S24 Ep4: This Could've Been You

Summary

Podcast Summary: Something Was Wrong – S24 Ep4: "This Could've Been You"

Introduction

In the heart-wrenching fourth episode of Season 24, titled "This Could've Been You," Broken Cycle Media's award-winning docuseries "Something Was Wrong" delves deep into the harrowing experiences of Leanne, a young survivor of the troubled teen industry. Released on July 31, 2025, this episode sheds light on the dark realities of wilderness therapy programs and their profound impact on young lives.

Leanne's Background and Family Dynamics

Leanne begins by sharing the tumultuous environment of her early childhood. Raised by a mother battling addiction, who paradoxically held a master's degree in child psychology and family therapy, Leanne's life was a battleground of manipulation and misdiagnosis. Her mother fabricated narratives to mask her addiction, falsely diagnosing Leanne with conditions like bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder from a tender age, leading to a barrage of psychiatric medications that left her feeling "cloudy" and emotionally numb.

Notable Quote:
Leanne describes her mother's dual nature: “There would be a side of that picture that is so beautiful and so warm and so loving and funny and kind. And then there is a side that is vicious and one that's angry.” ([08:06])

Experiences at Trails Carolina

At the age of 12, Leanne was sent to Trails Carolina, a wilderness therapy program. Her journey began abruptly, marked by a traumatic strip search that shattered her sense of safety. The program, marketed as therapeutic, instead subjected her to rigorous military-like routines, minimalistic living conditions, and punitive measures for minor infractions. Leanne recounts the relentless schedule of timeframes, silent hikes, and inadequate hygiene facilities that led to health issues like UTIs and pinworm infestations.

Notable Quote:
Reflecting on her arrival, Leanne states, “They kind of run through all these rules and I'm being explained how time frames work, how we do food, what phase work is.” ([18:24])

Transition to New Leaf Academy

After barely a month with her father, Leanne was moved to New Leaf Academy in Oregon. Unlike Trails Carolina, New Leaf appeared less physically demanding but introduced its own set of emotional challenges. Strict rules governed every aspect of life, from limited personal freedoms to invasive searches. Group therapy sessions aimed to break down the students, fostering an environment where Leanne felt her struggles were dismissed and internalized blame for her family's dysfunction.

Notable Quote:
Leanne shares a turning point at New Leaf: “I told her that one day they're going to make documentaries about places like this and that he's going to owe me one hell of an apology.” ([65:01])

Transition to Pacific Quest

Leanne's ordeal continued as she was transferred to Pacific Quest Wilderness in Hawaii, often referred to as "Princess Quest." While this program ostensibly met basic needs, it still enforced strict control and invasive procedures, including regular strip searches and limited communication privileges. The transition was another blow to her fragile sense of autonomy, further entrenching her trauma.

Notable Quote:
Describing Pacific Quest, Leanne remarks, “There's something called search of student that happened three times a day. You'd have to line up silently and they'd kind of shake through all your belongings.” ([73:29])

Impact of Tragedy and Program Closure

The closure of Trails Carolina in 2024, following the tragic death of a 12-year-old boy, marked a significant moment for Leanne and other survivors. Learning about the prior death of a 17-year-old in 2014 only intensified her anger and heartbreak, reinforcing the systemic failures of these programs.

Notable Quote:
Upon discovering the death at Trails Carolina, Leanne expresses, “It was devastating. We have a group chat and that's how I found out that this had happened. ... a lot of anger that this was allowed to happen.” ([79:40])

Relationship with Parents and Siblings

Leanne's relationship with her parents is fraught with complexity. While her father eventually became supportive, acknowledging past mistakes and advocating for her well-being, her mother remains a source of estrangement due to her ongoing struggles with addiction. The familial bonds with her siblings are both a source of love and tension, shaped by the differing environments they each navigated.

Notable Quote:
Leanne reflects on her father's support: “He actually has been so supportive of everything that I've done when talking about the things that I've gone through and has been able to, like, have super transparent and honest conversations with me.” ([77:14])

Healing and Moving Forward

Today, Leanne is on a path of healing, actively working on a memoir to chronicle her experiences. She emphasizes the importance of unlearning the harmful narratives imposed on her and regaining a sense of autonomy and safety. Through small acts of self-care and challenging lingering fears, Leanne is reconstructing her life beyond the confines of oppressive programs.

Notable Quote:
Describing her healing process, Leanne shares, “I'm learning how to regulate my nervous system, learning that I am safe and I am okay... it's a good physical reminder of my safety.” ([82:19])

Conclusion

"This Could've Been You" serves as a poignant reminder of the vulnerabilities faced by children in the troubled teen industry. Leanne's story is not just a personal narrative but a call to action for greater oversight and reform in therapeutic programs. Her resilience and pursuit of healing offer hope and underscore the imperative that no other child should endure similar trauma.

Final Note:
Leanne poignantly concludes, “This could have been you. ... I grew up in institutions, and I grew up in something called the troubled teen industry.” ([80:42])

Key Takeaways

• Systemic Failures: Wilderness therapy programs like Trails Carolina, New Leaf Academy, and Pacific Quest often fail to provide genuine therapeutic benefits, instead perpetuating trauma through punitive measures and lack of oversight.

• Emotional Manipulation: Leanne’s experiences highlight the manipulative tactics used by some programs to control and silence young individuals, undermining their autonomy and self-worth.

• Need for Reform: The episode underscores the urgent need for comprehensive reform in the troubled teen industry to protect vulnerable children and ensure accountability.

• Resilience and Healing: Despite enduring immense hardships, survivors like Leanne demonstrate remarkable resilience, paving their own paths to healing and advocating for change.

Relevant Quotes with Timestamps

• “[08:06]” – Leanne describes her mother's dual nature.

• “[18:24]” – Leanne recounts her first day with Trails Carolina.

• “[65:01]” – Leanne discusses a pivotal moment at New Leaf Academy.

• “[73:29]” – Leanne details the invasive procedures at Pacific Quest.

• “[79:40]” – Leanne reflects on the impact of the Trails Carolina tragedy.

• “[77:14]” – Leanne speaks about her improved relationship with her father.

• “[82:19]” – Leanne explains her healing journey.

• “[80:42]” – Leanne emphasizes the personal impact of her experiences.

Conclusion

Leanne's testimony in "This Could've Been You" is a powerful exposé of the hidden horrors within the troubled teen industry. It serves as both a memoir of personal struggle and a warning to society about the potential dangers lurking in ostensibly therapeutic environments. By sharing her story, Leanne not only seeks healing for herself but also aims to prevent other children from falling through the cracks of such flawed systems.

Transcript

[Tiffany Reese]

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics. Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children, which may be triggering for some listeners. As always, please consume with care. For a full content, warning sources and resources for each episode, please visit the Episode Notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season. Something Was Wrong and any linked material should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Today you'll meet Leanne, who despite her young age, is heartbreakingly already a survivor of three different programs across the United States. It's important to emphasize how recent leanne's experiences are. Leann attended these institutions from November 2017 through the summer of 2020 between the ages of 12 and 16. The first program she attended was a so called wilderness therapy program called Trails Carolina which was launched in 2008 by Wilderness Training and Consulting, LLC doing business as Family Help and Wellness. According to their website, Family Help and Wellness currently has 15 owner operated programs across five states. Broken cycle Media reached out to Family Health and Wellness for comment regarding allegations of abuse at programs under their ownership. In response, they said Family Help and Wellness FHW is unable to comment on pending legal matters or specific allegations. FHW and the affiliated programs it supports are strongly committed to advancing standards of care in residential treatment and behavioral healthcare. This includes active support for critical legislation such as the Stop Institutional Child Abuse act, along with other initiatives aimed at improving outcomes, oversight, accountability and transparency. FHW continues to advocate for improvements in the field that promote safer, more effective treatment for young people across the nation. End quote Trails Carolina marketed itself as providing therapeutic interventions and help for families with 10 to 17 year olds struggling with a wide array of of behavioral and emotional difficulties. End quote over the years, Trails Carolina faced mounting allegations of abuse and neglect, including the tragic death of a 17 year old due to hypothermia, multiple lawsuits accusing staff of failing to act on reports of sexual assault and misleading parents about program conditions in 2014. A decade later, February of 2024, a 12 year old boy died of asphyxiation due to smothering within 24 hours of arriving at Trails Carolina. Although the Office of the Chief Medical examiner for North Carolina listed the boy's manner of death as homicide, no charges were ultimately filed by the District Attorney within two weeks of the death. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that Trails Carolina had suspended admissions. All children were removed from their care, and the authorities had launched an investigation. According to a North Carolina News 8 article, in the year since the boy's death, Trails Carolina has settled a lawsuit, been sued two more times, had their licensure permanently revoked, and listed their camp property for sale. End quote. Trails Carolina was permanently closed in 2024. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was WR.

[Leanne]

Hi, my name is Leanne, and I've been to three different programs through the ages of 12 to 16. I attended Trails North Carolina, New Leaf Academy in Oregon, and Pacific west in Hawaii. My family dynamic was pretty rocky in my early childhood years. My mother is an addict, but the real doozy, I like to call it, is that she has her master's in child psychology and family therapy. So my mom, in order to divert attention from her addiction, would meet with psychologists and therapists to create a narrative that I had early signs of bipolar disorder at 8 years old, which is not something that you can even diagnose at 8 years old. I started therapy in second or third grade. I would bounce from therapist to therapist. One, because I didn't trust anybody, and two, because my mom would so easily connect with these people with her degree. And she'd set up a narrative that made it impossible to escape because I go in there and they'd be asking me questions that are inferring that I have these behaviors that I didn't feel like I had or feelings I knew I didn't have. Her diagnosis of me, it was borderline personality disorder, and then it was bipolar disorder. And then it was anything under the sun, really, that she could weaponize and utilize for herself in a weird way. And so from there, I was on a lot of different medications. I was definitely exhibiting behaviors that were alarming because of the things that I was witnessing in my household and also because of the medications that I was on, mood stabilizers and SSRIs and other sort of psychological medication. I just felt so cloudy all the time. I remember feeling just frustrated that I wasn't feeling anything really more than that. I think a lot of times I. If I came home from school and I was like, I had a great day. It was, oh, my God, the meds are working. That's amazing. And then if I came home and I was in tears, it'd be like, should we think about changing those meds? Maybe you need a higher dose immediately. I had a bad relationship with any sort of medication for years. I felt either like I just was Going through the motions of day by day. And time would pass weirdly, sometimes depending on what I was on. And then there was times where I felt everything so sensitively and so deeply, but I couldn't control it. Later, I would be clinically labeled manic from a reaction from a medication I was on. My mom would post on Facebook that I was having a hard day, or she feels like she's a single mom because my dad is at work all the time. She got a lot of sympathy and a lot of praise from her social circle and from other parents for being able to, quote, unquote, like, deal with me. It was a crutch for her own parenting struggles.

[Tiffany Reese]

If you were painting a portrait of your mom's personality for a stranger, what would that look like?

[Leanne]

There would be a side of that picture that is so beautiful and so warm and so loving and funny and kind. And then there is a side that is vicious and one that's angry. I think beneath all of that, just really sad and struggling. There were days after school where you walk in the house and you would not know what you were going to get. Sometimes she'd be laying on the kitchen floor with a glass of wine and playing with all of her dogs, and I'd be like, this is the coolest mom ever. And then there were other times I'd walk in the house, and immediately I'm getting sent to my room. I'm getting yelled at. And then there were other days where I'd walk in and I had no idea where she was for, like, hours. It was so difficult. I fought with my mom a lot, especially during her drunk moments. And there were quite a few of them that were pretty scary as a child. It just was so normalized in my house that I thought that that's just the way my mom was. My dad, for as great as he is now, he is so different than he was when I was a child. He knew to a certain extent that my mom had an issue, and so he'd avoid a lot. He never wanted to be home, and he'd say that himself. He didn't want to be around my mom. I mean, no one did. It was hard when that was my solid parent. My siblings, they hid a lot. Avoidance is something that they trended towards. While I was pretty confrontational with my mom, there were definitely moments where I feel that I stepped in physically and emotionally for my siblings in order to do my best to protect them in the ways that I knew how. And sometimes those ways blew up in my face. It was Definitely hard to develop any sort of sense of self. And it was impossibly hard to focus and to care about anything like school, friends, sports, or extracurriculars when I'm constantly worried about what's going on at home. It affected my academics. I have a auditory processing disorder that was not clocked until a little bit later. And so school was really challenging. The auditory processing disorder for me looks like if you hand me a textbook, I'm good to go. But if you're up there on the whiteboard and doing a lecture, I'm hearing what the teacher's saying, but it's not sticking with me. And a lot of my schooling was in that format. I went to a Catholic private school, preschool through fifth grade before I got sent away. And it was pretty rigorous academically, and they didn't really believe in accommodation or helping these things. And so I was already struggling in that aspect and not wanting to go. Then I was also being told that there is something wrong with me. Not that there's anything wrong with people who do have bpd, but the narrative was that there's something that's broken and that I need medication to be quote, unquote, normal. And I'm hearing my mom and her friends in the kitchen talking about this. And I'm hearing my mom get praised for being such a good mom, for putting up with me and for supporting me and dealing with the challenging child. My parents would fight a lot about what to do with me. And then when they divorced, my mom very much took and ran with that I was the reason that they were splitting up, which is not true, but there is a sliver of truth to it, right? Like I didn't have anything to do with it, but my parents disagreements on how to raise me and how to support me definitely contributed. I totally knew it was coming. They divorced when I was 12 years old. And I found out on the 4th of July we were having a pool party. There was like 60 people over at our house. And I thought something weird was going on. My dad was acting super present and he wanted to spend time with us before the party started. And I was like, this is weird. And I had caught my mom and my dad in his car in our driveway. And my mom was really upset about something. I had caught him leaving the front door, and I asked him like, where are you going? And he's like, oh, I need to go to the grocery store. At that point, he leaves. And I asked my grandmother to tell me what was going on because I thought that they were getting A divorce. And she confirmed it for me. And then I went to my mom. My mom told everyone that I was sick and that they needed to go home so they could tell us officially they were divorcing. It was actually a really big relief. I just remember thinking, this is my out. I don't have to live with my mom all the time.

[Tiffany Reese]

Is that what you ended up doing, living 50 50?

[Leanne]

Yeah, that was the original plan. She would tell my siblings really often in drunken fits that my dad left all of us. I was so worried that my siblings were gonna think that my dad left them. I would say, no, he didn't leave us, he left you. And that obviously did not go over well. Eventually there was a physical altercation where my mom put her hands on me and that was kind of the final straw of me living with her. And so my siblings would go back and forth. We had an agreement that if I took my meds, went to therapy and continued to do school, that I could live with my dad full time. I think my dad was really anxious about me following through on that because I was refusing to take my medication. My behavior and my emotional well being drastically improved once I was with my dad full time. But I stayed with my dad for about barely even a month before I left for my first program. I had a history of self harming from 8 to about 11. My dad didn't know it was going on when it was going on. And so then when he found out, I think it made him nervous that it was going on right under his nose and he didn't know about it. He didn't know what to do and he felt it was out of his capabilities until about. He met with an education consultant to look for a traditional boarding school for me. She recommended Trails from Conversations I've been grateful to have with him present day. There was a lot of pressure to move pretty quick with it. So it wasn't like, okay, let's give Leanne a minute and see if she can follow through on this agreement. It was like, no, we gotta move now because it's a rolling in mission and my life's in danger. I would assume that most parents love their kids. It's really hard to decide to send your kid to one of these programs. And I think education consultants, they know that and so they do what they have to do to create enough anxiety to get parents to move quick. From my understanding, the education consultant really emphasized that because I was so young, if I went now, I could come back for high school and to do high school Traditionally, problems would only get worse and these behaviors would only get more drastic and dangerous. As I got older, my dad thought that my self esteem was so shot from my relationship with my mom and my self worth and was so underdeveloped at that age. It was presented to him that I would get to trails and I would do hard things like make a fire and camp and that I would have a boost of self esteem and self confidence. My mom really wanted to send me somewhere. She found some pretty nasty places. They weren't even packaged in a pretty bow like trails was to my dad. So she was happy to sign on whatever. The day or two before I went, he had someone come in and take all the locks off the doors. And his explanation for that when I asked was that they were getting new locks put in. And then the day of it was a Monday, November 5th. He came into my room that morning around like 9 and told me that I was gonna go to this camp. He presented it almost like a choice. Initially I was like, hell no, it's November. I don't want to go to any camp. I don't know anything about it. And then it was revealed that, oh wait, this isn't a choice. I had the option of the easy way or the hard way. And the hard way was he was going to hire people to come take me the easy way. Said I was going to go with him. And I just remember feeling so betrayed, so angry that I had labeled him my safe person. And then all of a sudden, the rug is being ripped out from under me. The biggest bummer of all of it is like, I thought that I was doing better. I thought that I was enjoying stuff again. It was the most time that I had spent with my dad ever. And in that moment, it felt like that wasn't even good enough. I had messed up too many times. And there was a point where my parents love became conditional.

[Tiffany Reese]

What do you recall about the journey from your home to Trails?

[Leanne]

It's a long flight from California. Trails is in North Carolina. I refuse to speak a single word to my dad the whole way there. We stayed overnight and then I got dropped off the next morning. I was so angry, but I was also freaking terrified. He told me the program was three months. I was going to be there for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. And I also thought he was just trying to scare me a little bit. I was like, there's no way my dad's going to let me be in the middle of freaking nowhere at this camp across the country for Christmas. I got there, there were two staff members to meet me. Goodbyes are like literally a second. Not that I said goodbye anyway. And then I'm being let off and I remember there was a woman who was really trying to just engage with me and ask me where I was from, how I was feeling. Then we get to this wooden shed and they have to conduct a strip search. I just start crying. You don't even get that naked for like a physical at a doctor's check. Anyone who's been through it knows that. It's so traumatizing and it's so invasive and to be 12. There was a man in there and he turned around towards the door, but still, it just was humiliating. I was wearing my pajamas and I had brought my childhood stuffed animal. And they took everything, my socks, my underwear, and put it in this gray bin that was stacked on top of other gray bins. I put it together in that moment. This is how many kids are here then to walk out of the shed in clothes that don't really fit and it's freezing. It definitely set the tone for what the rest of my stay would be like there.

[Tiffany Reese]

So you were what, sixth grade?

[Leanne]

No, not even fifth.

[Tiffany Reese]

Fifth grade, yeah.

[Leanne]

It's easy, I think, for me to talk and then for people to forget just how young 12 is. I'll see a kid that's 12 now and I'm like, oh my God, I can't even imagine it's a baby. I was scared shitless and I didn't really understand where I was. So right off the bat, they kind of run through all these rules and I'm being explained how time frames work, how we do food, what phase work is. When I first arrived, I had an unofficial helping buddy. The 16 year old really took me under her wing and I'm so forever grateful. And because it was such a small group, she helped me get a grasp, I think quicker than what it usually takes from the staff. Explaining what the rules were is. I had a day of grace, so I had a day where my actions were not going to affect the group. I think I was fortunate with the staff shift that I entered trails on. The thing about wilderness is they have rolling admission and whatnot. So there were always people coming in, always people coming out. But when I came in, it was a pretty small group and the staff member at the time, he would become like a fan favorite because he was kind. It was so rare to feel humanized and to feel validated and seen for him to crack a few jokes here and there or Try and relate in some way was such a huge difference from most of the staff. And then I meet with the group therapist. She's going to be the one, I'm told, that gives me the okay to sleep freely and to be off the buddy system. And the buddy system was when I basically had to be within arm's reach of a staff member in case I did take off or in case I did something bad. I met with the group therapist and initially I loved her. It was a 20 minute conversation at most. She went through a checklist of like, okay, are you going to hurt yourself? Are you going to run away? Are you going to hurt other people? She's like, so do you have any questions for me? I'm like, well, what's the quickest way to get out of here? She had said something that I found such comfort in. She had said, just trust the program, kiddo. Just trust us. And I was like, okay, I can do that. I'm very much people pleaser, compliant with rules and regulations. This is going to be okay. It was very quick that it did not become okay. But it was only that first day that I felt any sort of feeling of safety and comfort.

[Tiffany Reese]

Was she a licensed therapist?

[Leanne]

She was licensed. I'm 90% sure she doesn't practice anymore. I know there was a lot of controversy where she failed to report things that she was mandated to report as a therapist. She used attack therapy and in a lot of situations. A really big point in trails at the very beginning is to forcefully make you be vulnerable and kind of break you down. That's when they say that the work can start. She had interesting ways of going about things. I saw her once a week for three months. And I think that that in no world is enough time for any person of any age to make change, especially in therapy. I don't know how reasonable it is one to expect one therapist to have a caseload of at least 12 girls and to be able to spend quality time with those girls, families and understanding those girls in a session. She also definitely was on board with my mom's narrative at that time. There were times where I felt that I didn't really always know if a question that she had was a trap and I was going to get punished in a way for doing what she expected me to do or not doing what she expected me to do. We all saw the same therapist and she typically had an order of each session. So like the oldest girl there would start and then it work its way down to the youngest. I had asked her when she was coming out to grab the next girl, I'm like, oh, is it my turn? Because that's been the pattern for the past month or so. And she's like, just because you asked me that, you're gonna go last for the rest of your time here. And that was seen as a punishment. And I totally did not understand what I had done wrong in that situation.

[Tiffany Reese]

Can you walk us through what items you were given in terms of clothes hygiene?

[Leanne]

So for clothes, we had a pair of black pants. They were kind of of sweatpant material, and they had those, like, really crappy drawstrings that break. And for shirts, we had a long blue sleeve T shirt that was like a polyester workout material. And then I had a red hoodie, and I had a red puffer jacket that was pretty thin and an orange beanie. We were given hiking shoes. I think it was two pairs of green thick socks. I think at one point, when it became more cold in winter, they gave everyone a pair of long underwear. The thing to do to keep warm was wearing your long underwear. Then you'd wear your pants, and you'd wear your long sleeve, your puffer, and then your hoodie over it to try to, like, insulate as much as possible. It's better to conserve heat that way. And then at nighttime, you would take your second pair of socks and your beanie and shove it at the bottom of your sleeping bag to add more insulation so your feet wouldn't freeze. And then we had a pair of black gloves. They're the itchy kind. And they would get really nasty because it was really common to get embers of fire on you if you were trying to do anything outside because it was so freezing, you wanted to wear gloves. I mean, if those bad boys got wet or they got too close to the fire, they would melt on your hand.

[Tiffany Reese]

How did you get clean laundry?

[Leanne]

I don't remember getting clean laundry. Our bathroom situation was wherever we were at the time. The leader of the day would designate somebody to go dig a loo hole. And so it was a hole in the dirt with a blue tarp from a tree to a tree. And that was what the bathroom was. It was so common for girls to pee themselves because we weren't allowed bathroom breaks when needed. We were just so understaffed that they didn't have enough eyes to be able to take a kid to the bathroom even if they wanted to. They had to be talking to you while you use the restroom because it was the only time that you were out of Sight. Sometimes they'd ask you, like, okay, sing the ABCs or count backwards from 30. And sometimes they try to make it fun or funny, but it was really uncomfortable and really disturbing. So kids were peeing themselves left and right, and that leads to UTIs, because we're not showering. So there were so many UTIs that they decided to give us all cranberry supplements. They eventually implemented something called Dub Wednesdays, which stood for Down Under Below. They would give us each one wet wipe once a week to clean ourselves with. That was their best effort of being sanitary and keeping us hygienic. I'm not sure if you're familiar with what pinworms are, but it's a parasite and they spread like wildfire. We never saw doctors for it, but we were prescribed medicine that tasted like Laffy Taffy. We would also get more unpleasant sicknesses from the water that we were drinking because there were times where we would filter it through either really old filtration systems, like hanging from a tree, or we would filter it at times through a bandana, which also does literally nothing other than get dirt out. We'd be collecting that water from running rivers, which by no means is it safe to drink or necessary to be having us drink water like that. What was your food like in the morning? It was a cup's worth of oats. Sometimes there would be a little bit of cinnamon in there, which was always really fun, but it was used so sparingly that you couldn't really taste it. And then for lunch it was whole wheat tortillas with two scoops of peanut butter. Sometimes we'd get tuna, and then for dinner it was rice and beans. Usually it'd be like a cup of those. And if we had leftover tortillas, we would have a tortilla with that. There was a time where we had lentils instead of beans. A bear bag is a food safe bag for your food when you're camping. At the end of each night, we would do bear hang, which is you throw a rope over a tall tree and you heave up the food bags so a bear can't get into your food. You have really young girls trying to throw a pretty heavy rope over a high enough tree that a bear can't get to it if it's on the trunk and, like reaches out, out. Sometimes it would take hours. We weren't allowed to know the time or the date, but once the staff got so frustrated with us that we just couldn't get the rope over the tree that they let us know that it had been two hours since we were trying to do our second attempt of it. I went into trails being around 98 pounds. I came out of trails weighing about 80 because I was on the smaller side. The group that I was with, they would distribute weight kindly and so my pack was definitely more than my body weight, but I would usually carry, I think it was the PB and the torts and sometimes the oats. The leader of the day would distribute those. Imagine like 12 year old girls out in the middle of the woods conducting military routines. You would wake up in the morning and you do roll call. So you'd have to say your name out loud in a specific order that was established by the group. And then there would be a designated leader of the day is what we called it. That would call the timeframes which you had eight minutes to get up, pack up camp, pack up your personals. And if you weren't able to do that in eight minutes, then there's a negative consequence which we would call a negi con, or there was a positive consequence which is called like a posi con. Some of the consequences were really atrocious and it really depended on the staff shift. If you had a good staff shift, you're treated like a human being. It's not cruel. You have a staff shift that's pretty bad. There were things called like pee party, which is where if someone had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, then everyone would have to wake up, stand up, get out of the tent and wait for that person to finish using the restroom. And then once that person is done, we could all go back to bed. Other negi cons were like food related. So sometimes food portions would be taken away. We always had to have the minimum amount of food, which was half a cup's worth. Sometimes we'd have like salt and pepper for like two months. And those were things that could be taken away. Warm food could be taken away. So we could have cold soaked oats and cold soaked rice and beans, which is gross taste wise, but also does not sit well in your stomach. And then the positive consequences, most of the time it looked like what we would call +5, which is +5 minutes of free talking. So you could talk about something that wasn't related to a time frame. We had timeframes every single moment of every single day. And the lesson to be learned there was that there are always positive and negative consequences to life, to everything that you do. The really disturbing part of it is that the designated Leader of the day has to call these time frames, and they have to decide the negative consequences and the positive consequences. And if it's not deemed bad enough, then the staff are going to take over. It was always this fine line between I have to decide on something that's pretty bad or they're going to pick something worse. Typically, like, we woke up, we did the time frame of packing up camp, whether or not we were going to stay there again that night. And then we'd have breakfast and we would wait to kind of see what was going on. If we weren't moving anywhere, they would tell us to set camp back up. We would hike five to ten miles a day. And it had to be silent, single row, because one, they can't monitor our conversations if we're hiking. And two, it was meant to be a time of reflection. So you're supposed to reflect on your actions leading up to being at trails during that time. It's excruciating to hike that long in complete silence. You do make such deep friendships there that I'm like, all I want to do is turn around and talk to my friend. And then we get to where we're going and set up camp and do water runs and then filter the water to the best of our ability. Sometimes we do personal time, which is just time that you have to sit and journal. And that would take up most of the day, every single day, on repeat, doing time frames, hiking, packing up camp, resetting up camp, doing water runs, doing wood runs for fire. There wasn't a lot of time to do anything else. At night it got below freezing. We would sleep in tents, often with holes in them. They were really crappy green, small tents that I think are advertised for two people, but there would be four of us in there at a time. And you would sleep head, toe, head, toe, head, toe to discourage any conversation. And the staff would make those sleeping arrangements. And the staff would be sleeping right at the entrance of a tent, so that way you couldn't leave without tripping over them. Essentially, the tents weren't waterproof. If your sleeping bag got wet, you were just screwed. They don't dry because they're packed up in your bag all day. It's going to get moldy and it's going to get gross. Depending on the staff, if they're kind, they're going to let you dry that bag out. They're going to let you hang it over a tree. But some staff were not like that at all. We would set up a tarp over the tent Sometimes if it was snowing, there was a lot of snow on the ground. It made fires really difficult because all the wood is so soaked through. There was some cold dinners for sure and cold breakfasts because we just couldn't start a fire. That was just what they called a natural consequence. A friend of mine that I went to Trails with got frostbite on her toe. They recognized that. And so she spent the morning timeframes in her sleeping bag. And she wasn't really allowed to participate. But never saw a doctor, never saw anyone else for it. Just the staff saying that that's gonna be enough to help her. In the group There were like two other 12 year olds. There were a few, 14, lots of 13 that would come in and there was a 16 year old who I think was placed in the wrong group on accident. The issues or challenges that a 12 year old typically faces versus a 16 year old is drastically different. So I was exposed to a lot of different things really, really young. I have so much love for a lot of the girls that I was there with. I'm still in contact with some. Some of the people that I met during that time needed structure and needed help in a way that they were never going to get. At Trails. Trails had on their website that's no longer up that they could treat everything from like social anxiety to autism. It was hard to watch in some instances. There was a child at a time who I believe was like 14 or 15 years old who presented or it was communicated to us that they had multitude personality disorder. Living in such close quarters with somebody who has that potentially was definitely a challenge. Just being 12, I didn't know how to interact or deal with moments that were hard for them.

[Tiffany Reese]

Did you guys have to do group therapy when you were at Trails Known?

[Leanne]

But we definitely all kind of knew what was going on with each other because those chances that we were able to talk, you could chat about that. And everyone had listened to my Trails letter and I had listened to their Trails letter, which is basically a parent. They write all the reasons that they sent you to Trails in the first place. And you have to read it aloud upon the moment that you receive the letter. And a staff member has a copy of it and they go along with you to make sure you don't skip anything and then you're not allowed to talk after you read it. It's something they do your first week there to break you down. Some of the girls, theirs was brutal. Mine was not pleasant for sure. I had stopped harming myself for about eight Months before I was sent to Trails and it was acknowledged, my dad had written me a letter being like, we know that you stopped and we're grateful, but there's anxiety around this. And that I wasn't taking my medication and my relationship with my mom were the three main points that were spoken about. I remember my mom writing just the most bizarre things and I just couldn't say anything about it afterwards, like, this is not true. And at that point in time, I thought I was the cause for her drinking. I thought that I stressed her out so much and that I was so difficult that I isolated her and that I left her no choice but to resort to this coping. I believed genuinely that things that I had experienced didn't actually happen. Situations where my mom would put her hands on me or when she would be in a manic state of intoxication. These adults that are telling me that are in control of my entire life at that moment at Trails, I'm having all these adults tell me that I'm crazy and that I'm making these things up. And I start to believe it. I was totally correct in the things that I experienced. And those memories have since been and validated through, like, documents or other people's recounts of things. The group therapist would be the one handing us letters once a week from our parents and collecting letters that we would write to them once a week.

[Tiffany Reese]

Did you ever try to express to your therapist your concerns about your living arrangements or hygiene, things of that nature?

[Leanne]

I didn't directly to her, but my first letter, I wrote what is known as an SOS letter, which is what they prep parents for. They say that the first letter you're going to receive from your kid is going to be asking you to pick them up. They're going to be lying, saying that the conditions are bad, these outlandish things, in an effort to manipulate you and to get you to take her home? I have the letter. I'm mentioning pinworms, I'm mentioning not showering and all these things. And he's prepped for it. But you were heavily punished for sending an SOS letter. And it was recommended to me by the older girl who took me under her wing to not do that. And I did it anyway because I'm like, no, my dad loves me. My dad does not want me to be here. If he knew the truth, I'd be picked up tomorrow. But I waited a week until I got his next letter. And it was like, I know it's hard, but you can do hard things. Love you and that was about it. I look back now and I'm like, props to me for at least trying to tell the truth.

[Tiffany Reese]

And was that the only communication you had with him while you were at Trails?

[Leanne]

Yeah, once a week.

[Tiffany Reese]

Did your therapist communicate with him?

[Leanne]

Yeah, she communicated with him about the letters. And I believe they met once a week as well to discuss how I was doing and what I was talking about in therapy. Besides the physical part of it, I think the hardest part was thinking that my dad had switched up on me and that I felt like I was being punished. Which is such a common theme with wilderness programs is feeling like you're being punished because they want you to feel that way. There was one time where we could check out a book from, like, a little tiny box of old pocket edition books. They were worn down and pages were missing. But it was a privilege that you could earn to read. It was a privilege you could earn to have your parents send you pictures at the end of a letter. It was a privilege to do just about anything, because the narratives. Nothing is owed to you. You don't deserve anything. And in a lot of my letters and a lot of other people's letters that I've been able to read, there's this verbiage of, I promise that when I'm home, I will be better. Like that there's something fundamentally wrong or broken at the first place. They make you believe that there is something wrong with you and that you are the cause for dysfunction and that you are the pain in the family. I think that's a pretty universal experience when it comes to these facilities. I have conversations with my dad now, too, where he's like, I never would have thought to ask if you were going to get three meals a day, if you were going to be able to shower, if you were going to get medical attention. Because these are all assumptions that parents would make. These places are not cheap. Why would you think to ask those things? If you. If you don't have any other knowledge other than what an education consultant has given you?

[Tiffany Reese]

When did you finally find out you would be leaving trails?

[Leanne]

Either the very last day of January or February 1, I found out that I was gonna go to a therapeutic boarding school directly from Trails, which, at that point, wasn't a shock. I didn't know where I was going to, but I knew that I was not coming home because during the three months, nobody went home. I left, like, two days after that. My mom came to pick me up because my therapist at the time thought it would be important for us to reconnect. I felt awful. I just thought that I was such a horrible child to her and I caused her so much grief and stress and pain and that I caused her divorce. I just remember being so grateful to be reconnected with her and grateful that she even gave me a chance. I couldn't have any of my own belongings, so like, my mom packed up things for me. She had gone shopping for me while I was at Trails, so all the things that she had packed me were like brand new. I had no comfort items except the stuffed animal that I had brought to Trails with me. I was really sad to be dropped off again because I felt like I had a taste of freedom for the first time and then it was going to be taken away again. She dropped me off at New Leaf Academy in Oregon, a therapeutic boarding school. I was prepared to be strip searched again at New Leaf.

[Tiffany Reese]

Gratefully, I wasn't right after Trails, Leanne attended New Leaf Academy. The residential treatment center was founded in Bend, Oregon in 1997 by Craig and Christy Christiansen. It was marketed as a therapeutic boarding school that addressed academic, emotional and social challenges through therapy, academics, and life skills training for girls aged 10 to 15. New Leaf Academy was acquired by Aspen education group in 2004, which launched a New Leaf Academy North Carolina campus in 2005. New Leaf Academy of North Carolina was shut down in 2010 and new leaf Academy in Oregon was sold back to its founders in 2011 following the closure of several Aspen Education Group programs. In early 2023, New Leaf Academy was acquired by Embark Behavioral Health, a network of mental health treatment programs that offer residential treatment facilities and outpatient clinics across the country. At the time of this episode's airing, Embark has not responded to our request for comment. How would you describe New Leaf Academy?

[Leanne]

It was not like a lockup facility, so to speak, but it still was pretty tight in terms of rules and structure. It was like a house. It was run by an older couple. There was the dining area called the Great Hall. There was the section of a house called Sagebrush and the section of a house called Tumbleweed, and they would group girls into the two and you would have a home advisor, which was like a staff member in your home. You were on their caseload. We would go to school, so it was the first time that I was going to school quite a bit. We would do a school day and then we would come back to the home. It was all the same facility. There were things that you could earn as privileges that you would think are basic human rights I couldn't go outside by myself until I earned the privilege called outside alone. I had to ask permission to shower. I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. And there were real toilets, and that was great. I couldn't talk to other girls who had been there for three months or less at that time. You could only talk to older students because they were afraid that the younger students who were not yet indoctrinated to the program would team up to, like, run away. There was a living room, and there were two bigger rooms. And in each room, there was about eight bunk beds. You were only allowed to have one stuffed animal and one blanket from home. You only had half of a dresser space. There were baby monitors in the room, so you couldn't talk out of earshot of staff members. So the same as trails, the way that you had to keep your section of your bed was very strict. They would do something called room points all the time. If your blanket was hanging off of your sheet or your comforter, they would dock you points for that. And if you were docked, you would get something called an ella, which is a learning opportunity, which is 30 minutes of physical labor. You do it silently instead of free time. If something was knocked over or crooked, you would be in trouble. And like docked points, your shoes kept under your side of the bed. If one was crooked, if a shoelace was hanging out from under it, your docked points, you had a bathroom space and a cabinet. If that was disorganized, if your toothbrush was falling over, you'd be docked points. It was less physically demanding than trails, but more emotionally volatile. There was those basic needs met. I had a bed to sleep in. I was not cold. I had a shower. I could brush my teeth. I had pajamas. But the consequences were always really disproportionate to the action. So we would have meetings in the living room five times a day before every meal and before school and after dinner. If you got there 5, 29, with, like, 10 seconds left to go, you're late, and you get an LO. After our school, we would have 30 minutes of free time before our group therapy started. And if you got an lo, you had to stand at the stairwell railing, and one by one, you would call out your name, who gave you the lo and what you did to get it. And then you'd get your assigned task, Then you were off to go do that for 30 minutes silently, and you were done when a staff member came to get you. So sometimes it would go on a little bit longer, and they wouldn't Remember that you were doing it. Like, I had a time that I had to scrub the shower grout with a toothbrush and vinegar and they totally forgot that I was in there. An hour had passed and I had no idea. And then they had remembered to come get me because it was dinner time. Things like that would happen a lot. And then there was something called an hour of work, which is a bigger offense, like if you say the word crap, if you use God's name in vain, if you're disrespectful, it's basically an ELO times two. So it's just an hour of work. It takes place instead of your designated Saturday or Sunday activity time, which is supposed to be like a fun, not so serious time that you get twice a week. It was advertised for all girls, but there were some of my friends there who didn't identify it as a woman and they wanted to go by a different name. And that was not tolerated at all because I believe of the religious undertones. It was really sad to see the emotional and like mental struggle that I saw some of my peers go through for not being accepted for how they wanted to be addressed and for it to be played off as part of a mental illness. The dress code was pretty strict. No stuff with writing on it. Everything you can think of. Stereotypical, like you got the shorts that go to your knees, no spaghetti strapped tank tops, no stomach showing. We had to have our ankles covered sometimes. We also weren't encouraged to cut our hair. They wouldn't want you to have dyed hair, so if you were enrolling, they would tell your parents to dye it to a natural color. And they wouldn't allow you to have more than one piercing for earrings. Nail polish was something you could earn as a privilege. Makeup, so mascara and lip gloss you could earn as a privilege for special occasions. So like seminars and milestones is what they'd call it.

[Tiffany Reese]

What was group therapy like?

[Leanne]

The really nasty groups were called Wednesday groups. Every Wednesday, right after school, we had to put on our charm necklaces, which were ways to track our milestones. So they'd give you a charm for each thing that you completed. We'd all go downstairs to the basement and get the folding chairs out and we'd set them up in a circle and we would do something called a group request. It was basically a way to address an issue that you had with another student. You could only do it in that group setting once a week. There were other times where like, everyone was required to do it. Initially, I had refused to, like Partake in that at all. If you had a group request for somebody, you had to switch seats with somebody else that was directly across from that person so you could directly look at them. I was like, this seems so awful. But because I was kind of refusing to do it, they incorporated it into my program. So I had to give one once a week. And my cop out was I would just give them to my friends and be like, when you talk bad about yourself, I don't like it. And I tried to make them as kind as they possibly could be, but that was not the case for a lot of people. And it was rewarded if you were to, like, write multiple group requests for people. We had a box that you would put them in for that Wednesday group. The staff would go through them, and even if you wrote it and were like, I don't want to do that anymore, they would make you. I refused to give a group request once, and I was sent to what we called an HH chair. It really is a timeout chair. It's like a blue beanbag chair at the end of a dark hallway, and you have to sit there, and you can't interact with anyone until the staff that sent you there comes to check in with you about why you were sent there.

[Tiffany Reese]

Did you witness staff engaging in holding procedures?

[Leanne]

Yeah. Every staff is supposed to be trained in the hold, and there is a processed way that you are supposed to conduct it in a way that results in not a lot of physical harm for the student or child involved. I don't believe that all staff were trained in that way because the times that I saw other people get put in holds, they weren't consistent. So if you were a harm to yourself, to somebody else, or to try to run away, they would put you on a hold. And sometimes it looks like one adult, sometimes two adults, but it always means going to the ground. It's obviously really disturbing, and it makes you feel like one wrong move, that's going to be you. And there was one time during my first month there that the police had to get called because a girl shoved a staff member down the stairs, and then she was put in a hold. The nasty ones that I have witnessed are when people try to run because there is so much, like, motion involved that they're not done correctly.

[Tiffany Reese]

How frequently would you communicate with your parents while there and how often would you see them?

[Leanne]

I'd have a weekly call with my dad, with my therapist involved. When you're close to leaving, like, three fourths through your stay, you could earn kinship calls. Which are like, you could have a flip phone and check the flip phone out of the office on Sunday for 15 minutes and call your parent to say like, hey, miss you, love you, but you can't talk about anything therapeutic or that you want to go home or something that should be spoken about with supervision, so to speak. I saw my dad about every three months. I would be able to earn home visits, so I'd be able to fly home, which was really nice, actually. Sometimes they would be a little stressful because they'd ask the parent at the end of the visit to do, like, a home visit report. You know, if I had a bad behavior. By bad behavior, I mean if I, like, stayed in my room too long watching TV or if I got in a petty argument with my sister, that's going to get flagged and that's going to go back to New Leaf and I'm going to have to face consequences for that when I'm there. And a consequence could be that I don't get another home visit. So I really felt like I had to be on perfect behavior, but also balance having a little bit of freedom, little bit sense of like, okay, I know I can't get an LL while I'm home, so I'm going to go shower when I want to shower, or I'm going to eat candy when I want to eat candy. But it definitely was like walking a tightrope.

[Tiffany Reese]

How many home visits do you think you had with each of your parents?

[Leanne]

Probably six with my dad, Sarah with my mom. I got so lucky with my therapist at New Leaf. She was brand new when I arrived, and so I was the second girl on her caseload. She advocated for the girls on her caseload, and the program did not like that. It's very one size fits all. She was a big part in recognizing that my mom had an addiction issue. There was a moment where I had a call with my mom and she showed up drunk. So I had picked that time to be like, do you remember when you would hit me when I'd be in my closet chucking socks at you and you'd swing at me? She had denied it and no one had believed me before until she was drunk on that call and admitted it and said, well, you deserved it and you were throwing things at me. My mom would be cussing me out on a phone call, and my therapist at the time, she would kick me out of the room and be like, you can't talk to her this way. Like, I won't let you. You need to be Calm. You need to be sober. I'd never had anyone before ever do that. For me, it was such a shifting point. And also I started to be believed a little bit more from that point on. A lot of my work there with her involved processing and then also how to move forward with my mom and how to handle conversations with her and how to hold boundaries with her, how to differentiate about, like, what I'm taking personally and what I'm not. My dad fully bought into the program from my understanding now is I believe he was so anxious and wanted to do right by me. So he diverted to anyone who was a professional in therapy and psychology and anyone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about. He 100% was super involved in the process. And I think this was his validation, too, that my mom was an addict. It was at that point where he was apologizing for a lot of the stuff that went on. That was a turning point for us for a little bit in our relationship. That's not the case for a lot of people who go to a therapeutic boarding school, but I lucked out. When I got to New Leaf, I saw a psychiatrist outside of the one that my mom had been taking me to. For the first time ever. That psychiatrist, through nuleaf, recommended that I would be taken off all the medication I was on. She said that she didn't see a need for it, and my dad was all for it. My mom really fought hard to not. I needed her medical consent, too, as a minor at that time, and she did not want to give permission. Her email basically wrote, I don't think that Leanne is in her right mind. Until we are in a good spot to reconnect and I get my daughter back, I'm not signing off. And I'm so grateful for my dad because he pushed hard. So then she gave consent to get me off my Med. At 14 was the first time I would be med free. It was pretty quick after that that they were weirded out by my mom and catching on, she wrote an email giving up custody of me, saying that it was too difficult for her. It was then where they stopped making me communicate with her. We had a movie night once a month. It was like the biggest event of the month, the one little piece of normalcy that you had. I had to write my mom a handwritten letter every week or every month before that movie time happened. And if I refused to write to her, I wasn't allowed to go. So they stopped doing that after she wrote that email. As soon as I graduated My therapist, she went on to open her own private practice pretty much the week I graduated from their program.

[Tiffany Reese]

It sounds like from the staff we've had right in. Most of the ones with hearts don't last long. It's gotta be so complex for the people who have souls and empathy.

[Leanne]

Yeah. There are some amazing humans that have reached out since I've been there, who used to work there and who I had such great relationships with. And it's such a complex thing because I'm like, you made my time there so much better than it could have been. I valued my relationship with you, and at the same time, you're still part of the system. I found out that I was leaving New Leaf about four to five months before I did, only because there are only like three designated graduation ceremony dates. So there's one in June, there's one in August, and there's one in December, and those are the only times that people leave. I was told that it would be June, and when I graduated, I went home and it was set that I was going to go to a normal high school. Living with my dad. Once I found out I was going home, I was ecstatic. It felt very much like I had been running a race in a loop without any knowledge of where that finish line would be. They had a weird graduation ceremony. He came up for that, and then he brought me home. I totally was unprepared for what that would look like.

[Tiffany Reese]

How long did you ultimately spend at New Leaf?

[Leanne]

A year and four months to have every moment of your day, minute by minute, scheduled for you and enforced, than to go to just living at home and like, what do you mean I can take a shower when I want to take a shower? And what do you mean I can go outside if I want to go outside? I was so annoying to my dad. I'd check in with him about literally everything. I had no independence. This residual paranoia that I had from these previous two programs, I just was in constant fear of being sent back. There's all these lingering feelings of I am a problem and I feel like I am an issue. I also was struggling with school. I was a freshman in high school, and I felt very underprepared. I had no schooling while I was at Trails. The schooling that we had at New Leaf, we were learning, but it wasn't to what the typical requirements are for entry level of like, freshman year in high school. And on top of that, I mean, I hadn't been in the real world for two years. I had no time management skills. That's something I feel like you build in middle school. And there was not room allowed to build those things at these programs. I had learned the day of my orientation what Snapchat was. I hadn't listened to any new music that had come out in the past two years. I had no pop culture references. 14, 15 year olds for freshman orientation, they're like, what's your favorite movie? Who's your favorite artist? I'm like, I had nothing to give. It was so frightening and I was so anxious. I didn't have a phone at the time that I toured the high school that I was going to go to and met some of the other kids and people. People looked at me crazy. It just was so isolating. I was lucky enough to make some friends during that year there, but I was lying out of my ass about where I was coming from. I wanted nobody to know that I had been through these programs. My family situation, absolutely nothing. And so the friendships were superficial. Really kind people, like, I still talk to some, but at that point in time, I felt so lonely. I had no support and no help moving through this huge transition. I felt like a fish out of water. Programs, they don't do sex ed. They don't teach you what consent is. You don't talk about relationships. You don't talk about anything. You get punished for speaking about these things in these facilities. So coming out of these programs leaves kids so vulnerable to people who can sniff out that you're inexperienced. I don't know a lot of people who were not taken advantage of fresh out of a long term, short term, whatever it may BE program. At 14, I ended up losing my virginity to an older boy in not a safe or consensual way. It really set me in a spiral along with being angry about everything else. I stopped going to school and I didn't do my online classes. I would sleep all day. I just was nocturnal. It definitely sent me into a spiral where I legitimately hated men. And my dad was no exception to that.

[Tiffany Reese]

Once you transitioned home, you're living with your dad back in California, and are your other siblings then living with your mom half the time?

[Leanne]

There was, I think, a few months of my siblings still going back and forth. But it was real quick after I came home that they then advocated to live with my dad full time. And so then we were all living together. But there were changes in my family. Like my dad started dating again and I felt super isolated from my family. My dad's girlfriend moved in during COVID had no idea that was happening. I had just gone through a lot of trauma and no one was willing to talk to me about it or like even acknowledge it. I felt like such an outsider coming home to my family and I felt like I didn't deserve to be there. I'm trying to now learn or relearn how I fit into my family dynamic because things have changed and they've healed together. They're able to have family dinners, say I love you and heal from. From my mom and from their divorce and from everything that we experience as children. When I Left home at 12, I was parentified like nobody's business. I felt very protective of and very responsible for my siblings coming back. I hadn't seen them in forever. I was still kind of in that mode. So it definitely caused tension and conflict at the beginning. I felt that if I were to give anything but positive energy and encouragement, then I would be hindering this new healthy system they've created for themselves. So I shoved it all down. Obviously that's not sustainable. And so it definitely started to bubble up. I think when Covid hit being trapped all in the house, I began to become really angry with my dad because I felt that everything that I had been through and everything that happened to me wasn't acknowledged or validated. I think there was a lot of my dad's own personal struggle in coming to terms with Trails was a really bad program. New Leaf maybe wasn't the best decision for me at the time. In my case, I'm very lucky. He had my best interests at heart and made a massive frickin mistake. I think the way of dealing with that at the time was to avoid and my way of dealing with the trauma that I had been through at the time was to confront the more that he'd avoid, the angrier I'd get and the more I'd confront and the more he'd avoid in this horrible cycle of disconnect. I'm angry that he's moved on and I'm angry to see my dad happy. As much as that sucks to say, I was really upset that he got off scot free. He was in a happy relationship and my siblings were doing well. And I'm here at 14 years old having dreams of being strip searched every night, being in constant fight or flight. And I was able to recognize what I'm dealing with is like ptsd. I'm waking up in sweats and I'm having these symbolic dreams of literally being abandoned. My life has been thrown off course. Why am I the only one suffering these consequences of my dad's poor decisions. My dad decided that he. He was going to get married. We were in the car, and he just said, by the way, I'm planning on proposing tomorrow morning, and you don't have to like it. I'm not asking permission, but I'm just letting you know that this is what I've decided to do. I think he was anticipating that I wasn't going to be thrilled, but it just was me and my sister in the car with him, and my sister was excited, but I think bummed out at the way that he decided to tell us. And I was so upset, upset. I like her. I think she's a good person. I felt more so that my dad was more concerned with his relationship than with his kids. And I think to this day, some of that is true. I think that he was finally happy for the first time in a really long time, and it was consuming for him. There were just instances where I felt I had to step up again and be more of a parent than a sibling to fill in the lack of my dad showing up. That was where a lot of the anger came from, too. I didn't understand why, again, I had to be the one. I told him that I would not be going to his wedding because of the way I felt disrespected in the process. And I didn't understand why we couldn't all have had a conversation in the living room where he told me and my siblings that he was gonna get engaged. I think he was upset that I was upsetting her. In their marriage planning and process, my siblings were okay with everything. Why wasn't I okay with it? Ultimately, what led to me being sent away again for the third time was I was so angry at everybody. I was super confrontational. There were no threatening behaviors, just a lot of arguing, in contrast to my siblings. It was then that my dad, I guess, decided to look for a third program for me, and I had found out on accident that I was going to go to Pacific West.

[Tiffany Reese]

The third program Leeann attended was Pacific Quest Wilderness, established in 2004 and based in Hilo, Hawaii, with additional facilities in the surrounding area. Marketed as an integrative wilderness and residential program, Pacific Quest came under scrutiny in January 2020 when the Hawaii Department of Health, Office of Health Care and Assurance, found that two units were operating without active licensure from the state. Reportedly, the agency issued a $13,300 fine and ordered the closure of the unlicensed units. Although the Department of Health did give Pacific Quest time to respond. To the allegations. According to the Pacific Quest website, in February 2020, the program reached a settlement with the state agreeing to pay a fine, completing the licensing process within two years and not open any new facilities until those licenses were obtained. The settlement allowed them to continue operating legally during that time, and the organization emphasized that it was never forced to close. Pacific Quest remains operational today and has posted a broad statement on their website in relation to the broader Breaking Code Silence movement which advocates for greater oversight and reform in the so called troubled teen industry. Pacific Quest has publicly stated that their program wholeheartedly supports the effort to reform the oversight and best practices of behavioral health treatment programs. PQ was founded on the belief that outdoor therapeutic programs could be safer, punishment free, and built on the principle of building youth up rather than breaking them down. In response to public discourse and participant feedback, Pacific Quest has allegedly implemented several programmatic changes including eliminating the enrollment of escorted students, revising its grievance process, and improving outfitting and personal item policies. As of 2025, Pacific Quest claims there have never been any forced closures, criminal investigations, findings of abuse, assault, misconduct or neglect, serious injuries or deaths at the organization. End quote.

[Leanne]

I think there is a sixth sense that you develop when you've gone through these things. I had been having dreams that my dad was going to send me back. So much so that I had sent a text message out to a family therapist that was working with us at the time. Like you would tell me if he was planning on sending me back, right? And she was like yeah, of course I would. And then a week later I overheard him having a conversation about sending me off again. He didn't know that I overheard but I had a full on panic attack. I thought that I was about to be hungry for another three months. I thought I was about to be strip searched again. Even though it didn't make sense at the time because it was summer. I thought I was going to be freezing. I was just going right back to trails. I genuinely thought that I was not going to be able to make it out and be okay. It was the only thought going through my head. So much so that I actually made myself sick. Just the raw panic and fear was not rational and it was animalistic and I have never experienced anything like it. I was going to do whatever I could to make sure I didn't go back there. Which I think is testimony to how traumatizing it was in the first place. I decided that I just was gonna beg and plead. I was like send me back to somewhere like new leaf for Two years. I'll do that instead of going back to trails or wilderness. It was like talking to a wall. I had asked more about the program because I thought that if I could find something horrific, then maybe he changed his mind. I was doing as much research about it as I could beforehand. I made him sign a contract before I went. And the contract was that after this program, he promises not to send me to another program program afterwards. I told him, if you don't sign this contract, I'm going to make you hire transporters and I'm going to make this messy and I'm going to kick and scream. I knew he didn't want to see that or have me experience that. He signed the contract and that made me feel a lot better about going in because I knew that I was going to go to just like a traditional boarding school afterwards and I wasn't going to have to do this ever again. There was a shattering realization that everything that I had been trying to tell him about my experience at trails and new leave was not believed. That he would do this again meant that he didn't think that my pain and my trauma was real. I told him that one day they're going to make documentaries about places like this and that he's going to owe me one hell of an apology. I had reached out to a friend that I knew had gone there and she told me basically what to expect for the whole entirety of the program. And it was a comfort to know that I had a bed to sleep in. There was a nurse on site. There were bathrooms I could shower, laundry was done. A licensed nurse was going to facilitate medication. You get food more than three times a day. Like that was such a relief. I had a phone call with the director of the program because I wanted my dad to listen because I was going to ask all these questions and I wanted somebody to be accountable for lying if this was a lie. I just wanted verbal confirmation of all these things and was so grateful to find out the majority of them were true. I did finish freshman year. Before I went, I wanted to have a zoom call with the therapist that I was going to be working with there. And I wanted to lay a foundation down for myself before I went, which is not normal. They don't usually do that. The purpose of that call was to really save myself from working with my mom. Basically it was like, okay, my mom is an addict. She can put a face on and she can use her degree to relate with you for a month and then she's going to start showing up intoxicated. So I was giving background information, giving documents. I had the therapist that I had at New Leaf on that call as well, so they could connect.

[Tiffany Reese]

What did the therapist from your second facility, New Leaf, say when she found out that you were going to a third program, Pacific Quest?

[Leanne]

We talked a lot about grief and how this is a really big bummer. How do I grieve my childhood? Because it's over. I'm 16 years old. My whole childhood has been spent in programs, essentially. And how do I make peace with that and move on from it? And what would a relationship with my dad look like moving forward, if that's even something that I wanted? Because it was beyond valid for me not to. I told him that I would go willingly because he signed the contract, but I didn't want him to take me and he didn't get to take me. A family friend was headed to Hawaii anyway, and I was like, you can text them, make sure that I got there. I refused to speak to my dad, refused to acknowledge him. Like we were done at that point.

[Tiffany Reese]

You mentioned previously that your third program, Pacific Quest, is often referred to as Princess Quest. Can you explain to listeners why that is?

[Leanne]

Your basic needs are met. That's why it's called Princess Quest. If you meet a kid who's gone to Pacific Quest and they say that they've done wilderness, it's like, no, not really. Because in wilderness you don't have basic needs. But there were not happy aspects of it too. Of course. It's a program. So again, no touching, no talking. There was something called search of student that happened three times a day. You'd have to line up silently and they'd kind of shake through all your belongings and you'd have to stand there and shake your hair around and lift your bra straps, lift your shirt a little, go through your underwear waistline, take off your shoes and socks and dump them out to make sure that you weren't carrying anything sharp or something that you were not supposed to have. They have co ed staff as well. They don't do a good job making sure that male staff are not the ones checking teenage girls bra straps and underwear lines.

[Tiffany Reese]

Was your communication still restricted?

[Leanne]

The communication was all filtered the same, except that you could earn like, zoom calls. So I was able to actually speak to my dad, although that's not something that I really was interested or wanting to do. I was there for only about two months. There is a distinction to make between kids who go to the programs in the summer and kids who go during the school year because the summer is often more a relaxed version of whatever program you're going to. Typically, kids who go to the programs during the summer, Their parents can afford to wait to send them so they don't miss school. And then the kids who go during the winter generally are kids whose parents can't wait. Their behaviors are deemed more threatening or drastic. At one point, I had a conversation with my therapist there and he asked me, like, okay, when do you want to go home? Each program, like, the fundamentals are kind of the same. And I had done this three freaking times at this point. So it wasn't beneficial for me. So my dad could figure out what to do with me. There was nothing to learn there or gain from it.

[Tiffany Reese]

When you found out that you would be transitioning to the boarding school in Boston, what were you told about that facility?

[Leanne]

I was able to look at it briefly online with the staff. It was like a traditional boarding school. So I'd come home for summers and spring break and holidays. I'd have access to my phone. There's a dining hall. I genuinely didn't care where I was going. I just wanted to be away from my dad and somewhere where I had freedom and like, bodily autonomy. I was tired of talking while I had my 10 minute shower. And I was tired of being searched three times a day at boarding school. I think I had a hard time because I felt the same sort of trapped, not to this same level, but it was the same residual feeling of being controlled and restricted. I think with every boarding school, they have rules and regulations for a reason. Like, there is definitely more structure than a normal school. And I was over it. I felt like I had been through so much at that point. And at that point I was able to kind of label it for what it was. This was really fucked up. And I don't feel like anyone's listening to me. It felt like I was one foot in one world and one foot in the other. I felt a lot of frustration that I was now supposed to, like, finish high school, normally be on the traditional path when my feelings were not aligned with that. I did a full year school there. And truthfully, I was having the worst time figuring out how to live and have normal friendships After I've had these deep trauma bonds with all these other kids that I've been through hell and back with. It just felt like I was living the double life and I didn't really want to tell anybody about anything about me. I was on honor roll the whole entire year that I was there. The academics were not an issue. I think emotionally was so burnt out and I just wanted to move on. So I told my dad, with the support of the therapist that I was seeing at the school at the time, that I was going to get my ged, come home and move out, get my own place and start figuring out what it was that I wanted to do and to have space and independence from everything. And that's exactly what I did. It was ultimately the best decision I could have made for myself.

[Tiffany Reese]

What is your relationship with your parents like today?

[Leanne]

My dad and I have had to do a lot of healing and we're in a good place now. He actually has been so supportive of everything that I've done when talking about the things that I've gone through and has been able to, like, have super transparent and honest conversations with me and legitimately hear me for the first time. But that didn't happen until I moved out. My mom I don't speak to and have not spoken to for quite some time. I'm blessed and grateful that my dad is one of the very few parents who's like, I didn't do this the right way. I wish I had done it differently. And I'm sorry for what you went through and how can I support you, I think is the biggest thing that I want to highlight, which I'm super appreciative for.

[Tiffany Reese]

What about your relationship with your siblings? Do you feel like it's been difficult for you to understand each other over the years, given the very different environments you were raised in?

[Leanne]

Yeah, to a certain extent. We're so close. Closer than I think the average siblings are. We're in constant communication and I love them so dearly. I wasn't present with them growing up as much as I would have wanted to be. There were wounds there for sure. But again, I lucked out in the fact that there is so much love and a want to move forward and heal.

[Tiffany Reese]

It's important to highlight for people this wasn't that long ago. Looking at your story compared to some of the other survivors, yours is the more recent. And it's just shocking to look down and see 2019 on your timeline.

[Leanne]

And that's the terrifying thing, too. I, of course, watch the documentaries, reading the books. I'm consuming every piece of media out there about these places because there's not a lot people's reactions like, oh my God, I can't believe that used to be a thing. It's not used to. It just sucks so badly that it often takes someone dying in the Programs for them to be shut down. And it's so easy to dismiss as like, wow, that used to be really bad. I'm glad it no longer operates. But what people miss is that these people who have operated the really bad ones have no consequences and can move forward and open a new one.

[Tiffany Reese]

Tragically, February of 2024, a 12 year old boy died at Trail's Carolina Wilderness therapy program. And this ultimately led to trails closing. Obviously it's heartbreaking, but I'm curious what it was like for you and the other survivors of trails to read about this tragedy.

[Leanne]

It was devastating. We have a group chat and that's how I found out that this had happened. The one thing that I did not feel was shock or surprise that this did happen. Just a lot of anger that this was allowed to happen.

[Tiffany Reese]

When you were in Trails Carolina, were you aware that in 2014 a 17 year old boy had died in the program?

[Leanne]

I didn't know that until afterwards. One of the first things I did when I had my first home visit and had access to the Internet was Google trails. And it's the first thing that popped up. The anger that started to build of like, why was I sent here and did my dad not research? This is the first thing that pops up and it's horrendous the first time that I learned of it. No surprise and no shock. Immediate understanding and immediate anger and heartbreak because it makes sense.

[Tiffany Reese]

What do you hope that listeners will keep in mind when hearing survivors stories?

[Leanne]

The main thing would be that this could have been you. You hear troubled teen industry and you're like, well, I wasn't a bad kid. You could have gone, if you have anxiety, if you've had a bad day at school, if you've skipped a class, if you've tried a drug, if you've gotten in a fight with your parents, this could have been you. It doesn't take much. There were kids that I've met who got sent because they had bad grades and played video games to kids that I met who had autism. And their parents thought that this program could, quote, unquote, fix it. The label of the troubled teen industry already puts blame on the kid. The kid is troubled. And so then by calling the kid troubled, their narrative is not to be fully trusted. The connotations and the dismissal of these kids struggles is beyond frustrating. So I found when I share the story, most of the time I get reactions like, you don't look like a bad kid. You don't look like a kid who would do drugs all these Wild things that you automatically assume when you hear. I grew up in institutions, and I grew up in something called the troubled teen industry. I had an interaction with a young lady who is an advocate for the national association of Therapeutic Programs in Wilderness. She has gone through programs herself, too. She had made a comment that I shouldn't be bitter because I failed treatment. And I think that says everything it needs to that I failed treatment. I'm like, how is something that is supposed to be helpful and healing to me? How can I fail at that?

[Tiffany Reese]

I'm curious what healing looks like for you today.

[Leanne]

I'm in the middle of working on a memoir that dives deeper into everything I've talked about today. And that's been amazing so far in terms of healing. I think it'll be a forever thing, unfortunately. But we take it day by day, you know, like a lot of unlearning. One of the hardest things I had to do afterwards is be like, I need help, because this is no way to live. I'm living out of a place of trauma, and now I gotta go seek help from somebody who I have not had good experiences with. And it was terrifying, and it was the most changing thing for me. I've found that I'm doing a lot of unlearning about narratives that were pushed on to myself, about family dynamics, learning how to regulate my nervous system, learning that I am safe and I am okay. I do things that I would not have been allowed to do in programs. I'll go outside, I'll go on a walk with my slippers on. I would have been in so much trouble for doing something like that. I'll make myself a sweet treat before dinner. Things that remind me, like, I'm in control here, and there are no consequences to these things that are not harmful to me or anybody around me. And it's a good physical reminder of my safety, because that's the thing that I think myself and a lot of my friends who I've gone through these places with, struggle with, is like this constant fear, constant paranoia, and it's paralyzing sometimes the more and more I can do things that I would not have been allowed to do and prove that nothing bad happens afterwards. The more confidence I gain and the less fear I have when I wake up in the morning. You know, just little stepping stones like that.

[Tiffany Reese]

Well, you deserve that, and I'm glad that you're on that path, and I look forward to reading your memoir one day when it's ready. I think you should be extremely proud of yourself. And where you're at, especially given your age and what you've overcome, you're extremely resilient.

[Leanne]

Thank you.

[Tiffany Reese]

Next time on Something was Wrong. The program directors took the belongings I had brought.

[Leanne]

That's when it set in.

[Tiffany Reese]

Like, oh, this isn't a camp. If there's somebody who's trying to run.

[Leanne]

Away and they're being restrained, you would.

[Tiffany Reese]

Think somebody would step in and say.

[Leanne]

Something, but nobody ever did. These programs are more so for filling.

[Tiffany Reese]

The pockets with money than caring about.

[Leanne]

The person who they are destroying.

[Tiffany Reese]

Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle. Media production created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, Associate producers Amy B. Chesler and Lily Rowe with audio editing and music design by Becca High. Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist and Marissa and Travis from wme. Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener for making our show possible with your support and listenership. In the episode notes, you'll always find episode specific content, warnings, sources and resources. Thank you so much for your support. Until next time, stay safe, friends.