Why It's Time To Start Talking Now

My name is Joshua Demarest. I am a survivor of the Troubled Teen Industry. For a long time, I was silent about my experiences in these programs because I didn’t want to face the truth about what happened to me. But that’s not the only reason that I, or countless other survivors, stayed silent.

I also didn’t want the stigma of trauma. I didn’t want my new friends to see me as a collection of things that happened to me. I didn’t want people to define me based on what I had been through or what their preconceived notions of what a “troubled teen” was.

Looking back, I think part of that was because the programs that I attended, namely the therapeutic boarding school Carlbrook, stripped away my sense of self. I was afraid that people would see me as the damaged kid who went to a program like this because I didn’t see anything when I looked in the mirror. I couldn’t look at myself and see that emotional core that defines a person. They took that from me. And they did it because it is easier to control people when you supplant their identity with something of your own making.

It was 2007 when I began my journey into this industry, starting with the wilderness therapy program Second Nature Blue Ridge (now Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness). Why, then, am I just now beginning to speak out?

First, when I got out of Carlbrook, I spent just nine days at home before going straight to college. My life changed dramatically and I was busy trying to form a new identity. I thought I could just forget what happened and move on. Add to that the fact that I was thoroughly institutionalized - like all survivors of cults and intense behavior modification programs - that I didn’t really understand the full gravity of what I went through.

This was also before a lot of the research and advocacy for survivors in the TTI had gone public. Most of the narrative around these programs was coming from people like Dr. Phil, a noted proponent of programs like this who regularly sent child guests on his show straight into places like Turn-About Ranch. Also the mainstream conservative politicians of the time from Nixon to Bush had spent decades praising these “tough love” programs as the answer to why children were just so darned bad these days. To say that speaking out against these programs fell on deaf ears is just the best case scenario. At worst, I watched several peers face ridicule and disbelief, with people telling us that we deserved what we got for being such bad kids.

For me, there was a clear turning point. In 2026, nearly 17 years after graduating Carlbrook, my parents casually told me they had helped a family friend who had adopted a kid out of foster care find a therapeutic boarding school for that kid who, at just twelve years old, had been showing signs of extreme behaviors like climbing trees and not coming down until the fire department had been called.

Now if that doesn’t sound like the sort of behavior that should get a child - one who has undergone the trauma of foster care and adoption - locked up into programs that will further abuse and traumatize that child, it’s because it isn’t the behavior most people expect.

The vast majority of people assume that kids get sent to programs like these for doing heroin or running with gangs. Perhaps at one point that was what programs like these purported to treat, but these days the educational consultants and other entry points to this industry are pathologizing perfectly normal teenage behavior and convincing scared parents that these actions will end up with their child dead or in prison if they don’t get help right then.

Of course, we know this isn’t true. Most teenagers act out. It is actually a normal and (usually) healthy act of experimenting with independence. And most teenagers will grow out of their impulsive behaviors long before they face the worst-case consequences that these fearmongers predict.

I am starting to speak out and advocate for survivors of this industry because I needed someone who would do that for me. And it would be a betrayal of that version of me who was crying out for someone to fight for them. And so I decided it was time to start fighting for the hundreds of thousands of kids who are still getting sent into these programs.

But this isn’t advocacy based in anger. I am angry. We all are. You’d have to lack any sort of empathy not to be angry at the things that are done to these kids. But what I want to do with this platform is educate. I want to investigate the businesses that profit off of these children. I want to help parents make better decisions and avoid sending their kids to a program that will forever change their relationship. I want to work with therapists, social workers, survivors, journalists, and legislators to build a network that will create meaningful regulation for these industries and resources for the survivors.

Anger is great for tearing things down. And there are certainly elements of this industry that need to be torn down. But it will require more than that to build real change. And that is what I want to do. I’m hoping you’ll join me.