All language subtitles for S01.E03] The Program Cons, Cults And Kidnapping - Follow The Money

It bothers me how people low
on the totem pole end up taking the fall.

And the people at the top
seem to get away with murder.

I knew if I really wanted
to go after these places,

I need to follow the money.

When I first got out,

it was hard to track down
anyone to talk to,

which is exactly
what the program intended.

How fucking sad is this place

that literally everything was enacted

to make sure
that we never had relationships?

We were never allowed to be friends.

Well, and they did not want us
to find each other…

- No, they didn't.
- …after the program.

Not allowed to share
contact information or phone numbers.

When someone left, you're like, "I wonder
if I'll ever find them in the real world."

When I first got out
of the program,

Myspace was just becoming a thing.

We were able
to find our friends from the program

that we assumed
we'd never be able to see again.

So,
even among program graduates,

we had to stalk out
to find each other and stay in contact.

Even in our home contracts,

we're not allowed
to be friends with program kids.

'Cause you know why? They didn't want us
to get together and do this.

Right.

"You wanna be
in my Netflix docu?"

We found out that they were
tracking our Myspace pages after we left

and found an email from Tom Nichols
calling Myspace a "hate site."

So I asked Tom about it when we stopped
by his church for his Sunday sermon.

My only role was to take pictures.

So you weren't tracking kids
on social media

after they left the program?

No.
If we did that, we would've been fired.

You did do that.

Let me just read you
an email I have from you right here.

"We do have an opportunity to keep track
of where they are and what they're doing."

"It gives us a chance
to keep an eye on them

and see if lawsuits are being formulated."

"I think we should monitor them
and track them quietly."

This is you. You sent this email.

I have no idea
where that email came from.

Do you want to go outside
so you're not lying in a church?

Now there are dozens
of private online groups and forums

where survivors can connect
and share information.

- Look at us now!
- That's where it all started.

It would take us years

to go through
what we call the "waking up" process.

When I first got out, there was
very little information out there,

except for a few online forums.

So I did everything I could
to find proof of what was really going on.

- I had to turn the pen off.
- Did you get some stuff?

- Yes. When I first walked in.
- Good. Okay, cool.

I tried to find
any experts on the issue.

That's when I came across Maia's book,

Help at Any Cost:

How the Troubled-Teen Industry
Cons Parents and Hurts Kids.

I figured that would be
a good place to start.

So I'm not a real journalist.
You're a real journalist.

I'm like a amateur gumshoe.

'Cause I got out and immediately
started trying to investigate to get…

find anything that would explain
what happened to me.

This was in 2005.

Literally nothing out there.

And then your book came out,
and it frickin' blew my mind!

- It, like… Thank you. Thank you so much.
- You are so welcome.

I mean, I really, you know…

I was just horrified
by the fact that these places existed.

And I was just really curious
about who came up with this awful idea.

Like, why? Why?

After years of trying
to find proof of the abuse,

it's crazy that it was my very own program
that left all the evidence behind.

We could finally find
the answers we were looking for.

Do you know how much your parents paid?

Uh, not offhand, no.

Here we go. Cost per student.

There we go.

So, this is saying
a three-month contract tuition, $3,190.

My dad paid more because I have exactly
the contract he signed.

So if he was paying $5,085,
and I was there 15 months…

Seventy-six thousand dollars? To…

To give me PTSD.

One thing's for sure.

Very little of that money
was actually going to Ivy Ridge.

Ogdensburg is a tiny town
along the St. Lawrence River

in upstate New York.

With two prisons,
a psychiatric hospital, and Ivy Ridge,

its main economy in 2004
seems to have been institutionalization.

When you see these houses,
it prompts me to want to feel bad.

It's hard to see suffering…

…and not have empathy and sympathy.

I mean, I think this is
exactly why Ivy Ridge came to Ogdensburg.

Because it was
full of broken dreams, kind of, already.

And a very distressed economy.

For Ivy Ridge
to pop in here and give out jobs?

Everybody saw that
as a great opportunity to do something.

I had a…

A friend of mine called me up
and said, "We need employees."

Asked me if I wanted a job.
"Hmm. Okay." So I took the job.

And I said, "I can do this.
I just have to sit in a hallway."

Lo and behold, there was a lot more to it.

Emotionally, there was more to it
than just sitting in a hallway

and waitin' for the kids
to get up in the morning.

I was watching these girls
go to bed at night.

No moms and dads to kiss 'em good night.

I followed the rules as best I could,
without breaking my morals.

But I was havin' trouble
with this whole setup.

They were being treated like prisoners.

Things just didn't feel right.

Now, I look back, and I think…
"I could've done something."

"Maybe I should've done something."
And those kids deserved better.

These programs, they choose places
where there's very high unemployment.

So, suddenly,
they're the biggest employer in the place.

And nobody wants to complain about them

because, otherwise, the entire economy
of the town will be destroyed.

This former staff member
asked not to be identified.

And I don't blame her.

My friends and I remember her

being one of the meaner dorm parents
while we were there.

I mean,
I just remember being super strict.

-I was a bitch.
-Yeah.

I was.
I mean, it was black-and-white.

"These are the rules."

"This is what they can do.
They can't do anything else."

So I kinda followed 'em to a T.

What were the qualifications
for staff that worked there?

- Quite frankly, none.
- Really?

Yeah, I mean,
I was pretty much fresh out of college.

Didn't have any other jobs.

I don't think
I had any sort of background check

or anything
that I would wanna know now as a parent.

And I don't believe
there was any training.

So, they told us,

"If you're being mean,
if the students are complaining about you,

you're doin' a good job."

- Really?
- Yeah.

I'm sure I had
a million complaints about me.

- I feel bad for that.
- Yeah?

But I thought
I was doin' a good job back then.

The message goes out
to the local community

that these kids who we're shipping in
are the worst of the worst.

"We're not shipping in a kid
who drank a Mike's Hard Lemonade."

"We're shipping in kids
who are out of control."

They told us,
"These are bad kids."

"They're either goin' to jail or juvie."

You know? "They were into drugs."

"They're disrespectful kids."

- "They deserve it."
-Basically.

They dehumanize the kids.

They tell the staff that these kids
are liars and manipulators

and that you are doing the right thing
by being cruel to them.

And so people
who have really never had much power

end up on a massive power trip.

When we get accused,
or some of our programs get accused,

of being abusive to children,
uh, that's totally false.

Ken Kay
was the president of WWASP,

the umbrella organization of programs
which Ivy Ridge was a part of.

But prior to that,

he was the nighttime security guard
at Brightway Adolescent Hospital.

Okay. Where did you work just before
you came to WWASP five years ago?

I was, uh, the security person.

- Uh, eventually, I--
- Security guard?

Um… I…

don't think that was exactly…

It was… We were…
What we were called is "night watch."

At WWASP,
the lack of qualifications

went all the way to the top.

These guys were charging
a tremendous amount of money

based on the claim

that they had completely turned around
the lives of 15,000 children.

You had parents thinking

that they're dealing
with child turnaround experts,

and they're not.

If you actually are providing
decent psychiatric care for children,

it's very difficult to make money
because you need incredibly trained staff,

and everybody's gotta have
a master's-level degree or above.

Now, these places convince parents that,

because their regime is so well-designed
to modify behavior,

"We don't need any trained staff."

"We just put them
through our own training,"

and that's all they need
to be able to fix your kid.

In the files, we found out

that they were only paying some staff
$5.50 to take care of us.

The average tuition
at Ivy Ridge was $3,500 a month.

So, at the height of enrollment,

they were bringing in
more than $1.5 million a month.

But how much of that
were they really spending on us?

They only spent around four dollars
a day per kid on our meals.

They also saved money
by using child labor.

When you get to level three,

one of your privileges
was you're allowed to work in the kitchen.

The kids were the ones
doing all the cleaning in the facility.

I don't think
we ever had a real janitorial staff.

These programs
are remarkably inexpensive to run,

and the WWASP people figured that out.

If you eliminate all the things
that make a school expensive,

and you charge more than what was charged

at the most expensive private colleges

by calling it
"a therapeutic boarding school,"

my God, there was huge money to be made.

And so, the entire underlying concept,
the whole approach, is a scam.

At Ivy Ridge,
there were 500 students, 240 staff,

one certified teacher. One.

They used some type of
a Bible-based home study program to teach.

Switched-On Schoolhouse.

Yeah.
I mean, it was totally inadequate.

And I found that out as I began to unravel
what was going on at Ivy Ridge.

Parents pay out
$30,000 to $40,000

to send their kids to Ivy Ridge.

More than 100 diplomas have been
handed out over the past two years.

But Ivy Ridge is not licensed,

certified, or registered
with the state Department of Education.

The Attorney General's Office
wants to know

whether Ivy Ridge
may have been defrauding people

by passing themselves off
as a diploma-granting boarding school,

when the diploma they were issuing may not
be worth the paper it was written on.

So they were issuing diplomas
that were bogus,

and we were then able to go in
and say, "You know what?"

"You are an educational fraud."

And it was
the largest educational fraud case

in the history of New York State
until Trump University came up.

Oh, really?

Does a behavior modification program
have to go through

any oversight, or regulation,
or licensing in the state of New York?

At the time? No.

New York State actually had
more regulations governing dog kennels

than they did programs for troubled teens.

So is there anyone,

in the entire operation
of Academy at Ivy Ridge,

from 2001 to 2009,

who can say that they have
a legitimate high school diploma?

No.

Nada.

Wow.

And so all the pictures of Ken Kay
and different WWASP people

handing diplomas to students on stage
in a graduation ceremony, what was that?

They might as well have dressed up
as scarecrows and bunnies

and handed each other carrots
or something, you know?

Since I got pulled
from Ivy Ridge early,

I never got one of their fake diplomas.

My dad ended up issuing me
a home school diploma,

and I was able to get into a film school
in Los Angeles for college.

But a lot of other kids weren't so lucky.

So, you have a high school
diploma from Academy at Ivy Ridge?

- Yeah.
- Do you happen to have it?

Um, no, the…

This is the closest thing I guess I have…

Right now, um…

- So this is high school graduation.
- Yeah?

Uh, 2006. July 2006. So, um…

This is, uh, saying that I was awarded
a diploma from Ken Kay.

I didn't think about it
until I wanted to apply for college.

That's when I realized the gaping hole

that was the lack
of my high school diploma

and the fraud they had really committed.

I felt slighted. I felt stupid.

You know, "I'm gonna have to get my GED
because this place lied."

Before the program, growing up,
I always wanted to excel and chase dreams.

Educational, athletic.

And I really wanted
to go to a four-year college.

And I just lost that chance.

I didn't even become
that "fixed son" that Ivy Ridge promised.

The biggest post-program issue for me
really is just the disconnect of family.

My mom, she would cry
every time I visited the house

and just apologize for the program.

Every time.

All the time.

And I told her
not to feel bad and…

that it's okay.

But that was a lie I even told myself.

It's not okay.

Unfortunately, she passed away in 2014,

and the biggest thing that hurts me
about Ivy Ridge is that,

at the end of the day,
my mom never got her kid back.

Ivy Ridge obliterated any chance of that.

The nice thing about America
is there's organizations like ours,

and there's schools like ours,

that are tryin' to help kids
and help families get back together.

At the time, I was not empowered
to conduct an abuse review.

We did what we could do.

The New York
Attorney General's investigation

and bad press exposed the fraud
at Ivy Ridge,

and business began to suffer.

Many parents opted to send their children
to other WWASP programs,

and enrollment in Ivy Ridge declined

until they officially shut down operations
in 2009.

Ivy Ridge closed,
but every program they're opening

in all these different states

have the same issues of abuse

and are doing
the same thing over and over again.

How have they evaded any accountability?

- I hate to say this.
- Mm-hmm.

But follow the money.

I went to Montana
to meet with a lawyer who had sued WWASP.

Let's see.

She was able
to get a rare glimpse

into the inner workings
of their business operations,

and I wanted to see
what she had uncovered.

Back in 2005,
a case came into our firm

related to a death at a WWASP program.

And I think that I probably dedicated
90% of my practice to this case

for two years.

We, at first,
just focused on this particular school,

Spring Creek Lodge.

And through that investigation,

we realized the expansive nature
of this organization

called World Wide Association
of Specialty Programs.

Every single one
of these binders are from our case.

That's so much material
to go through.

I mean, we had to look
at every single program,

one of which is Ivy Ridge.

These boarding schools
were entering into contracts

with out-of-state corporations or LLCs

that were taking
a third of the profit off the top.

I found 73 companies
that were somehow related to WWASP.

We wanted to know
who really was making the money

and who was profiting off these schools.

So we started looking into
all of these other companies,

and we found
that most of them were from Utah.

And if you dug through
their layers of ownership,

one name kept coming up.

It always ends up down here.

"Robert Lichfield."

"Robert Lichfield. Robert Lichfield."

"Robert Lichfield."

Robert Browning Lichfield.

Robert Lichfield,
or Bob, as most people call him,

is the founder and owner of WWASP.

It's a real rags-to-riches story.

He grew up in complete poverty
to a large Mormon family in southern Utah.

He dropped out of Dixie State University

and started working
at Provo Canyon School,

which is another
unregulated teen residential program

that has a long history of abuse.

Robert got his start there

and was described
as "a humorless, dictatorial figure

who seemed to delight
in taunting students."

He left in 1988
and opened his first WWASP program,

Cross Creek Manor in La Verkin, Utah.

I think I'm talented, workin' with youth,

but I don't have a quote "college degree"
in that area.

He had a management contract
with Brightway Adolescent Hospital

and funneled many of the patients
into his WWASP programs.

He even hired the nighttime security guard
from Brightway

to be the president of WWASP
and the public face of the organization.

Robert has somehow managed to evade
liability for all of the fraud and abuse

that had been running rampant
throughout his programs.

And it's a lot.

You know, to the press,
he would always deny

when we'd talk
about allegations at various schools.

"Unsubstantiated. Unfounded."

There is no such thing
as "physical punishment."

There's only physical restraint.

And he's even said,
"I don't police these programs."

"I have been to that campus one time."

So, his role,

it appeared, if you just look
from the outside, pretty distant.

But if you study his emails, he had say
in who the director was of each school.

He approved bonuses, consulted on media.

His fingers were everywhere.

He was aware of the problems.

He was aware that children were being
in seclusion for days at a time.

And in the emails,

they're not even referred to
as "children."

They're "units."

It was all about money.

- Yeah.
- Units.

This was a very sophisticated,
lucrative business.

Bob Lichfield referred to it
as "a McDonald's franchise."

WWASP is like the McDonald's name.

And then, it provides services
to all of the associated programs.

They provide media relations.

They put on seminars
for the parents and the kids.

They were kind of the governing body.

And in exchange for that,
WWASP gets $75 per kid,

per month for every child
that is in any of these schools.

And we're talking worldwide.

Thousands of kids.

You can do the math.
That's a lot of money.

And, unfortunately, it was
at the expense of kids and parents.

The original WWASP facility,

Cross Creek Manor in La Verkin, Utah,
was Robert Lichfield's testing ground.

Okay, I'm going to FaceTime
this Cross Creek survivor I know.

Hello!

Could you give me a tour?
'Cause I didn't go here, so I don't know.

Yeah.
So down that hall to the right,

if you go straight ahead,
that's where the isolation rooms were.

- Oh!
- This is… Oh my God.

I have fuckin' chills.

- Oh gosh. This is small.
- Yeah.

You could be in there for like a month.

This is literally a carbon copy
of what we were living.

Like, I just can't…

For kids
who were really resistant to the program,

they would send them
to High Impact in Tecate, Mexico,

where they were forced to walk laps
for hours in outdoor dog cages.

This behavior modification model
is like torture.

Spring Creek in Montana
at least had a beautiful mountain setting,

but not one that kids could see
when they were kept in the Hobbit,

a small isolation shack
with no temperature control.

They could be in there for days at a time.

They were allowed
to shower every four days.

This is the classroom.

That is
the most depressing classroom.

It was a completely
self-taught program,

and you would lose points
if you looked out the window.

This was
the WWASP business model.

Holding children hostage
in remote locations

with unqualified staff,

while they con parents
with cult-like seminars

and collect the checks.

So many families were destroyed,
like my own.

You see the human casualties
of these programs.

And then you try to look at,
"Well, what was it all for?"

And it was just to make this guy rich.

It's tragic.

So, why hasn't
Robert Lichfield been charged with a crime

or held to account?

It was a sophisticated setup.

J. Ralph Atkin
is a prominent Mormon businessman

and founder of SkyWest Airlines.

He co-owned one
of the first WWASP programs,

Morava Academy in the Czech Republic.

He was WWASP's go-to lawyer
and set up many of Lichfield's businesses.

WWASP was basically organized

in a series
of limited liability corporations,

and it's a way to evade responsibility.

"This company didn't do it.
That company did."

"This company is owned by that company."

And, "Well, I didn't know
what those guys were doing."

Bob's own sister-in-law,
Marie Peart, said in an affidavit,

"When I questioned
why we needed so many bank accounts,

Robert Lichfield told me
to 'keep my mouth shut'

about what went on in the office."

"He then reminded me
of the three monkeys."

"Hear no evil,
see no evil, and speak no evil."

When you're
the best in the business,

you're under the most amount
of look and monitoring.

Bob has been able
to shield himself from liability

and from the public eye.

But in every business,
and in every family, there is a weak link.

And that weak link
is Robert's younger brother Narvin.

I'm either a sinner or a saint,

based on whatever argument
you want to believe.

Narvin Lichfield is honestly
a great name for a villain,

but he's gone by many aliases.

Though, for a guy
who's trying to hide his identity,

he is very public on social media.

Little tap dance for you. Here we go.

♪ Hey, oh! My little Tina ♪

♪ Hey, oh! Nothing could be sweeter ♪

♪ Hey, oh! She's my little ballerina ♪

If you're doing a study
of the WWASPs program,

all you have to say is,
"Narvin Lichfield."

It's a punchline on its own.

He was a bit of a wild card.

Robert enlisted
the help of his brother Narvin

to run some of the programs

and build WWASP
into an empire of troubled-teen programs.

I want you to know that we can truly make
a difference for your child.

One of his programs
was raided by the police,

and another had its license revoked
by social services.

But he'd just reopen them
under a new name.

But watch out, Narvin, Marvin, Nathan…
whatever name you're going by these days.

We're comin' for you.

This is
the results of our investigation.

And so we've just been trying

to piece together
all these names that kept coming up.

What are the connections
between all of them?

I met up with Thomas Houlahan

to pick up
where his investigation left off.

WWASP did its best to silence critics,

and Houlahan had ruffled
a lot of feathers.

They asked me,
"What business is it of mine?"

The abuse of a child is the business
of anyone who knows about it.

Here's our main villain,
Robert Lichfield.

And then, of course, you know this idiot.

Yeah.

For anyone who's like,

"How did someone like Jason Finlinson
become the director of a 'school'?"

Like, "Oh! He married MayBeth Lichfield."

When someone is setting
everything up to be all in the family,

it raises a suspicion that,
you know, they're dealing with family

'cause that way secrets get kept.

Yeah, that is definitely
a family of secrets here.

For years, I've been piecing
together information about the Lichfields

through old depositions and lawsuits.

I even found this obscure self-published
book by one of the Lichfield brothers

called
Little Boy Lost:
Missing Retarded Brother
,

which talks about their weird
fundamentalist Mormon upbringing.

And, yes, it is as bad as it sounds.

So, imagine my excitement
when I saw this post pop up

in the private WWASP Survivors
Facebook group

on St. Patty's Day in 2021.

"Hi, all.
I'm the son of Narvin Lichfield."

"It has been a long time coming,
but I wanted to reach out

to any and everyone here
who went through the programs."

"I just want you to know
that I saw firsthand

how awful those places were,
and that you are not alone."

"If you ever need someone to talk to,
I am here."

So I flew out to Utah
to meet up with him in person.

The last time I talked to my dad,
he just showed up at my sister's house.

That was four years ago.

Before that, it'd been
another three or four years.

It's a big deal
to cut off your dad.

I cut off my dad for a bit,
and that was tough.

What was it that made you do that?

It was
a combination of things, for sure.

You know, I had made
a lot of excuses for him over the years.

And…

I just felt incredibly… guilty.

You know?
I felt like we had destroyed lives.

How would you describe
your dad to people?

Uh, he's an asshole.

Uh,
he was a man with two faces, right?

A funny guy.

A very charming person.

And then he had a much darker side.

But he saw himself as, like,
a Biblical scholar.

And my understanding of WWASP, as a child,

was that these were places
where we were doing God's work.

So, Narvin was one
of the younger sons of 12 kids.

They had started basically living
in dirt poverty.

But Robert Lichfield is the one
that sort of got the ball rolling

with everybody in the family.

He was sort of the provider
for all of us, you know?

Considering how impoverished
the family was.

He started WWASP
and kinda enticed everybody in.

Got everybody involved.

Narvin had been a used car salesman.

So he could say things
with a straight face to people.

And that's what Robert saw in him.

And he initially got involved
with Teen Help,

the marketing and admissions arm of WWASP.

Teen Help
is a free referral service

for parents of struggling teens

and can help direct parents
to both short and long-term options

to assist their family.

The money started coming in
when I was about five or six.

You know,
started living that yuppie lifestyle.

He got himself this pretty expensive house
out in St. George, Utah.

All of a sudden, we had computers.

And my dad kinda saw
a future of everything being online.

Narvin pioneered early SEO,
search engine optimization.

It made use of cheap internet marketing,

so any time parents searched
for help with their teenagers,

they would be referred
to a Lichfield program

or a referral service.

He created all of
the marketing materials for WWASP,

and there are some real gems in there.

I mean, you could see
the original marketing materials…

- They were… pretty bad.
- Yeah.

But my dad was demanding
more and more involvement with WWASP.

More and more responsibility.

And it only skyrocketed from there

when we went
and moved out to South Carolina.

Nestled in the upstate
farmland of South Carolina,

not far from Augusta, Georgia,

you will find the beautiful country campus
of Carolina Springs Academy.

When I was probably
about 10 or 11, he sat us all down

and said, "God has come to me,

and we are now going to go
open up a school in South Carolina."

And then, from there, he went on
to open up Dundee in Costa Rica.

Dundee was only open 19 months
before authorities were alerted to abuse,

raided the facility,
and Narvin was arrested.

Costa Rican officials
raided Dundee,

and the school was shut down.

Students tasting freedom ran wild.

Some fled into the jungle,
and others started trashing the place.

We haven't done anything
but try to run a school.

Narvin didn't waste any time
in rebuilding his Costa Rican facility

into a new program called Pillars of Hope,

only seven months
after his previous program was raided.

My name is Narvin Lichfield,

and I'm the founder
of
Pilares de Esperanza,

or Pillars of Hope, in Costa Rica.

And I want you to know that your children
become our children here.

And that we treat 'em just like
as if it was our children, literally.

God fuckin' forbid
he treat them like his own children.

'Cause he treated us like shit.

It's wild that anybody
could watch this and trust him.

We believe in this process so strongly
that I sent my own son here.

I had a son who was 17 years old,
who was not doing well in school,

who was not progressing well.

After my junior year
of high school,

I went and stayed at Dundee
for a few months.

And then I was "enrolled," so to speak,

as a "student" at CSA.

Definitely not to the degree of any
of the poor kids that had to go there.

And then when my dad opened up Gulf Coast,

I went out
and worked there for the summer.

The place was in total disarray.

The head of the school side
of the program,

the first thing he said to me was,

"Fuck your dad.
I'm leaving in three days."

"Guess who's
the new principal of the school?"

"You, buddy."

So you became the principal
of Gulf Coast Academy?

Without a degree,
without any qualifications,

without any licensing, nothing.

When did you
first start realizing

what was really going on
with these programs?

In my 20s, I think,
after I had cut him out of my life,

and I was able to just take a breather
from all the chaos.

That's when I was able
to kinda look at the bigger picture

and say, "There is a big problem here."

Do you think Narvin actually believed
that the programs were helpful to kids?

No.

The programs
were a means to an end to him.

And that end being lots, and lots,
and lots of money.

He wanted to live lavishly.

He wanted to spend lavishly.

He had more money
than he knew what to do with.

Bought horses, properties,
just constant vacations.

And it's all just riding
on these poor parents' credit cards.

To think all the allegations of abuse,
and torture, and death,

all these kids being robbed
of normal childhoods…

That's where our vacation funds
were coming from.

I remember, at the time,

we were always going out
to visit Bob's property.

It was just insane.

They called this
the "Millionaire's Junkyard."

This is where
all that parent money went to die.

It all went into this. Just one man's…

ego project.

If any other Lichfields see this,
if anybody else in the family sees this,

like, it's not too late to say, like,
"All of this is fuckin' wrong."

Like, why?

Yeah. Was it worth it, Bob?

Only he
can answer that question.

Well, even he's abandoned this.
He's not even here anymore.

Yeah, he's not even here.

Apparently,
Robert hasn't lived there for years.

He's moved on to bigger and better
properties, buying up lots of real estate.

But his nephew Tyler Olson is living there
and running a new program on the property

called Soulegria, which targets
mentally challenged young adults.

Tyler used to be a teen transporter,
one of those people that kidnaps kids

in the middle of the night
to take them to these programs.

He even posted a picture of himself
in a convertible on Facebook and said,

"Sometimes we get to go kidnapping
in luxury, LOL."

He couldn't even spell "kidnapping" right,
or "luxury."

Bob's gonna die someday,
and this will all just pass on.

- And what was the point of any of it?
- And where is he now?

-Do you know?
-No.

Like, he set up WWASP in a way
that shielded him from any liability.

And it's not fair
that he gets away with that.

The extent to which

Robert Lichfield
has never paid any price for this,

has never been held to account
for any of this,

bothers me.

The guy who created it all
and he's just gotten away scot-free.

Free as a bird.

Never a day in jail,
I don't think.

There's a question
of political influence in all of this.

According to public records
with the Federal Election Commission,

the owners and directors of
World Wide Schools and related companies,

and their families,
have given candidate donations,

mostly to Republicans, since 2001.

Robert Lichfield
was Mitt Romney's Utah finance co-chair

and fundraised hundreds
of thousands of dollars for the campaign.

You worry
that this industry is kind of

infiltrating the political system
at the highest levels

to keep action
from being taken to protect the kids.

In 2003,
the year before I was sent to Ivy Ridge,

Congressman George Miller
had already started investigating

the abuses in these programs.

Congressman Miller
saved some of his harshest criticism

for one particular group
of alternative programs

known as the World Wide Association
of Specialty Programs.

Congressman Miller had asked
the United States government

to look into the program,
and they just sidestepped this issue.

I look back at how many people
were completely gutless

and sort of allowed this to happen.

What did you think of the GAO hearings,
congressional hearings in 2008?

The Government
Accountability Office

found thousands of allegations
of abuse and neglect

in private residential homes for teens
between 1990 and 2007.

Examples of abuse include
youth being forced to eat their own vomit,

denied adequate food,

being forced to lie in urine or feces,

being kicked, beaten,
and thrown to the ground,

and being forced
to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet

and then forced
to use that toothbrush on their teeth.

It's astonishing,
the range of punishments

and the types of things
that these programs get away with.

Virtually everything
short of waterboarding.

I strongly believe that the instances
of neglect, abuse, and death

at these facilities
are totally unacceptable

and must be stopped.

It was just disappointing
because we saw these hearings happen,

and they turn up just
so many bombshell moments.

And you're like, "Oh my gosh.
All this horrific stuff is being exposed."

But then nothing happens.

This issue has been so neglected.

It came out in 2008.

I mean, that congressional investigation
revealed a lot.

And still, despite all of that,
there's been no meaningful change.

Caroline was at Ivy Ridge
at the same time as me.

- Caroline!
- Yeah.

Wait.
I'm gonna bring this to her.

And she's been
heavily involved in activism

to get federal legislation passed
to regulate the industry.

I actually went to a program called
the Academy at Ivy Ridge

in upstate New York.

I was there for 29 months,
two and a half years of my life,

from when I was 14 years old,
uh, until almost 17.

WWASP eventually
unraveled after the bad press

and lawsuits became insurmountable.

But these programs are like Whac-A-Mole.

As soon as one gets shut down,
a new one opens up under a different name.

Eagle Ranch Academy is currently operating

out of the original Brightway facility
in St. George.

I happened to stumble upon
a seminar they were running

out of the hotel
I was staying at while I was in town.

Okay.
So, we're staying at the Hyatt,

and there was a trash bag
full of the big, white posters.

"Based on…"
Holy shit. Is this what you saw?

"Based on your results,
you have exactly what you intended!"

I cannot believe it!

Oh my God!

Are you kidding me?

It's a seminar!

"There are no accidents!"

I can't believe this is real!

This stuff is still going on
to this day, at this very moment.

Oh my gosh.
Look what business card I just found.

Norm Thibault.

Norm Thibault
was the therapist at Cross Creek.

He then left to open his own program

called Three Points Center
that works exclusively with adopted kids.

I decided to give them a call

and pretended to be
the parent of a troubled teenager.

Happy to share
information, tell you whatever.

Yeah, so our daughter
has had some behavioral issues.

I guess our main concern
is that she will not go willingly.

- Yes.
- I'm not sure we can convince her to go.

- Uh…
- You don't have to.

Like, she doesn't have to choose
to be with us.

Utah's an involuntary state.

So that means
you have the right to sign her in.

And she can't leave
just because she doesn't want to be here.

And then as far as getting her here,

if you feel like
you couldn't transport her yourself,

you can hire a transport company
to come to you,

and pick her up from your home,
and bring her to the program.

Um…

- Is she adopted through foster care?
- Yeah.

Do you have
some post-adoption funding

through the state or the county?

Oh! I don't know.

I don't think so.
Is that something I should look into?

Uh, yeah, for sure.

So, we have agreements
with several counties in California.

Oh, really?

They fund
the full amount of the program.

- Okay.
- We have a contracted rate.

So your out-of-pocket is 200 bucks.

Oh, wow. Okay.

The troubled-teen industry
as a whole has evolved

and become more resilient over the years.

They've now pivoted from private payment
to government contracts.

So, they'll come and kidnap
my adopted child across state lines.

And they'll take, uh, county…
government money for it.

Programs now enter contracts
with a variety of public agencies

responsible for the care of children.

It's a billion-dollar industry.

I mean, so much money
is being made off the abuse of these kids.

You know, several hundred thousand kids
are in one program or another every year.

It is a big industry.

If you look at the data in Utah,
it's an industry

that now exceeds
a half a billion dollars in revenue.

And we have about 100 facilities
in the state of Utah today.

Utah's the epicenter
of the troubled-teen industry.

And its idyllic setting
and access to nature

have made it a hot spot
for wilderness programs.

Wilderness programs
are an especially clever advance

because when you're talking
about reducing costs,

now you don't even need a facility.

You can just take
the untrained staff that you have

and take the kids out into the wilderness.

And you don't even need
to buy very much food

'cause they can eat lizards.

And you can sell it
for thousands of dollars a day.

There is no FDA for behavioral health.

If I want to introduce a therapy,

I can just say, "Standing on your head
will cure addiction."

And, "Come to my treatment center
and pay me $1,000 a day."

And there is nothing to stop me.

Do you believe the troubled-teen industry
has cleaned up its act?

Not at all.

I mean, we have reports of horrific abuse
still coming out of these facilities.

As of a week ago.

As of yesterday.

Last April, a child in Michigan,
Cornelius Frederick,

threw a piece of bread,

and as a result, was violently restrained
by numerous staff and died.

There's video of this.

Literally, all he was doing
was throwing bread.

He was not a threat,
but he's restrained for about 12 minutes.

And what happened
to Cornelius wasn't unusual.

We know it wasn't unusual because
of the reaction of the kids and the staff

in that room.

People eating lunch,
scraping things, walking by, looking.

The only reason
Cornelius was in the program to begin with

was because his mother died.

So he was put in foster care,

which contracted him out
to Sequel Youth and Family Services.

Cornelius died,
and there are thousands of other kids

that experience these restraints
multiple times a week

or witness these restraints
multiple times a week,

which is very traumatic.

And we call this "treatment."
It is not treatment.

There is absolutely nothing
that is therapeutic

about a physical restraint or a seclusion.

It is a management technique
to manage kids in a very violent way.

How many more deaths do we need
to decide that now is the time to act?

I wanna see
a federal bill passed.

I think if you bring in
some federal regulation,

you're gonna get to ask the question,

"What treatment is appropriate?
What protocol is appropriate?"

Any time federal legislation
has been brought to the table,

it's been met
with intense opposition by the industry.

We found an email that Ken Kay sent
to program directors ranting about

the End Institutionalized Abuse
Against Children Act of 2005.

"Utah has approximately
1,500 teens in private youth programs."

"That's pristine money
coming into this little state…

those out-of-state dollars."

"Our state or counties should be
the only regulatory agencies involved."

That sentence, right there.

"Pristine money…
those out-of-state dollars."

The kids are just…
they're tokens in this economy.

And everybody is making a lot of money.
It is human trafficking.

It is…
It is human trafficking of children.

There has to be
somebody looking over that,

and there has to be protection
for the rights of these kids,

because their liberty is taken away
without any court hearing, nothing.

I noticed you're struggling

with an out-of-control teenager.

Let's talk about it.

Survivors have been
speaking out on social media

and organizing their efforts to expose
the abuse that still runs rampant

throughout the industry.

There's nothing more to fear.

We will fix your child for you
for 36 a year.

Kids who were
in these programs, now adults,

are speaking out, are trying to get people
to understand what happened to them.

The survivors are the experts.
The survivors have been telling us

what's wrong for a long time.
They've been telling us what's needed.

These experiences of abuse
are not just reserved to a few bad actors.

It truly is institutional.

It is systemic.

It affects every state
and every community.

They are
shutting some places down.

They are causing
some state investigations.

Facilities, historically,
have shut down, then start up again.

Bad employees bounce around.

I think that's still…
I think that's still happening.

But we are trying to limit that
as much as we possibly can here.

Yeah, I mean,
I'm not gonna give you any pointers.

You're the professional here.

But I'm just saying,
if there's a guy like Robert Lichfield…

Right.

…who has been opening
all these programs all over,

-and they've all had abuse…
-Right.

Can Robert Lichfield be put
on some sort of blacklist or something?

Being like, "Yo, buddy. Enough's enough."

I would think so.
I don't know Robert Lichfield, but--

You will! Soon enough.

I will watch the documentary,
and I will take notes of Robert Lichfield.

Okay. Keep an eye out.

The Lichfields and their
protégés are still running programs,

just not under the WWASP name.

So,
what is Narvin doing these days?

He is… still operating.

-That's insane.
-Yeah.

All you have to do is type
"Narvin Lichfield" into Google,

and you'll find tons of stuff on the guy.

And, yet, people still send him kids.

While I was in Utah,
Narvin posted on social,

inviting people to do karaoke
on Wednesday nights at Club 90 in Ogden.

So I thought I'd drop by
while I was in town.

Thanks for the invite, Narvin.
See you there.

All right, we got Narvin
comin' up for his first one.

♪ And I've got no defense for it ♪

♪ The heat is too intense for it ♪

♪ What good
Would common sense for it do? ♪

It was surreal
to see Narvin in person.

Knowing everything I know about this guy,

the children he abused,
the parents he conned,

all of the crimes he's gotten away with…

Yet, here he is, free as a bird,

singing Frank Sinatra at a club in Utah.

I didn't talk to him
because I didn't want to blow my cover,

and I don't like giving abusers
a platform to spew their bullshit.

All right!

That was Narvin Sinatra!

Ooh! All right. Let's do it.

Unlike the Justice Department
or FBI,

there's nothing I can really do
to the Lichfields except this.

But don't get too comfortable, Narvin.

'Cause one way or another,
I'm gonna get ya.

♪ One way or another ♪

♪ I'm gonna find ya ♪

♪ I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya ♪

♪ One way or another ♪

♪ I'm gonna win ya ♪

♪ I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya ♪

All these people,
they've gotten away with this for so long.

So I think a lot of them
really do think they got away with it.

I think Narvin, I think Robert,
they've gotten away with it for so long.

And so if the smallest thing
that can come out of this

is just to expose it publicly,
they're getting off easy.

Very, very, very easy.

There's revenge I could do,
but I'm not gonna do it.

I'm not… being malicious.

I'm setting the record straight.

Who knows what will happen legally

if any law enforcement organization

will actually get their shit together
and investigate?

Like, you know,
if they actually serve time in prison,

if they actually get
whatever punishment is due

for people who abuse children,

knowingly abuse children…

There are punishments for that,
and I'm not a law enforcement agency.

I'm just a kid trying to expose the truth.

And it really just started out…

It was just to show my dad.

Because they didn't believe me.

They didn't believe any of us
about this shit.

I thought
it was just Ivy Ridge when I…

when I started looking into this.

And Ivy Ridge is bad.
It gets worse and worse and worse.

And then you realize,
"Oh, it's not just Ivy Ridge."

It's multiple programs.

Multiple states, multiple countries,
multiple families, multiple children.

So, if I'm bringing that to light…
That's justice.

That's accountability.

I am exposing criminals.

Not for their sins against myself,
but for their black injustices to others.

Not only for what they have done,
but for what they continue to do.

They are the ones devoid of all humanity.

The ones that profited
by the sufferings of others.

- This is what I've been up to.
- Wow.

That looks like a, uh,
crime-solvers type of thing.

Well, there's been
a lot of crime going on.

You look like Carrie in
Homeland.

I feel like Carrie in
Homeland,
with all the mental breakdowns.

Well, you've done a good job.

My dad's always been
supportive of my filmmaking.

- Can I take a picture of this board?
- Sure.

In fact, why don't you
stand over by it, Katherine?

So, part of me
feels really bad making a documentary

that will make him seem
like a horrible parent.

Lean towards 'em and gesture towards 'em.
Yes. There you go.

Because he was
a really good dad.

And here we are
with baby Katherine, and she just woke up.

- It is Katherine's birthday.
- There's the birthday girl.

- Right there.
- December 5th, 1989.

Katherine, what do you have?

Can you make it play?

Here he is helping me
with my first documentary about Mars.

I'm interviewing Katherine
about her planet report.

Now, exactly what planet are you doing?

Oh, I am doing Mars.

Here is a picture that I made about Mars.

- Hold it straight.
- What? Oh.

Tell us about it.

And if you weigh 100 pounds on Mars,
you'd weight about, like…

Dad, put the camera up.

The camera up!

Up! Up!

And, well, that's it that I have.

Let's see
what some of these are.

Every day, they would make us
write reflections.

- So…
- Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, so here's a few things.
"Reflections."

Look, my quote of the day is,
"'I love Daddy.' By me."

Aw.

Yeah.

So, here's a note on 3/28.

"Katherine went to worksheets

because she got a major mischief
for looking at the boys in the hall."

"A major mischief."

"A major mischief
for looking at the boys in the hall."

So, when the boys
are crossing you in the hall,

they have these dorm parents
looking at your eyes to see if you--

Oh, yeah. You are not allowed to look.

If your eyeballs look out of line,
then you get in trouble.

So they got somebody staring at everybody?

Yeah, you're being…
Your entire body is being scrutinized.

- See, to me that's sort of…
- That's the worst abuse.

- …kind of the worst.
- Yeah.

That control.
You don't have any physical autonomy.

Turning you into a robot.

See, that's one of the things the parents
have no clue that it's at that level.

You have no way of knowing.

- I thought you knew.
- No.

For the longest time,
I was like, "You knew."

'Cause you were like,
"Try this program. It works."

How could you not know
we're not allowed to talk?

That's the most fundamental thing
about the program.

They never tell you.

So you had no idea
we were not allowed to talk?

- No.
- Not allowed to smile.

I write in letters,
"We're not allowed to talk."

Somehow or another, that doesn't connect.

Maybe you think it's so absurd
or you assume that means study hall.

- Like, "Don't speak in school."
-Something like that.

You don't assume it's 24/7.

I think the thing
I've been realizing the most

as I've been going through these files

and seeing the program
for what it really is,

is just how manipulated you were
and how lied to you were.

Yeah, it's sort of shaming

to realize you've been manipulated
when you consider you're pretty smart.

Mmm.

-Yeah.
-Particularly by…

- Idiots.
- Yeah!

Wish we could do it over.

Mm-hmm.

- I'm glad we're talking.
- Mm-hmm.

And I'm really supportive of this effort.

You're doing a great job
and I'm very proud of you.

Obviously, I'd love
to see Robert Lichfield in jail

for what he's done, but I can't do that.

But what I can do

is expose the methodology
of these places in this documentary.

Yeah.

So that other parents
don't get manipulated

and sucked up into this scheme.

Somebody needs to come up
with a alternative.

If you're even being tempted to…

put your kid in some program like this,
well, what's the alternative?

There is no easy answer to that.

A lot of times, people ask me,
"What should parents do instead?"

And most of the time,
I say, "I'm not that smart."

I just know they shouldn't do this.

That this is absolutely clearly wrong.

The fundamental flaw
with these places

is that "troubled teen"
is not a diagnosis.

Adolescence is a crazy time
for a lot of people.

And part of the point of it
is to get away from your parents.

So you may be rebelling,
or doing things that they don't like,

or just experimenting,

or just figuring out
ways to piss them off.

It's the job of the adult to be like,

"I get that. That's a teenager."

Um…
You know, "I'm trying to keep them safe."

But when you do things
to break their image of themselves,

it's just harmful. It's just not…
There's no way to help somebody like that.

And it also makes it really difficult
for them to function when they come out.

When somebody gets out of a confinement,
they get into survival mode.

And surviving right now at this moment
means not looking at that.

For me, it was workaholism.
That kind of worked out for me.

I kept myself busy
so I wouldn't have to think.

And then, eventually,
when I was forced to confront it,

I started just having really bad,
debilitating kind of PTSD things.

- C-PTSD.
- C-PTSD. Yeah, there we go.

C-PTSD,
or complex post-traumatic stress disorder,

is caused by long-term abuse or trauma

in which the individual perceives
little or no chance of escape.

Complex PTSD, it colors
all your relationships afterwards,

because of the mistrust, and the paranoia,

and the fear,
and the betrayals, and all of that.

You have flashbacks, you have nightmares,
but you also have huge issues of trust,

loss of sense of self,
not knowing how to relate to people.

They're probably never
gonna go into therapy.

There are probably
some that will go into therapy,

but that's gonna be rare,

because they were abused
in the name of therapy.

It's rough.

Like, there are nights
I'll be in the fetal position, crying.

And it's heavy,
and I don't know how to describe

how debilitating it can be.

"They tried to murder
children's souls here."

Fuck WWASP.

And, unfortunately,
for a lot of program kids,

that's ended in suicide or overdose.

Oh, yeah. The suicides. Um…

One of the really,
really most difficult aspects

of even being aware
of this whole situation is the suicides.

So many come out of these programs.

These programs do real damage,
lasting damage to children and families.

And some of that cannot be fixed.

There's a lot of times,
from 2006 to 2022, that I…

have not wanted to live.

And, unfortunately, it's beyond my fingers
to count people that I spent time with

in my program experience
that are not here.

We've been keeping a list
of people we know from Ivy Ridge

who have killed themselves
or overdosed since their time there.

It's at about 40.

Oh, this is nice. Here we go.

That's a good fire, Quintin.

Did you guys ever watch
Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Hell yeah.
Do you know it's full-blown Canadian?

- Is it? Wow.
- Yeah. Listen to 'em talk now.

It'll blow your mind.
It freaked me out when I heard it.

"What are you talking about?"

"Are You Afraid of the Dark?"

Pretty much. It is strong.

Wait. Do you have any files to burn?

Yeah, I have a whole box I haven't
yet burned that they want destroyed.

- They asked you to burn 'em?
- Yeah.

- Let's burn 'em.
- Want to burn 'em now?

Yeah, let's do it.
Get it over with.

All right. It should be…

this one right here.

What are these we're burning?
People that said they don't want them?

- Yep. They're over it.
- Burn it.

They found
some way to get through it.

This shit right here burns good.

For the most part,
I mean, people want their files back.

Just out of pure curiosity, I would say.

But these people just…

they don't want to revisit
that time in their life whatsoever.

So…

- Therapeutic, ain't it?
- Yeah.

Yeah, this is therapy.

Hell yeah.

Every file, you know,
is just someone's destroyed life.

Oh my gosh. Another frickin' huge one.

Separate 'em a little bit.
They'll burn better.

Ooh, that's smart.

Feel that heat?
That is hellfire, right there.

All right.

♪ I come home
In the morning light ♪

♪ My mother says,
"When you gonna live your life right?" ♪

♪ Oh, Daddy, dear
You know you're still number one ♪

♪ But, girls, they wanna have fun ♪

♪ Oh, girls, they wanna have fun ♪

This story
does not have a happy ending.

And the story is far from over.

The troubled-teen industry
is still alive and thriving.

They're still out there,
institutionalizing children

with little to no oversight or regulation.

People need to know
that these programs exist,

and that they're unregulated,
and that the harm is monumental.

And something needs to be done about it.

♪ That's all they really want ♪

♪ Some fun ♪

♪ When the working day is done ♪

♪ Oh, girls, they wanna have fun ♪

♪ Oh, girls, they wanna have fun ♪

I often think of
what Maia said in the intro to her book.

"Creative, difficult,
challenging teenagers,

the ones most likely
to become our artists, our writers,

our social critics, and our scientists,
are at risk in this climate."

"Tough-love programs,
no matter how well-intended,

often wind up destroying these kids
in their attempts to save them.
"

"If there were good research that showed
that such programs are effective,

there might be an ethical dilemma
over their use."

"But in the absence of such data,
and in the presence of much

that suggests they produce damage,
not improvement,

we should stick with the first principle
of medical ethics,

'first, do no harm.'"

♪ Some boys take a beautiful girl
And hide her away ♪

♪ From the rest of the world ♪

♪ I wanna be the one to walk in the sun ♪

♪ Oh, girls, they wanna have fun ♪

♪ Oh, girls just wanna have fun ♪

There needs to be people
that keep up with the cause, you know?

And that…

stick with it to see it through

till the very end,
till the program is in that fire pit.

There are thousands
of children

still trapped in these programs.

Like Thomas Houlahan said,

"The abuse of a child is the business
of anyone who knows about it."

Now you know.