I sent my daughter to a "therapeutic" boarding school...

And I wish I hadn't.

It has been a long journey from when I first discovered that my daughter was developing a problem with substances until I learned about harm reduction and began to practice it in my own family. In this series of blog posts, I will share parts of my experience in the hopes that other moms can learn from mistakes I made and know that you are not alone!

Like many parents when my daughter started acting out, such as doing poorly in school and using alcohol, we spent probably a year thinking it was just teenage experimentation and not really understanding the severity of the problem. We didn’t think to lock up our alcohol, so there was a whole liquor cabinet available for her use. We eventually discovered that she’d been watering liquor down from the cabinet and drinking.

It all just came to fruition in the middle of one night when I heard a huge thud in the hallway. She was blacked out, face-planted on the floor. It was then that I thought, we’ve got to do something. We were able to get her to tell us more about what was really happening.

I became aware of Copper Canyon, which called itself a therapeutic boarding school, through the Dr. Phil show I am now embarrassed to say. My sister and I went out and began investigating this notion of a therapeutic boarding school. I decided I would find the best one for my daughter that I could, no matter how much it cost. Most of these therapeutic boarding schools are private pay. We narrowed it down, my sister and I flew out to the campus, heard the sales pitches, and took the tours. The people who give those tours say what they’re paid to say, and it all sounded too good to be true.

There are two ways to get your child to a therapeutic boarding school: to get them to go voluntarily, or to basically have them taken away in the middle of the night. That just didn’t seem right to me (at least I did one part of this right). I went back with information on the school and was able to convince my daughter to go willingly. My mother’s heart just could not stand the idea of putting my

daughter through the trauma of being kidnapped, and I found out later that the kidnapping is a major part of the traumas that young people go through at these places. She went willingly and she stayed there until she graduated from the program, which took her about eleven months.

What I didn’t know when my daughter went to an Aspen Education Group facility were the reports of sexual abuse, physical and verbal abuse, and that Aspen Education Group was one of the programs that continued to use Lifesteps Seminars. These are very much structured like Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT), similar to The Game in Synanon, a kind of ritual abuse that is considered to be about as close to brain washing as it comes. In these seminars, the youth were forced to reenact traumatic events in their lives in front of a large group. I will never forget hearing from her how horrible it was to re-live a severe childhood trauma in front of a large group of people with no support. They used tactics like attack therapy, manual labor, they had communication restrictions with family which caused major isolation, and emotional abuse.

The foundation on which they ran the Copper Canyon was by a step program. It was structured as levels, and as you move up a level, you earn privileges. My daughter would tell you that her main focus was just to fake the program and to move up in those levels as quickly as possible so she could get out. She wasn’t back for a month before she returned to use.

Everything was monitored: incoming and outgoing emails were screened, and phone calls were limited. Through the first three or four levels my conversations with her had to happen either before her therapy appointment so she was in with a therapist or after so she was always overheard. I did not realize at the time, just how controlling that was. The fear that was placed in them for saying anything negative about the program was huge. She would be punished by going back a level and losing privileges.

We went to a parents’ group program there. They had us crying and chanting on the floor. Then at the end of the seminar they had all the daughters come out to the parents dressed in white dresses with a daisy crowns on their heads. I just remember bursting out crying. Like what kind of cult is this? I didn’t put it all together until after or else I would have pulled her out immediately.

My daughter’s experience there set her on a trajectory that was so much worse than what I had sent her there for. She suffered PTSD as a result of going there. Girls ran away all the time.

At the last level she was able to come home for three days and go back. We had scheduled conversations with her “therapists” where they were controlling the narrative. They would say how well she was doing and how great the program was for her. There was nothing about what to do to support her when she got home, nothing helpful at all. We just thought we had her in the hands of the best experts.

Over the years, we’ve learned bits and pieces of what really happened, but not until much later. Trauma has a way of protecting itself. We didn’t even know about her childhood traumatic experiences until she was in her early twenties. Maybe as she felt safe to talk about it we’ve kind of heard bits and pieces, but we don’t pressure her about it. My husband and I have both dealt with tremendous guilt over sending her there, and all of the stuff we were told to do. We have asked her to forgive us, and she has. It is extremely difficult for parents to know what to do when our child is using drugs and it’s causing them harm, but when we make decisions that hurt them, it’s important that we own that and talk to our child honestly about it. We will feel guilt for putting our daughter through the trauma of sending her away and the suffering she went through at Copper Canyon for the rest of our lives. I am sharing our story in the hope that other parents can learn from our mistakes, and not believe the lies that the Troubled Teen Industry tells parents.

I want to make sure that people have resources before they think about sending their child away. I am not an advocate for sending children away for a long period of time. There are many other, more evidence-based ways to work with children and youth who are experiencing substance use and mental health problems. The organization Unsilenced, created and run by survivors of the Troubled Teen Industry, is an incredible source for resources on the industry and alternatives to institutionalizing your child. Our next entry will be an interview with Marissa Linderman, who is Director of Advocacy at Unsilenced and a survivor of the troubled teen industry, and Kimberly Renninger, a survivor who has been working in peer and family support and patient advocacy in the mental health industry for over fifteen years.

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