The troubled teen industry is a large web of private programs whose sole intention is to "rehabilitate" troubled teens. Many of these programs are advertised as therapeutic boarding schools, drug rehab centers, religious academies, wilderness programs, etc. 

These programs are owned and operated by private groups that promise to help parents struggling to handle their youth who have issues with addiction, eating disorders, behavior, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.

In a program that is part of the troubled teen industry, parents sign over guardianship of their child to the program; this essentially gives the program power to do as they please to your kid. 

Youth who come out of these programs tell stories of physical abuse, sexual abuse, physical and chemical restraints, lack of health treatment, lack of basic needs such as food or water, conversion therapy, and the list goes on.

Someone I love with everything in me was sent to a program just like this. They made it out relatively unharmed. Yet, they still wear deep stretch marks all over their body from the extensive use of exercise as abuse.

The specific program they were sent to, Liahona Academy, has had multiple cases of abuse reported and nothing has been done. In 2010, Taylor Mangum died from a brain aneurysm at this facility. His parents insist that the facility had nothing to do with this child's death. Yet, multiple witnesses who were also forced to stay at the facility stated that the staff refused to call the police as this young boy cried out in pain. The staff made two other boys carry his body out to a van where they drove him to an urgent care. Witnesses were threatened with more abuse if they told anyone what they saw.

At this same facility, in 2019, a staff member was arrested and charged with second degree felony charges for child abuse. He threw a teen boy onto the ground and held him in a choke-hold. This boy ended up in the hospital with 11 staples in his head. This occurred only three months after my loved one left the facility.

I don't want any more children to endure the abuse that goes on in the troubled teen industry. Help me end these programs. Let's save our kids!