I was kidnapped in the night and taken to one of these in 2002. My mom finally figured out how awful it was after 14 months and came to get me. The school convinces the parents to not believe any bad things their kids might sneak through on one of their once-a-week call privileges, and they also make older students sit in the phone room and listen to the phone calls in case they need to cut you off.

If you’re being punished for anything (which is basically solitary confinement in public- you are limited to a booth 16 hours a day and nobody can talk to you unless they’re assigned to bring you homework from the school you’re forcefully missing) you also lose your rights to talk to your parents.

Further, there are a series of brainwashing events called propheets (some overnight or multi days long) that convince a LOT of students that they very very very much deserved to be taken away and that they must essentially repent and accept the program to “heal”. It was really upsetting to see kids who ordinarily struggled socially to 100% immediately fall im line and then become hall-monitor manipulative snitches.

I’m trying not to really get going about it bc I think the comic covers a lot of it, but only some of the kids come from rich families (and they’re ordinarily just spoiled, nothing more). Most of us learned that our parents mortgaged their houses or took out other high high interest loans. So, that got thrown in your face too “you’re such a piece of shit person that your own parents had to almost lose your house!”

And yeah they’d get in your face and scream as loud as adult men could scream until you’d break the fuck down and weep and scream as well.

I wish more parents would have been vocal when their kids told them the truth. They could’ve spared more families the trauma.

My school was in Idaho, where parents could petition for custody until their kids turned 19, so there were fucking ADULTS there that couldn’t leave without being tracked down and physically (violently) brought back and then put immediately “on a booth”.

Two of my friends I made there killed themselves not long after release.