The new documentary series The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping landed on Netflix this week, but what is exposed at the end of the show?
The three-episode series explores the horrific experiences suffered by classmates at the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a private disciplinary boarding school in upstate New York that operated between 2001 and 2009.
The institution claimed to be place to accommodate troubled teens, but as the show demonstrates, students on the site were in fact made to take part in cult-like behaviour and had to endure emotional and physical abuse.
The Program is directed by Katherine Kubler, a survivor of Ivy Ridge, who revisits the site of the academy with a number of her former classmates.
“I made this series because there really was nothing out there to help explain what had happened to me to my friends and family to warn them about these places,” Kubler has said. “So now, that resource exists.”
All three episodes of the series are now available to stream on Netflix.
What happens at the end of The Program?
The show reveals that the now-abandoned building that used to house the Academy at Ivy Ridge in rural Ogdensburg, New York is now publicly accessible. When Kubler and her team arrive at the site, they find files and papers that document the eyewitness testimony of former students lying around the site, as well as security camera footage of staff physically abusing some of the teen boarders.
Other victims of abuse at the Academy recount various forms of psychological abuse that they suffered, including being penalised for looking in a mirror, looking out of a window or looking at each other.
It also reveals some of the promotional materials that the school made to entice parents of “troubled” teenagers to send them to stay at Ivy Ridge. The school claimed to offer therapeutic sessions for students, but did not even have the capacity to offer official degrees or recognised diplomas.
Kubler also reveals that she resented her parents for sending her there, and ultimately meets her father again for a sit-down interview, in which he apologises to her for sending her there.
The show also seeks to place Ivy Ridge amid the broader context of the Troubled Teen Industry, in which scores of other such boarding institutions are offering “help” to teens and families.
“This story does not have a happy ending, and the story is far from over,” Kubler says, noting that the industry is “still alive and thriving”.
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