The first shots are reminiscent of urbex, this leisure activity consisting of visiting disused buildings: a group of young adults armed with flashlights walk through hastily deserted places, where furniture and documents are still scattered. But they do not discover Ivy Ridge, on the contrary: all of them were forcibly placed in this establishment in upstate New York, by their parents, as teenagers. And everyone experienced a nightmare lasting several months, even several years.

Through their testimonies and hundreds of documents discovered on site, director Katherine Kubler, herself literally kidnapped – with the consent of her parents – and sent by force to the scene, dissects the perverse methods and brutality of those responsible. of this establishment supposed to re-educate disruptive adolescents by “modifying their behavior”: complete isolation, rules as drastic as they are absurd, deprivation of food, sleep, physical and verbal violence… And use of psychological techniques akin to brainwashing , similar to those used for “conversion therapy” inflicted on homosexual adolescents.

Regularly, the nearly five hundred residents of Ivy Ridge are subjected to “seminars”, which they must comply with in order to hope to escape this prison. Placed in sensory isolation, prevented from sleeping or eating, they must, for example, repeat the same sentences and the same gestures for an entire day, hit the ground with a rolled-up towel while shouting for hours, write “confessions” about their “bad behavior,” engaging in humiliating dances in front of others, encouraged to stigmatize the victim of the day.

Speech with sectarian overtones

In addition to these methods, several stories mention sexual violence on the part of those in charge of the establishment. The testimonies of the survivors, all lastingly traumatized, supported by images taken from video surveillance cameras, are as effective as they are chilling.

Over the course of three episodes, according to a familiar division of Netflix true crime documentary series, the focus broadens. In addition to Ivy Ridge, there is a whole lucrative network of similar establishments managed by the World Wide Association of Specialty Program and Schools (WWASP) in the United States, Mexico and as far away as Jamaica and the Czech Republic.

Nearly 25,000 adolescents were subjected to the same abuses there for a decade, with the agreement of families duped by a discourse with sectarian overtones. The “genius” of WWASP founder Robert Lichfield, a Republican activist from a Mormon family in Utah, is to use the parents themselves as recruiters: families obtain reductions on the cost of the stay if they convince other parents to send their child to Ivy Ridge or another WWASP branch.

It took a teenage riot in 2005 – put down by local police – to lift part of the veil surrounding Ivy Ridge. The facility was eventually closed in 2009. But despite several lawsuits, WWASP still exists, as do many other “programs” of its type.