‘It was a cult’: Traumatizing troubled teens at Az facilities
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Outside the small town of Mayer, Ariz., 14-year-old Katie Farran and other teenage girls were engaging in a ritual they had done many times before.
At the Spring Ridge Academy, Farran and others gathered in a room for “Feedback Group,” a pseudo-group therapy that involves shouting grievances at other participants.
The teenage girls were encouraged to participate, told they needed to have things to say to their peers, who were there for reasons ranging from substance abuse, eating disorders or simply being victims of bad parenting.
“It was something you had to do,” Farran, now 39, said in an interview with the Arizona Mirror. “It was really humiliating to be called out in front of everybody.”
This style of “therapy” was born in the late 1950s, connected to a group known to many as a cult and connected to a string of crimes including attempted murder.
Now Spring Ridge Academy is facing legal repercussions after a mother of one of those teenagers filed a federal lawsuit claiming fraud, among other things, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million. But for survivors of Spring Ridge Academy and similar facilities for so-called troubled teens, the victory is just one small step towards greater accountability.
But Spring Ridge Academy, which closed in 2023, is just one part of a larger ecosystem, one that continues to use outdated therapies and procedures born out of a cult from the 1950s And it’s one that still has roots in Arizona.
“It is easy for people to kind of overlook us and think, ‘Oh, they were just kids,’ or especially, ‘Oh, they were just messed up kids,’ and not take us seriously,” Farran said. “I hope that people start listening.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/071624_teen_help_fraud/it-was-cult-traumatizing-troubled-teens-az-facilities/.
