. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think it's so difficult. But we have gained an understanding of industry, like, what we can expect. And I'd say about 150 to 200,000 kids find themselves in a facility in a given year. 200,000 kids. Up to two, yeah, 120, 200,000 is our estimate. What would you like to see happen? Would you like to see these facilities just disappear? Do you want regulation? I, we can't, yeah. You want retribution? We can't say, I need kids to be safe. And we can't be sending kids into these facilities unless we have regulation that can ensure the safety of the kids. It's like hospitals. Are there any, are there any facilities that you would recommend? No, because there is no, there's no regulation, uh, federally seeing these, overseeing these facilities. And I, I know from my investigations that the, uh, you know, we know that the states are really responsible for setting the expectations and the licensing and the standards for the facilities. And I see on a state level what's happening and what's falling, you know, what's falling through the loops and, and what's, what's happening and the holes that are there. And kids are dying. And I don't think we should be placing kids in this industry until we can make sure not only are kids not dying, but that based on outcomes that kids are having very standardized outcomes and they're positive. You know? There would be no hospital that would ever exist if 85% of the people that went into the hospital and left called themselves survivors of that hospital. Is that, is it 85%? Oh, I mean, I would have no idea because the people with good experiences don't come to me, right? I do know they do exist and there are people who have legitimately good experiences and I validate that 100%. But until we can make sure everyone has that good experience, we can't be sending kids here. We can't. Damn, man. What kind of traction have you gotten? We've made some really good traction. All I know is that back when I was telling you I was doing the Googling, I was like, you know, troubled teen industry, blah, blah, blah. There was nothing. There was nothing. Type in troubled teen industry now. Unsilenced is like number three. We have over 3,500 programs in our program archive and over 100,000 documents on those programs. That's DHS reports. That's 911 calls. That's like police camera footage that is personal records from survivors that redact it and give us what these look like behind the scenes. That's survivor testimonies and news articles. And, you know, this is largely thanks to Paris Houlton, too, for using her platform to be able to talk about everything she's been through. And we've gotten a lot of movement and we see programs closing. And most importantly, you were asking, you know, what do you want to happen? Man, I want justice. I want justice. What does that look like? It's hard because a lot of these states. Have really poor statutes of limitations, right? I know so many states where physical abuse, even bad physical abuse, you have one year. And, you know, look how long it took me to wake up. So, like, you know, statutes or statutes of limitations are really over by the time you're like, OK, I'm ready. And even if you know it's abuse, you have to be ready for that. You have to go to therapy. You have to, like, prepare yourself for litigation. So there's a lot of barriers when it comes to having that. But what I want to see is. You know, regulations over the programs become safer and the, you know, limiting their ability to rebrand under a new LLC when they get bad PR for, let's say, sexual abuse that's going on or lawsuits. That's many times what happens. They just say, oh, we're shutting down. And then quietly a new LLC forms. They pop up in the same building, same staff, new logo and say, hey, welcome to blank. And it's hard to keep track. Of that for us. There's nothing that alerts us that this is happening. I want to see, you know, predators not be able to move from facility to facility. You see that a lot. If there's someone that is at program a lot of times, if there's allegations of sexual abuse, they'll just be fired quietly. And what do they do? They go somewhere else in the same, you know, same. I mean, do you have a solution for that? How would how would we stop that? I mean, if there's no record. It's it seems to me. it's almost impossible it has to be on the parents right i think it has to be dual right this is an industry in any industry look at the health care industry why can't we model it after the way that hospitals are run right i think that there's boards and there's licensing like anyone can start a program anyone i could be like oh i'm gonna start a program right now i've never graduated high school but i got a log cabin out in the woods we can make that happen let's just get a log cabin in the middle of montana so there's no regulations on who can start them there is very little regulations on the amount of experience most of the staff at these programs carrying out therapeutic techniques are 18 to 25 no experience with kids let alone troubled kids and kids that are going through trauma and experiencing you know mental health crises so seeing regulations and oversight in that way we needed that to shift right but also like i'm not enough of a business expert but like we got to look into this private equity stakeholders and like you know the incentivization of really profit margins over care and you know is should private equity really be in behavioral health it really just inherently incentivizes the wrong thing and so you know we need to look at that but i think that yeah parents parents need to be able to do that and i think that's a really important thing to realize that i know it seems like a really easy answer like i am so worried about my kid i am so scared they're going to die or you know fill in the blank it's really easy when someone says hey i can help you with that and you're going to be so much less stressed i got you i got you like it's really hard when you're that stressed to not believe that and want to believe that these people are on your side but really thinking twice and you know going to our website and looking at the red flag list and typing that into google um what's on the red flag list oh so many is it facilities or is it no it's things within facilities to keep an eye out so are they monitoring contact with the outside world is there level systems and phase-based systems are uh do you have a discharge date at the time that you arrive do you know what you need to do exactly and when you're going to be leaving um are there uh any kind of forced labor any kind of removal of food and essential items as a form of punishment you know these there's so many different things you know all the way to like what does school look like is it you know accreditation and licensing like all those things and we just basically ask like if you're going to send your kid like if they have any of these red flags take a pause because these are the ones that we see in problematic and allegedly abusive programs damn man and that's why we have an archive right we've got over 3500 programs in this and we've got a lot of programs that are in this so if you're like well i am thinking about sending my kid to discovery ranch you go to unsilence.org you go to the program search and you type in discovery ranch and you're going to see uh the dhhs binder and you're going to see all of the allegations you're going to see lawsuits you're going to see survivor testimonies and you're you know we need to re-educate the public here and so they they parents can't make informed decisions unless they have all the information and silence make sure you have that information what's that website unsilence.org yeah you're doing solid work thank you you're welcome thank you welcome i appreciate you being open to hear it because it's it for many years i mean advocacy around this has been going on for decades i'm for real and this is the first time i've heard of it yeah what does that tell you right we've been operating in a silo we've been you know screaming from the rooftops and no one's been listening and what it means to have someone like you listen and not only listen but be able to provide you know and amplify our voices i'm not sitting here as meg applegate i'm sitting here as meg applegate and all the survivors and to be able to hopefully make them all feel very validated it's pretty big i'm sure they will thank you for that you're welcome meg i wish you the best of luck thank you where's the next legislation going to be oh man um there's some rollbacks that i i've heard about that are kind of coming so in the past year or so we've made a lot of progress well not me i guess i haven't personally worked on all of it but i've heard uh like oregon did a lot of great work uh senator gelster has done incredible work over there and utah has had a few bills that have passed that have made it you know better and i've heard word that there's been a lot of pushback on pulling back and uh you know i'm not sure if that's the right word but i'm not sure if that's uh recently so i think there's going to be work there that we have to fight against and then i did hear some recent stuff from someone on paris's team about michigan there's something going on in michigan so i think that they're hard at work you know and we're always needing more survivors to come forward and be like from those states and talk about how that state had a facility where they were hurt it's really powerful to have survivors in those states when you're you want people to follow in silence and keep an eye out because we're always looking for survivors to help with kind of facilitating that policy change in the states tell me about this attorney directory yeah so our attorney directory we launched um a couple years ago and it's been incredible it's our way of really getting into the legal advocacy work so we created this directory to connect survivors of institutional abuse and through our website are able to see all these attorney partners that we've been able to make throughout the entire country that are able and willing to take on survivor cases on contingency which is a big deal and so it allows unsilenced as kind of the hub of survivor information to have survivors who trust us come to our site and see these attorneys that we trust to take care of them and in these institutional abuse cases and and through our legal advocacy work it has it's been amazing we've been able to get whistleblowers and witnesses and other plaintiffs for cases because we have this huge huge community of survivors just ready to tell their stories so what we do we'll put out an experience survey for fill in the blank whatever program and within minutes we're getting stories submitted and all of a sudden we're seeing names be the same and maybe it's the same name as someone that's in uh has allegations in this lawsuit that we know about and we're able to connect these people to access for access to justice and they wouldn't have known about it right there's so much litigation going on and we're able to connect these people and we're able to connect these people to access for justice and they wouldn't have known about it right there's so much litigation going on and we're able to connect these people that's going on within this industry and our job and what we really want is to make sure that litigation is known because chances are, like, there's so many programs that have litigation that you could have an option of being able to participate in it in some way, even just to give information. Maybe there's a staff member that was problematic, or you know something. Anyone can help. And so being able to facilitate justice has been so incredible to see. And we did a little survey at the end of last year, and within about 18 months, we have at least 200 lawsuits that we know about that Unsilenced was able to, through our website or personally, me working with attorneys helping them investigate programs, there's been 200 lawsuits that we've had a hand in, in any way, shape, or form in the past 18 months. Wow. Which is crazy. And it's really the only way I have seen problematic and allegedly abusive programs actually have any accountability. This is all on unsilenced.org? Yes. So you have, you have, what, 3,500 different facilities that people can dig into, and see how they're doing. Yeah. And I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really, I think that's really going on in there. Everything that's been documented by survivors, DHS, all this other stuff. You have the list of attorneys that can help with survivors. What else is on there? We've got the red flag list. We've got survivor support resources. We offer free of cost support groups for survivors across the country. And we've got mental health professionals that facilitate those groups. We offer independence packs, which are sent out to kids that age out of these programs. And like you mentioned, they're just like sent out into the world. We've got a laptop that are full of resources, like how to write a resume and resume templates. They've got gift cards, books, essential items, hygiene items. And we send them to kids that are battling unstable housing across the country. And we offer those free of cost. And the attorney directory, as I mentioned. And yeah. How are you funding all this? Well, by donors. We really rely on the generosity of our donors. And, and that's another thing is, you know, all these resources take, it takes a lot and we're a very small team. So honestly, donating is something that the public can do to help us be able to have a positive impact on survivors and also the kids that are still in facilities and, and, and making sure that we're fighting for the kids' safety right now. Because I'm telling you, I've been involved in cases where kids die every year since this has happened. So. Damn. Well, we'll donate right after this. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, let us know if you need any more top cover. Yeah. Be happy to help. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. Best of luck. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. 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