Two strangers woke up fifteen-year-old Meg Appelgate in the middle of the night in 2009, "You are coming with us. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way." Appelgate cried in desperation, begging her parents to save her from the kidnappers, only to hear one of the kidnappers say, "Your parents already packed you a bag."
Applegate's parents waved her goodbye as she was forcefully ushered into the back seat of a large, black SUV. That would be the last time Appelgate saw her parents for three and a half years.
Unfortunately, Appelgate is not an anomaly amongst teens, in fact, over 200,000 teens are forcibly sent to such camps each year. The Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) is a multibillion-dollar entity of profit for treatment facilities and programs designed to assist teenagers deemed troublesome or at-risk, or as Appelgate calls it, "Institutionalized child abuse that is incentivized by profit and funded by the government." 17 years later, Appelgate stands tall as a fierce survivor of TTI and an advocate to terminate this industry. Through her published memoir, "Becoming Unsilenced," and her grassroots organization, "Unsilenced," Appelgate continues to make noise in the TTI world. She is dedicated to empowering other survivors of institutional abuse and holding the industry accountable for their irreversible actions: "Nobody else should have to go through what I [Applegate] went through alone."
When Appelgate was 15, her parents hired an educational consultant, an advisor who helps parents find the perfect, academic fit for their child. Appelgate's undiagnosed autism and ADHD made school a constant, uphill battle.
"I was skipping class. I was getting in trouble with the school. I was hanging out with the wrong crowd; it was the perfect storm," Appelgate said.
That's where the educational consultant stepped in. The consultant told Appelgate's parents that there was only one solution; a solution that such loving parents like them could never provide: tough love. The consultant assured Appelgate's parents that therapeutic boarding schools' (TTI in disguise) top-tier care and support would help their daughter get back on the right track.
However, as it does for many kids, it did the opposite for Appelgate.
According to a survey conducted by Appelgate's nonprofit, Unsilenced, only 2.7% of teens leave TTI seeing any improvement. The other 97.3% remain "unfixed." Actual, evidence-based treatment, such as cognitive behavior therapy, EMDR or trauma-informed care is supplanted by this cruel, archaic physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Moreover, all the while being government funded, totaling $23 billion annually.
As Appelgate put it, "it is all a business." TTI sends out decoy marketers to families in dire need of fixing their troubled teens. Even with an annual cost of approximately $215,000, marketers know how to blind parents into believing that this is the only way to save their child.
"They are huge corporations. They're smart. They strike when families are most vulnerable. My parents thought I was a lost cause. She [the educational consultant] did her job; she sold me. And my parents bought it. They bought 3 and a half years of it," Appelgate said.
For the first six months of her TTI experience, Appelgate stayed at Inner Mountain Hospital in Idaho.
"They[faculty at Inner Mountain Hospital] made it clear that control was no longer mine, and it never would be again. It was a power game, and the staff always came out on top," Appelgate said.
The staff's abuse of control wasn't just emotional, it was also physical. Once, Appelgate rolled her eyes at a staff member and was placed in the "QR" for 48 hours in punishment. Appelgate, along with many others in the facility, had to spend days in the "QR" strapped down to a bed with little to no food. "It was both a physical and mental prison," Appelgate said. Despite anticipating her return home after six months in the lockdown facility, Appelgate soon found out her parents had other plans.
Appelgate spent the next three years of her life as a Chrysalis sister in Eureka, Montana.
"It's more of your traditional therapeutic boarding school; it is a cult. It's ten girls living in the middle of the woods in a log cabin, and we share a bathroom with our therapists," Appelgate said.
During those three years, Appelgate and her Chrysalis sisters underwent significant trauma, yet their hunger for love and attention blinded them from the toxicity of their situation at hand. In addition to the indoctrination, she and her sisters endured 20 hours per week of grueling attack therapy known as "The Circle." In these tedious, antagonistic therapy sessions, all sisters would gather in a circle and publicly address each other's flaws and shortcomings. The Circle was a venue for public humiliation and punishment, with child labor as one of the consequences.
Although Chrysalis boasts hundreds of acres of land, they didn't have any staff dedicated to maintenance or upkeep. Instead, girls who "misbehaved" were forced to perform extensive maintenance work to maintain the land, even during the harsh winters of Montana.
After Applegate's release from Chrysalis, it took her two decades to process moments of trauma she endured.
"I didn't actually wake up from the brainwashing until I heard that four of my past Chrysalis sisters committed suicide. That was my wake-up call. This wasn't normal," Appelgate said.
Since then, Appelgate has remained relentless in sharing her story and determined to expose the ongoing existence of "camps" endorsed by the government. Appelgate refuses to rest until all survivors are heard and these establishments are shut down for good.
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