Episode 46: Trapped In Treatment Podcast Hosts Caroline Cole and Rebecca Mellinger Grone

Trapped in Treatment

Miranda Pacchiana: I’m opening this episode by quoting Paris Hilton. This is an excerpt from her testimony to the House of Representatives less than a month ago, on June 27th, 2024, while advocating for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.

“When I was 16 years old, I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported across state lines to the first of four youth residential treatment facilities. These programs promised healing, growth and support, but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely or even look out a window for two years. I was force-fed medications and sexually abused by the staff. I was violently restrained and dragged down hallways, stripped naked, and thrown into solitary confinement. My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this for-profit industry about the inhumane treatment I was experiencing.

Today residential facilities are continuing to warehouse over 50 thousand foster youth and an unknown number of adopted youth in lockdown facilities.  Innocent kids who have not committed crimes. Kids whose parents did not have resources to support them. Kids whose parents passed away. Kids who have already experienced trauma. This $23 billion industry sees this population as dollar signs and operates without meaningful oversight.

Why can’t we see as a society that these kids are hurting? They need love and kindness, not beatings and restraints. I’m here to be the voice for the children whose voices can’t be heard.”

Paris’ words are a better introduction than I could have written to convey what’s really happening to kids on a grand scale, in the name of treatment.

My guests today work closely with Paris Hilton to educate the public and advocate for kids, in part as the co-hosts of the Trapped In Treatment podcast, now in its second season. Rebecca Mellinger Grone and Caroline Cole take listeners on a deep dive into the so-called troubled teen industry, its history, the main players, and why this billion-dollar industry continues to thrive despite the rampant human rights violations of children.

If you are a regular listener you may have heard episodes 33 and 34 on the Troubled Teen Industry with our wonderful guests Chelsea Maldonado and Amanda Simmons, my fierce and funny friends who, like Caroline Cole and Paris Hilton, are determined advocates and survivors themselves.

It’s not an easy subject but the only way to save kids from institutional abuse is to know the truth and support the crusaders on the front lines. We had a truly thoughtful and intriguing discussion with Caroline and Rebecca, moved forward at times by my co-host and legislative advocate Kathryn Robb who you’ll hear offering up her ideas in real time.

One last thing. I made an extensive list of links in the show notes from the TinT podcast, the Stop Institutional Child Abuse website where you can learn more about the movement including the SICAA bill and sign up for updates, Rise Justice Labs, and other relevant links, video of Paris and Hilton speaking publicly, and more.

Hello, and welcome to Truth and Consequences, a podcast about trauma and its aftermath. We talk about what happens, what hurts, and what helps us heal. I’m your host, Miranda Pacchiana. I’m a writer, social worker, and personal coach And the creator of the website, The Second Wound. We have exciting news today about my co-host, Kathryn Robb. Kathryn left her position as executive director of Child U. S. Advocacy to take on a new role at Enough Abuse as national director of the Children’s Justice Campaign, formerly known as Massachusetts Citizens for Children or MassKids, Enough Abuse is a highly respected organization whose leadership has helped build the movement to end child sexual abuse in our country and beyond. Kathryn, congratulations on your big move.

Kathryn Robb: Thank you the other thing you might want to add is that they have been doing national and global work as well. And that’s why we have the rebranding because it’s really a national global organization. So, I’ll continue to do the sexual limitation reform, writing, testifying, I just had an op-ed today in the Dallas news about Pastor Morris who said that he had an inappropriate relationship with a young lady and the young lady was 12. So that has been all over the national news. So I submitted an op-ed yesterday and it ran today.

Miranda Pacchiana: Good. I’m sure it’s really well-written and powerful as usual. And thank you for speaking to this because it’s so important. My guests today are Caroline Cole and Rebecca Mellinger Kathryn, hosts of the

iHeartRadio Trapped in Treatment, now in Season 2, which takes an in-depth look at the so-called troubled teen industry. This season focuses on the Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, known as WASP, one of the largest and most notorious networks of schools in the TTI. We also learn about Robert Litchfield, the mastermind behind a global empire of troubled teen programs.

Caroline Cole is an entrepreneur, policy advocate, co-host of Trapped in Treatment from Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media and Warner Brothers, and Special Advisor to the International Coalition Against Restraint and Seclusion. After 2 ½ years in a “troubled teen” program, she knew she needed to change the system. In her work, Caroline draws from her own experiences with trauma to drive social change. Caroline, alongside Paris Hilton, penned the federal bill, The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, and has successfully passed laws across the country to prevent youth from being abused in institutional settings. She believes that through trauma-informed policy and community-focused healing, we can provide young people the opportunity for equity, growth, and joy.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone harnesses the power of entertainment and media platforms to drive social change. Head of Impact at Paris Hilton’s media company 11:11 Media, she is reforming the “Troubled Teen Industry” through policy change, public awareness, and providing direct assistance for institutional abuse survivors. All of this is in addition to co-hosting Trapped in Treatment with Caroline Cole.

Welcome, Caroline and Rebecca.

Caroline Cole: Thank you. We’re so happy to be here.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Yeah, Thank you so much.

Miranda Pacchiana: So, let’s just dive in. Can you two tell us all about Trapped in Treatment, the podcast, and whatyou set out to convey and accomplish with it, and talk about season two and what we’re going to learn by listening to it.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: So you know, initially Caroline and I came together because Paris Hilton had shared her story of abuse within the troubled teen industry, um, and that let us down, this long four-year journey at this point of policy and awareness and direct advocacy and so forth, and so, you know, our initial goal with Trapped in Treatment with Season 1 was that we didn’t feel like there were enough stories out there about the experiences of survivors within the industry.

You know, survivors have been sharing their stories for decades, but we really wanted to create kind of a solidified space where the story was being told by those with lived experience and from those with lived experience. And so season one was really successful. We had the opportunity to share the story of Provo Canyon School, which was one of the facilities that Paris went to.

So there was kind of that direct connection to our media company, 11:11 Media, that Caroline and I both work within. Um, and Season 2, we really took Provo and dove into the story of WASP, which I will turn it over to Caroline because this is her story.

Caroline Cole: So it’s actually kind of interesting because Season 1 with Provo Canyon School, I always refer to Provo Canyon as like the granddaddy of the industry. It was one of those prominent figures, prominent, facilities that ended up creating so many different offshoots, which of course have gone on to create it so much harm to children and what’s really unique about this story is that Robert Litchfield, the creator of WASP, which we cover in season two, he was actually a dorm parent at Provo Canyon School for over a decade. And so he took his experiences there and started to replicate that. And one of the things that I think is so especially interesting about WASP, and let me mention I’m a WASP survivor myself. I went to a program called the Academy at Ivy Ridge, which we also cover in the season. But he really had this kind of sick way of operationalizing and franchising these programs. program models, all while separating himself from any accountability as to what actually happened in these facilities.

So for WASP survivors, it’s been really difficult to achieve any kind of justice or accountability, which is why I feel like it’s so important for us to tell these stories because I feel like that’s probably the closest that we’ll get.

Miranda Pacchiana: Well, that’s one of the things that I found so stunning and in some ways frustrating listening is again, and again, you would tell the stories and there would be reports and there would be incidents that would get the law involved and there were lawsuits. But again and again, it always ended with, and yet no one was held accountable, or the school shut down but there was no way to really stop it from happening and these schools would just pop up again with the same bad actors, creating them.

Caroline Cole: It’s so frustrating as a survivor too, right? And I’m sure to anyone, listening, you hear these stories that are so blatantly criminal in a lot of cases. There’s just not even a gray area about it. It’s just, just blatantly criminal. And there’s zero accountability. And so when we came into creating season two, because of my lived experience, I really wanted to understand how is it that that they were able to, really walk off scott free, with no repercussions for what happened. And so throughout the season, we really start to unpack that and analyze all the different things that were at play, that really kind of created this monster known as WASP.

Miranda Pacchiana: Can you summarize a little bit what those factors are? And do we have hope that things will change? Are there processes in place to start holding them accountable and preventing these really human rights abuses of children?

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: I think Caroline can bring us into the world, but what I would say on that accountability and justice front is, we really are trying to hone in on the fact that in each of these instances, as we cover each facility, over the course of each episode of the season, they haven’t received justice, but at the end of the season, the culmination is that justice question. How do survivors get justice for their experience? Um, and so that is why we are trying to hammer, that particular instance. Um, and as we look at, you know, what is the goal of this podcast? Podcasts, yes, they are entertainment. They are awareness vehicles, but we really hope that it’s a vehicle for change as well.

So as we continue to investigate and ask questions ourselves as to, if they had these police reports, if the licensing offices of these facilities were involved, how are we still at a place in 2024 where these facilities are completely evading responsibility, where there is very, very minimal oversight and accountability?

And so, through this investigation, we do hope to see where the gaps are, and obviously through our work on the advocacy front, is fill those to make sure that kids are safe in treatment moving forward.

Caroline Cole: And then to get into a little bit of some of those systems at play. What’s interesting about WASP is they almost always set up these facilities in very remote locations. I mean, hours from the closest Walmart, uh, to give people maybe a cultural frame of reference here. You know, we’re talking out there.

And so you would have these people that would come in, open a facility, their websites at the time, were, you know, splashy and appealing to parents and they put a lot of money into marketing. And so they knew how to speak to this demographic of parent who was looking for help with their kids.

And, at the time, the internet was very young. And so we just really didn’t have the discourse that we have now about internet safety and being aware of different marketing and advertising scams. And so that just really wasn’t a part of our discourse yet. And so WASP was able to really, really, capitalize on these parents trusting and believing that these folks were experts.

And so, they would come into these small towns with a lot of money. They would offer a lot of job opportunity. And then at the same time, because of their location, we’re kind of just not really under the radar of any authorities who might see what was happening. But as you’ll hear in the podcast, as, as you’ve said, they constantly have these close brushes where you think this is going to be it.

One of their facilities in Mexico was stormed by the Federales who came in with machine guns to set these children free. And so, you know, you think, okay, this is going to be the moment. This is going to be the moment that it brings WASP down. And so it’s really kind of an interesting exploration.

Miranda Pacchiana: I’m so glad that you are exploring that and that you’re getting to the root of it. And this podcast is so important. I thought maybe we would just, start at the beginning a little bit and talk about the whole term, troubled teen industry.

You know, we did interview Chelsea and Amanda Simmons in a previous podcast. And, Kathryn had a great insight. She pointed out that it’s so normal for adolescents to act out and experiment and rebel against their parents. I’m a social worker. We call that individuation. You know, you’re supposed to hate your parents for a while and you’re supposed to take risks and experiment to understand who you are and what you like and what you believe.

And yet we also do have a lot of adolescents who are struggling and we have a responsibility as parents to help them and explore the causes of their distress, which I believe a lot of these parents, that was their intention. Absolutely. They felt desperate. They felt scared. It looked like they were sending their kids to, you know, this idyllic therapeutic site and really they’re being subjected to behavioral modification at best and torture at worst. So, I would just love to hear any thoughts you might have about that.

Caroline Cole: Well, I’ll start by saying we don’t love the term troubled teen. And this is really a phrase that we use, and I’ll get into my thoughts on that in just a second but, you know, it’s not a phrase that we coined. This is actually terminology that the industry has used historically.

And so we use that same terminology just to be very specific about who we’re talking about. And so, when we use words like troubled, that’s really loaded. It comes with a lot of stigma and a lot of shame and you make all kinds of assumptions about who that child or teenager must be if they’re troubled, right?

And, you imagine their background, you imagine their future, and it’s just kind of a label that doesn’t end, right? It doesn’t mean, well, maybe this child is experiencing depression right now because they just, lost a parent and so we can kind of wrap our heads around that. But when we say that a child is troubled, this is just a continuing circumstance for that child. And it’s a part of who they are.

Kathryn Robb: And then if you couple that term troubled with the term treatment, it’s such an easy way to hook parents in, and I thought about this a lot listening to both seasons about Larry Nassar and in the guise of medicine, in the guise of treatment and for profit, generally speaking, create these systems that, in many ways groom parents to believe one thing, one reality, one false reality, over, believing that children as a mom of five, um, I know what the teen years are like, and I remember what I was like, and, it seems so profoundly unfair and manipulative to use the term troubled. As well as the term treatment.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Well, I think when you put those together, you know, it’s extremely predatory because there’s a distinct power structure between somebody that is seeking help and somebody that is offering help. And so when those offering help are not capable of doing so, but they say that they are, those families who we’ve spoken with are going to do everything, everything that that person in power says because they’re saying that they can treat their child. You know, there are instances and I’m sure we’ll get into this of families who have not done the right thing and families who know some of the abuse that’s occurring and are still making the decision to place kids in this industry.

But with WASP, there wasn’t a lot of information on the internet. And so you were really trusting the marketing. And so it’s not that surprising that families did. Put kids in these instances because a lot of times, they did care. But unfortunately, what is really distinct about this industry is that because they’re in really rural locations, because children don’t have access to communicate freely with the outside world, you’re creating, that very distinct power structure again, once the child is within the walls and it’s very hard for them to get out of it at that point, which is really hard.

Caroline Cole: Well, and to add to that too, I think when we say, this, young person is a troubled teen, it kind of lets the parents off the hook. Right, because all of a sudden, oh, it’s not me as mom. It’s my child. My child’s the problem and they’re the one that needs to go seek treatment because they are a troubled teen. And so it really lets the entire family escape looking at what dynamics have led up to that point. As we all know, things don’t happen in a vacuum and, Guy Stevens, I recently heard him say, with the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, that, behavior is the language of children. And so, when they’re trying to communicate something, it’s gonna come out as behavior. So, troubled teen, that phrase needs to die.

Miranda Pacchiana: It’s such an important point, Caroline, and I think that it slaps a negative label when really if there’s trouble in the home and the kid is acting out, then, you know, we need help. Um, and you’re right. Absolutely. We have to look at the whole family system, at the very least.

Kathryn Robb: It’s almost as insane as saying crying babies. You know, it’s like, yeah, babies cry, you know, teenagers are trying to find their way, and they’re trying to pull away and find their independence as Miranda spoke of earlier. It’s just such a manipulation of where they are in their behavioral growth and development. It’s such a manipulation of that. And of course, of the parents as well.

Caroline Cole: I do just want to jump in on that because I think that’s such a beautiful analogy because, um, as a mom with a two-year-old, I experienced this very recently, it feels like, uh, but, you know, when you have a crying baby, what is your response? You hold them, you reassure them, right? You bring them in. And then all of a sudden when we have teenagers who are, quite frankly, exhibiting the same need for community and connection and closeness, we push them away because we’re like, ah, scary. Um, teenager, ah, you know, hold them at an arm’s length. and so, I mean, what would that be like if we looked at it that way? Like a baby crying.

Miranda Pacchiana: And as a mom who’s also been through the teen years with three kids, I would say it’s so important to look at your own wounds from childhood and understand that once that child becomes old enough to start to resemble an adult, and they’re saying things in an articulate way that might wound your ego, you really need to be careful about that because they’re not an adult and they do need to experiment with that and be able to express themselves in the kind of clumsy rough ways that kids do.

Um, but I’d love to talk a little bit about the treatment and I pulled a, quote from episode one… I’m just trying to think who the quote was from because  I read it on the transcript. All right, I’m just going to read the quote and I can add it in later. (Hi it’s Miranda popping back in here to say I found the quote and it’s from Caroline Cole herself.)

“Something I’ve seen across the board in the troubled teen industry is that their treatment model is essentially break you down to build you into what they want you to be. But I think what alot of us have experienced is that we never got built into anything else. A lot of us just walked away feeling really broken.”

Tell us about what they refer to as treatment. It’s a big question, I know.

Caroline Cole: It is a big question, but it’s an important question because when my mom actually listened back to some of these episodes, I don’t think she fully understood that it was actually the staff’s job there to make our lives as difficult and challenging as possible. And so I’m not sure what she believed all of these years, What that program was actually like, um, but sometimes with people who have never heard of the trouble teen industry, how I explain it is if you remember back in the nineties, we had those daytime television shows, Jerry Springer Montel,uh, there’s dozens of them and, uh, you know, they would bring some kid on and they’d be like, Bobby’s got a bad attitude and we’re gonna make Bobby comply. Pretty much is what it is…

Kathryn Robb: We’re going to fix him.

Caroline Cole: Right? Exactly. We’re gonna fix them. And then they send this kid off to some kind of a like, boot camp or like Scared Straight type of program. And, and some of these were also, especially on the Dr. Phil show more recently were troubled teen industry programs. And so, the treatment it’s punitive, it’s carceral, and it is, what we refer to as tough love, right?

So it’s this tough love approach to, uh, you’re not depressed. You need to just be busy. You need to just work. You need to, you know, power through whatever difficulties you’re experiencing, but a lot of the treatment there too is very physical. And so if you don’t follow the rules at my program, just to give maybe people an example of what that might look like, but if you got up without permission and started walking across the classroom, most likely you’re going to be physically restrained by these staff members and a lot of the staff there looked at it almost like sport, you know, we’d hear the radio calls come in. We need backup staff to classroom B and you would just see their entire demeanor change. Cause they’re like, all right guys, let’s go. And then they would run down the hall and tackle this child. And so it almost became like this sickening game.

Kathryn Robb: Like it was a sport or something.

Caroline Cole: And it’s really scary as a kid to see your friends go through something like that or for you to experience something like that.

Miranda Pacchiana: And it’s so oppressive, and it’s at a time in your emotional development when you’re supposed to be developing your sense of individuality and autonomy and they are stripping that from you at every opportunity. And I think, of all the things that I read and listened to that were hard to hear, I think that’s maybe what got to me the most because I think that’s what allowed me to get where I am today and survive my childhood and become an advocate for issues that I lived through is because there was this person inside me that was like, I may be quiet right now because I have to, but you’re not going to crush me.

And I don’t know how a lot of kids got through that without just dissociating to survive on such a deep level that, how do you even recover from that? And Caroline, you probably know this firsthand. Yeah.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Well I think also that’s why so many survivors are finding so much healing and speaking out now, because individuality, self-expression are completely frowned upon and you learn through the process of going through these facilities that if you don’t stuff your feelings down and if you don’t comply, you are literally never going home.

So, you know, in Paris instance, and Caroline, I’m sure you can speak to this, she thought she was going to take this to the grave with her forever. She was going to have nightmares and insomnia and death. Live with this horrific trauma, have an issue connecting in relationships and so forth because it impacts every single part of your life if you are keeping this in and you’re not getting the help that you need and deserve from experiences like this. And it’s so sad that these facilities are telling children that they are the problem and that nobody is going to believe them because we go back to that label of you’re troubled, you know, you will never be believed, your voice doesn’t matter.

Our hope is that we’re showing all of those adults who were children and children who are getting out today that know your stories desperately matter, and your stories are the only way that we’re going to make progress moving forward as well.

Miranda Pacchiana: I love that.

Caroline Cole: Also just to speak to maybe some of that survivor experience of living through that is, um, much like what you said, I think having that, in your mind that, you know, they’re not going to crush me, they’re not going to take who I am from me, is definitely something that gets you through just the day to day.

Um, but in my case in particular, I was there for two and a half years and I was 14 when I first was sent to the program and I ended up kind of drinking the Kool Aid. I really thought maybe this program will give me the family that I’ve always wanted. Maybe this program will fix the issues between my mom and I. And so it’s also, um, I think it was something really difficult to grapple with when in hindsight you feel like you’ve been fooled and there was a part of myself that I gave to the program that I spent a long time trying to get that part of me back and I…

Miranda Pacchiana: Completely understandable.

Caroline Cole: It’s, and I think a lot of people who go through different kinds of trauma can also relate to that.

Um, one thing in particular that I’ve been trying to figure out recently, and anyone who knows me probably wouldn’t guess this about me, actually, um, but I have this, like, continuous fear of, being seen or being perceived, and anytime I am, I immediately feel like I’m in trouble, or I’ve done something wrong.

And a lot of that too, I feel like, is because we were just constantly monitored. There was not any point in time that we were not being absolutely observed for slouching, for having a hair out of place, for, um, being seen. accidentally touching a wall or looking out a window. All of those things were rule violations. So I think when you’ve just been so deeply analyzed and who you are analyzed on such a critical level, it doesn’t feel safe being me in the world anymore.

Miranda Pacchiana: That makes so much sense. I mean, of course, that’s what you would walk away with when it happens in such formative years while you’re forming all these neural pathways, right? And it’s a survival mechanism, both learning to adapt to it. That was how you survived. So that was a strength in a way for you at the time. It’s just something that has to be unraveled, you know, after the fact, but, um, it’s so interesting to hear you say that and know that you are an outspoken advocate who’s stepping forward to tell your story and speak, and I saw you in the press conference that you were in recently. I mean, you’re such an excellent speaker and spokesperson.

Is it healing for you to be able to do that work coming from that place and still even having that kind of instinct inside of you?

Caroline Cole: I think it is. Um, and so when I mentioned earlier about just reclaiming that person who I was before, the program, you know, when I was a child, my nana always tells this story. So I’m going to make you all sit through this story quickly. Uh, but we were at the zoo one day, and I must have been like three or four. And all of a sudden they looked down and they couldn’t find me. Um, my, my mom and my grandma. And so they’re, you know, frantically searching as one does when your toddler goes missing. And all of a sudden they see, and this is what they say, I don’t know if this is totally accurate, but they said they see this group of people gathered around, this was at one of the gift shops at the zoo.

And, uh, they were playing some kind of like music in the gift shop and I’m there in the middle and I’m just like dancing my butt off for these people, like loving the crowd, loving the energy. And so I’ve always just really loved people and loved being social and loved interacting. And at my program, um, we weren’t allowed to even talk at all. It was 24 hours a day of pure, pure silence. And so some of that too, I mean, you just kind of disconnect from the world and from people and it’s hard to feel safe in reconnecting.

Miranda Pacchiana: Of course. But it’s interesting to hear that that’s your innate personality is that you like connecting and feeling the beat and enjoying yourself and being seen. I mean, you were the little center of attention at such a young age. It’s so sweet. And I’m so glad you were able to get some of that back.

Caroline Cole: It’s a journey. It is definitely a journey and I’m grateful for every little opportunity that I have to reconnect with that person and um, luckily therapy has helped quite a bit with reckoning with some of that. Yes.

Miranda Pacchiana: Thank goodness for therapy. It is a lifelong journey.

So, I pulled a quote referring to the cult expert, Dr. Hassan, I pulled a quote from the podcast, which says he explained that things like controlling someone’s environment, what they eat, what they wear, who they can talk to, and what they should feel are all in the spectrum of undue influence. The more of these that are being affected the more likely that person is experiencing a form of brainwashing. And many of the techniques used in the WASPs seminars had undeniable characteristics of undue influence. So you’ve already touched on some of those major factors, Caroline, um, but I do think it’s so important for people to understand This is really serious. You know, we are truly, deeply affecting the development of children in addition to genuinely abusing them.

And the public needs to understand how bad it is, how widespread it is, and how it just keeps happening. Can you talk about your thoughts about that a little bit?

Caroline Cole: Sure. When we’re talking about that undue influence, part of that is really about just human nature, right? And so you have in groups and out groups and everyone, for survival sake, if we’re looking at this through kind of the lens of evolution, but you want to be a part of that in-group.

And so once those norms of that group are established, um, most people are going to want to comply. And so, especially when we look at WASP, um, many facilities now are maybe a little bit different. Some of those dynamics are still at play, but WASP still had a very strong element of, some kind of bizarre cultish practices.

And so, earlier when I said, I really kind of drank the tea, um, I, I bought into it. I bought into the lingo. There’s a whole program dictionary that we could write about specific specific words that we use that are not really typical with the English language.

Miranda Pacchiana: Classic cult feature.

Kathryn Robb: Yeah.

Caroline Cole: Exactly. And, and also not to mention, we were completely removed from our support systems. So we did not have the ability to communicate with our parents, really at all. When you first got there, it was just by letters. And then after that, I think once you reached a certain point, you could have one 15-minute 15 15-minute phone call a month that was monitored.

And so really any type of, there was no freedom to say, I’m being abused here or what’s happening to me is wrong, or I remember reading some of my first letters home and, um, they’re really hard to sit with because initially I was saying, mom, I don’t like it here. They yell at us all the time. I don’t feel safe here. I just want to come home and I was really kind of pleading, I’d say for the first like three months or so. But then all of a sudden you see this change in my letters home and it becomes I love it here, I’m doing really well at my program, so excited to move up to the next level, and all of a sudden I was just so um pro program right? And you would never know that this child is experiencing abuse from my letters. Also very common with coercion and that type of influence. I also think part of it was just a really natural desire to want to make people happy. I didn’t want staff to be mad at me. I wanted to make people happy. I wanted people to like me, and so I’m going to operate in a way that they will like me and be happy with me.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: I think what’s so interesting too is that, we’ve had the opportunity to get to know India Oxenberg, who was the survivor of NXIVM. And there are so many similarities between Paris and Caroline and India’s story. You can look at the troubled teen industry or survivors of this particular type of abuse and brainwashing, but it really is much larger.

And, the people that created these educational seminars that we talk about is basically brainwashing. Um, those came from real religious cults and other areas and then infused it into this treatment model. But they’ve still gone on and they very, very much still exist today.

One of our team members, we went down to Jamaica, and I’m sure we’ll get into this a little bit because it is related to WASP, but we went down to Jamaica to basically save eight American boys who were warehoused in a facility in Jamaica. And at the time we didn’t know this, but when we got down there, we found out that the owner of that facility, Atlantis Leadership Academy, was actually a survivor of WASP, and then went on to work at WASP. And what we found in the building once the boys were taken in by CPFSA, which is Jamaica’s CPS system, the facility was empty, um, and there were seminar packets there. And this is 2024.

Um, and so while WASP, you know, obviously WASP is dissolved, um, but the influence of WASP still very much lives on today, including this cultic brainwashing practice.

Miranda Pacchiana: It’s similar to generational trauma. It’s like this person experienced this and then he passed it on and recreated it. And what I want to add to what you’re saying to Rebecca is that as someone who works mainly with family systems and how they affect people, especially unhealthy or abusive family systems, there are also a lot of parallels to cults. To abusive relationships. And, there are things like complying and putting the goals of the group ahead of the goals of the individual. And really, the ends justify the means. So it is okay to lie, cheat, and steal as long as you’re doing it for the higher purpose. Um, and it’s really dangerous. And I do see some of those aspects that you’re talking about here.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: I think what we haven’t discussed too today is the fact that there is significant profit motivation when it comes to this industry too. So you know, it’s really, not just about, it’s not even just about the facility owners and what are they hoping to get across to these kids and so forth. No, they are doing this because they see each of these children as dollar signs.

And especially today, and Kathryn, you’ve done so much work in this space too, the kids in these facilities today are not just kids who were sent by their parents because they were trying to fix them in one way or another, or viewed them as the problem. These are kids who have entered the child welfare system because You know, their family has died or there’s abuse within the home and we’re just trading that trauma for more trauma by putting them in these facilities because we haven’t created a culture of family-centered care or preventative services to ensure that they don’t end up, needing treatment, that level of, treatment or so forth.

Um, and so kids from child welfare and kids through school districts, you know, IEP placement, if they’re not being served within a school district, they can be sent into these facilities very far from home and kids are being sent through juvenile justice systems through diversion programs.

And so each of that child comes with a multitude of federal and state funding sources because they’re being sent through state systems, which is even that more concerning because if you look at profit, you want to bring as many kids into the facility as you could possibly can. You want to make sure that staffing costs and costs of care are low because the difference between that is what matters to them.

Kathryn Robb: And you know, when I was listening, I kept thinking, damn, this is like a for-profit criminal enterprise because obviously there are so many crimes. I kept thinking…my legal mind can’t stop this, but I’m thinking, okay, there’s kidnapping. Okay. There’s assault. Okay. And then I’m, you know, hopping to civil wrongs and it just, wow. It’s just a ton of both criminal and civil wrongs. across the board, again, in the guise of treatment, it’s such a profound act of trickery on parents and all the systems that may support these treatments.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Narvin Litchfield, in our first episode, or actually I don’t know if it was our first or if we put it in the third episode, but, he said in his interview with Caroline that they had the goal of creating the McDonald’s of treatment.

Kathryn Robb: Oh, wow.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: And maybe, honestly, maybe we didn’t even need this story. Maybe we just needed to put out a trailer that said the McDonald’s have treated, and honestly, that’s all you really need to know. Like, that sheds so much light on why they were going into this, their goal of franchising, and, it just explains so much.

Kathryn Robb: Yeah. It’s just a business model. It’s a for-profit business model. They’re selling a lie to parents and to, to young people who are at such a critical point in their lives of needing to be independent and find their own voice. And instead, they’re, just smothering thatvoice and giving them this false dialect and this false brainwashing type of language that is so damaging.

Miranda Pacchiana: It needs to be said too that the vast majority of people working with these kids are not qualified at all to be working in the mental health field or working with kids necessarily. I think that’s something that would shock a lot of people and a lot of parents who are assuming that they know what they’re doing.

Kathryn Robb: Well, if they don’t have any expertise, they don’t need to be paid a lot.So it fits the for-profit model, right?

Caroline Cole: I think high school degree is usually the standard of the frontline staff who work with these kids. And even they, a lot of times will resort to doing kind of like group therapy, which is questionable because it ends up being like peer support. Maybe a staff member sits in on it.

I know there’s a lot of facilities now who will contract with some kind of a therapist who will come in. But typically it’s not very often, not enough to justify being in a residential facility. I mean, you can go meet your therapist, you know, bi-weekly if you want to and not be in residential. And so the rest of the time, 90 percent of the time that you’re there, it is not treatment.

And in fact, I also just want to emphasize that many, many, many people that I have talked to survivors have said that it was their therapists who were abusing them. And, um, there’s one, and I just want to give a trigger warning about sexual assault very quickly. Um, it’s nothing terribly graphic, but for any listeners who might be sensitive to that topic.

At a facility within the WASP network called Tranquility Bay, there was a psychologist there who ran a group called Rape and Molest. This was the name of the group, and this was four people who had experienced some kind of, sexual abuse. And during this group, he would actually have these girls reenact what had happened to them, with him.

Kathryn Robb: Wow.

Caroline Cole: And so I mean this is abuse and it is criminal and that was called treatment. And I’m sure parents were actually paying extra to make sure that their child was able to attend this group. So what’s being communicated to the parents is that, oh your child had a wonderful time and they’re participating in this group that’s helping them heal and it’s all therapeutic. And so I mean you really, can I throw in the word therapeutic with anything in this industry and justify a lot of abuse that’s happening.

Miranda Pacchiana: So to Rebecca’s point, the fact that this is really all driven by money, on such a grand scale, something has gone terribly wrong. Can you all explain why there aren’t more regulations in place, more protections for kids, more state and federal government guidelines that can put a stop to this? And maybe what, your plans are, what you’re advocating for.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Everybody buckle up, because this is going to be a 45-minute answer on behalf of the both of us. Okay, Caroline, you start, and then I’ll jump in.

Caroline Cole: So, for many decades, this was really a private industry. And so it was mostly parents, there were some court-ordered kids, but it was mostly parents who were privately sending their kids to these facilities. And so the way that our government really champions and supports business, no one really wanted to intervene on regulating private business. And so although there would be these reports that came out about kids being abused, of course, it was all justified because these are troubled teens. And so for many, many decades, a lot of the stories that would come out of these facilities were quite frankly, just discredited.

I think that’s the biggest contributing factor to this. They had operated for so long without any kind of guardrails or oversight or regulation that when they did finally start regulating this industry. It’s kind of interesting because they almost self-regulated and so in Montana, actually at one point, not that long ago, they had an advisory board for this industry called PARP, which stands for the Private Alternative Adolescent Residential Programs Advisory Board.

And this was the oversight body for this industry in Montana. And quite literally, everyone on that advisory board owned a program. And so they were the ones regulating and overseeing themselves.

Kathryn Robb: That’s like the fox walked in the hen house. My God.

Miranda Pacchiana: Yeah. Is that the one that would certify basically anyone that applied or is that something different?

Caroline Cole: I believe you’re probably talking about, the joint commission. I will touch on that here in just a 2nd. So, Rebecca, you’re so funny. This is going to be a 45-minute spiel. There’s a lot of complexities to it. And I think it’s important for folks who are interested in the policy side of things.

What we’ve seen though, is because the industry has grown in such a way and now they are receiving in some cases, 95 percent of their revenue is funded through taxpayer dollars. Uh, so there’s just a higher level of accountability. But unfortunately, that regulatory framework and that oversight framework has never really caught up, just to kind of simplify it.

Um, and so now what we have instead is there’s all of these different entities who technically oversee these facilities. But because there’s so many, there’s a lot of jurisdictional confusion. And so everyone’s kind of pointing at each other like, well, I thought you were overseeing them. And then the next person’s like, well, no, no, no, that was that person’s job.

Or we thought it was law enforcement who was responding to those issues. And so there’s a lot of lack of clarity and honestly, probably a lot of contradictory regulation of this industry, which makes it difficult to not only adhere to, but also difficult to enforce. And then Rebecca, if there’s anything, I know I, definitely left things out.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Well, I think what’s important if, let’s take the foster care system just as an example of this is that, the conversations are around, how do we increase resources within the community, how do we support families before they have to enter the system to begin with and so forth, but because we’re not there yet and the resources aren’t there, there’s been many reports of these children are ending up in hotels are sleeping on the floor of their caseworker’s office and so forth, and this industry has basically, any time a caseworker or a system is like, we need a bed, they’re raising their hand. They’re like, well, we’re here, like Sally can come to us, right? And so there’s a little bit of perverse incentive where it’s like, we want to move away from institutionalization, but we don’t have the solutions yet as to where they go.

They have a lot of power in that instance too, and I do want to read, there was one really important quote from the Senate Finance Committee who just created a report and we were actually in D. C. last week for the hearing, which was so validating for survivors as well as for the recommendations that we’ve been trying to make on the state and federal level as to how to address it, but the report was called Warehouses of Neglect and when they were discussing foster youth, they quoted, and they said,

“These are children for whom we have made no place in the real world. The warehousing of these children only remedies society’s disinterest in addressing their needs. By removing those who are inconvenient from sight, we divest ourselves of the responsibility to help them.”

And I just think that that is so true. Um, and, now hopefully we are in a different place where these questions are being answered and solutions are being brought to the table, but I think that this industry has just had a lot of power for a long time because these children need shelter over their head at night and this industry has made themselves very, very available to taking them in. Which is so wrong.

And one other piece for me that was really eye-opening and I’m a little bit naive, so maybe that wasn’t as surprising for other people as it was to me, but I thought licensing offices, you know, Department of Human Services, you know, just these licensing bodies were really acting in the best interest of the children. And so you make these changes within law and you hope that there’s enough staffing and resources that they’re able to hold the facilities accountable to ensuring that they’re following that law.

And I won’t name names, but it just has been a little bit surprising. That lack of putting the hammer down when the licensing bodies know that these facilities are violating the law. And I still don’t have the answer as to like why that is. I thought that they work for the children and their whole purpose is to make sure that they’re following the law and that they’re safe. But we just have not seen that to be the case whatsoever.

We’re working on a California law right now and we are trying to increase reporting and transparency of seclusion and restraint that’s happening in these facilities. And, you know, the licensing office, we just got this back the other day that since 2017, there’s over 300 facilities that have been operating every single year since 2017. And the licensing office has only taken 10 actions over the course of seven years. 10 actions over 350 facilities over the course of seven years, holding thousands and thousands of children. You look at that and you’re not like, oh, these facilities are doing a good job. Like we all on here, and I think the majority of people understand like, no, just with the leveling, there are things that are happening. It is absolutely inevitable when you’re in these facilities. And so that just shows, a complete lack of taking action or, if the issue is that they don’t have enough people to go into these facilities and make sure that’s the case, it would just have been my hope that they would speak up about to ensure the safety of these kids. So I think there’s a billion issues that we’re hoping to address.

Miranda Pacchiana: Kathryn, do you have thoughts on that, why this is?

Kathryn Robb: Well, my first thought is that bureaucracies, , are ill-equipped to deal with a lot of social ills. I think we all know that. I think there’s a difference between having laws and enforcing laws and what it means to be licensed to do one thing and not another. And certainly, Miranda knows this, I’m not sure if you guys know this, but I believe in the power of the law and the muscle of the law to make change. I just think we need to stand up and scream and yell and jump to get it done. And here’s clearly a place that we need to stand up and start screaming. I mean, what’s the purpose of a license? If it’s never, if there’s no oversight, that’s a bit of a sham, right?

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: I think we’ll have to be stronger there and, you know, we would really love to work with you more as well because, you know, we are advocating on the federal level for a lot of policies and we’ve made progress in eight states already, but this is an issue that impacts every single state in America and it’s also an international problem.

Kathryn Robb: Count me in.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Great. Okay.

Miranda Pacchiana: Ah, makes me happy. Tell us about this hearing recently in the Senate.

Caroline Cole: I can go into that. A couple of years ago, Senator Patty Murray and Senator Ron Wyden had launched an investigation into the four largest residential treatment providers. And so these companies are massive. Their value is in the billions of dollars. Some of them are actually publicly traded as well.

So just talking about the size of these companies, they have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of facilities. There have also been a very long history of abuse and neglect and lack of access to medical treatment, preventable deaths that are happening in these facilities. And, like the statistic that I mentioned a little bit earlier, one of these providers, Devereux, 95 percent of their revenue is through Medicaid. And so they have really positioned themselves in the market to be receiving these public dollars and to be receiving these system-involved children.

And so they had launched this investigation a couple of years ago, and they had a very lengthy list of data and documentation that they requested from these facilities. But despite the length of the list, these are all things that you would think that a company like this would have on hand and would have easily accessible. So they asked questions about physical restraint and the usage of seclusion. They asked them questions about their physical health, funding sources, financial documents, and things of that nature. And we were told that over the course of this investigation, there was a lot of difficulty and even this in Congress being able to get this information from these facilities. I always like to position that if Congress, some of the most powerful people in our nation cannot access this information,

Kathryn Robb: With subpoena power.

Caroline Cole: With subpoena power, how could a parent know? How could a child-placing agency in Ohio know this information to be able to make appropriate decisions on where we’re sending these kids? And so, on June 12th, the Senate Finance Committee had a hearing and they also issued a very lengthy 136 page report as a result of this two-year-long investigation. Rebecca had, um, quoted it a little bit earlier and so the report is called Warehouses of Neglect, how taxpayers are funding systemic abuse in residential treatment facilities.

And when I tell you that everything in this report is our wish list. In a way, okay, hear me out here. It confirms everything that we’ve been saying, it lays out exactly the issues that are in these facilities, it really defines that abuse is endemic to the residential treatment model. And that it’s not just a few bad actors and that it truly is a part of this model of treatment.

And the report goes on to tell a lot of stories about different kids and their experiences. And it also lays out a lot of really important data. One of the things that I thought was most fascinating is that there are currently 1.2 million residential beds in our nation, and 81 percent of those are for profit. So these are very much for-profit organizations. And I also just want to emphasize that just because an organization may be a nonprofit doesn’t mean that abuse isn’t happening, right? And so that’s a very common kind of business structure that we see is some of these corporations will have certain nonprofit entities and, as Senator Gelser Bluin from Oregon says, and they’ve got a big, for-profit entity in the sky where all the money gets sent to.

So the report was extremely validating, and I really believe that the data that they collected will become a large part of our movement going forward, and something that we can always refer back to to illustrate what’s happening.

Kathryn Robb: That’s great.

Miranda Pacchiana: What kind of changes specifically are you advocating for?

Caroline Cole: That’s a great question. So on the federal level, and again, hear me out, this might be another 45-minute spiel, but I’ll try to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

Um, so let me start with on the state level. The state level has licensing authority and they are also the boots on the ground who are there to enforce and oversee what’s happening in these facilities. So when we look at state-level legislation, oftentimes, what we’re doing is making sure that they have a very thorough definition of what a critical incident is, that there is standard reporting of critical incidents that are happening in these facilities, because states can’t respond if they don’t know what’s happening.

A large part of our initial work here is making sure that there’s transparency, there’s accountability and also the kids have the ability to report abuse if it’s happening to them. In my case, we never saw a telephone. We had no communication with the outside world to say something bad is happening to me.

So we really want to ensure that kids have a telephone that they can use, they can contact authorities, they can contact the state, we look at practices that can reduce the usage of physical restraint and seclusion, and establishing just minimum standards.

And then when we look at this issue on the federal level, what we can do changes a little bit. And so I’ll actually speak to our federal bill that we’re working on right now, the Stop Institutional Child Abuse aAct. And this bill does 2 important things. The 1st thing that it does is it creates a working group of all of the different agencies that touch this issue, right? So one of our biggest issues is that this has always happened in silos, right?

So you have a special education. And they look at these facilities just through the special education lens. And then you have child welfare, who’s also sending kids to these same exact facilities, and they really look at it from their lens and, so forth. You have juvenile justice and on and on. And so we felt that it was so necessary to bring all of these stakeholders to the table, to look at these facilities very holistically. And we’ve asked them to do a number of things.

The first thing is we want them to establish minimum best practices as it comes to preventing child abuse and neglect, and also as it comes to reducing the overall usage of residential facilities. And really, again, getting a closer look at why are we sending a child to this facility if they don’t need treatment? They just need a bed. They just need a roof over their head. Exactly.

Miranda Pacchiana: Great point. Yeah, that’s such a baseline.

Caroline Cole: One of the other things that we’ve asked them to do is to identify current barriers to utilizing community based services.

And so the second aspect of the bill is a study. And so what we discovered on our mission is that all of these billions and billions of federal dollars are going into these facilities and no one is keeping track of that money. No one knows, no one can account for it and say X amount of dollars, holistically across all of these different streams are going into residential facilities.

And so knowing that is very important because oftentimes when we regulate on a federal level, it is attached to some kind of funding stream. And so we first really need to start with understanding what dollars are going where and, really how can we divest. And push that money back into community-based care and family-centered care.

Miranda Pacchiana: It feels a little shady that we don’t know.

Caroline Cole: We’ve been writing a blank check. We’ve been saying, however much it is, we don’t know, ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month, just, you know, take it out of our account.

Miranda Pacchiana: Well, it’s ripe for abuse.

Caroline Cole: And a lot of these facilities, too, they can charge a higher daily rate if that child has been determined to have, and there’s a specific word for it, and I’m not going to get this right, but if that child has been determined to have a higher level of need. So let’s say they’ve been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder or they’ve been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, so then they can charge this higher amount because then that child needs medication, right?

So we also see this over-diagnoses of kids who maybe never really had those issues or maybe also it’s just an inaccurate diagnosis. And so the study will start to accomplish a lot of that data that we really need to have a more effective approach to how we, uh, regulate and again, just the underline of how can we avoid institutionalization to begin with.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: You know, sunlight is the best disinfectant and really that is our thesis to start because we know that there’s cycles in terms of culture. We’ve been in a place before, I think it was the late sixties, seventies when we were over-utilizing institutions and we’re back there and we don’t want to see another cycle.

So for us, we believe that having that data on both the state and the federal level will help prevent any sort of next cycle from happening again. So that’s really important to us. And, obviously, at the end of the day, the world we hope to see is that kids are treated if they need to be treated within their communities and that they’re getting that preventative care so that they don’t reach a level of crisis where they need to be separated from the home. And if a child does need stabilization, or does need a certain level of care, that it’s short term and that it’s quality because these facilities have just been completely able to not provide that quality and we know children who went in at nine and they were there until they turned 18. So kids in our nation are legitimately growing up in institutions and that is just completely wrong.

Kathryn Robb: I have another thought about something. One sector that I feel like is not utilized in terms of helping abuse of kids overall. Obviously, I write a lot of laws and I think about all the different ways that we can make kids safer. Having tougher criminal laws, civil laws to create liability.

But I’ve always felt, and we’re doing this with institutional purely sexual abuse, is how do we get the insurance industry to be on the right side of this problem. Because if organizations and institutions cannot have insurance, they don’t survive. They can’t exist. So whether that means that insurance companies have automatic audits, have certain requirements, I’m not sure if this is in some of the laws that you guys are working with, but it becomes a really powerful muscle. It becomes another additional muscle that we can utilize as a society to protect children from the abuses by these for-profit institutions that are essentially using the normal diagnosis of being a teenager as a money making scheme. In my view, it’s a scheme.

I always say this when I’m testifying if I’m a bad driver, my insurance premiums go up. If I’m a really, really bad driver, then I may not be insurable. So I just think about it in that way and I’m just wondering if that’s ever been a consideration.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: It’sso brilliant too, because I would imagine that if these insurance companies really understood that this type of residential placement costs five times more than treatment within the communities, that they would be completely outraged. So I, I think that it is a strategy that we need to lean into more because we’re not going to be able to stop them if we don’t hit them in their pockets.

Kathryn Robb: Exactly, and whether that be liability or, you know, again, insurance is everything to institutions.

Caroline Cole: I also think you bring up a really great point with that too, because, how do we determine that this is effective care or that this is safe treatment? And when we were working on legislation in Utah a couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to ask some questions about what they look at when they do site inspections.

And I was shocked, and not shocked, that almost everything on that list had nothing to do with the quality of treatment. And instead what they were looking at was, is there mold on the walls? Is there a fire extinguisher every X amount of feet? Are there any broken tiles in the bathroom? Are all of the toilets secure?

So they’re looking at the big picture building itself, and not about the quality of treatment. And so using your analogy about being a good or bad driver, this would be similar to saying, uh, well, you’ve got seatbelts, you’ve got a steering wheel, you’ve got four tires on your car. Great driver. And it has nothing to do with the actual quality. So that’s also one of the things that we’re looking to address within our federal bill is developing those risk assessment tools in a way that will start to identify, is this truly therapeutic treatment and is this quality of treatment?

Kathryn Robb: It just uses the power of the insurance industry to be another set of eyes, so to speak, on this problem.

Caroline Cole: Absolutely.

Miranda Pacchiana: So desperately needed. Okay, great. It’s exciting to watch you all strategize in real-time. So I just wanted to ask you, Caroline, I was curious, I noticed when we put out the other episode that we did that there was such a cohesive and engaged community of survivors online. And I wonder if that is really helpful in healing and if that kind of gives you all as survivors what you didn’t get and were supposed to get supposedly in these treatment facilities, if that’s healing for you as well?

Caroline Cole: I think it’s a very unique and special experience to be a part of changing the very systems that harmed you. And it’s so rare that folks who have experienced some kind of tragic trauma can actually go and influence the very laws. And for me personally, it is an experience that I hope every survivor of this industry gets to experience at one point or another.

As we’ve mentioned, just a week or so ago, we were in Washington, DC, and we had over 85 families and survivors fly out to DC with us for this committee hearing. And, you know, in our conversations afterwards, it’s so hard to leave, it’s so hard to leave once we’re there together because we just get it. We don’t need to speak, we don’t need to justify what happened to us, we just get each other. And so there’s so much power in having that community with each other. And our community at times, I will say, is not perfect. We’ve all been through trauma. We’ve all been through some things and sometimes that comes out in the way that we deal with our relationships, you know, but,

Miranda Pacchiana: That goes without saying.

Caroline Cole: But at the end of the day, we are so able to unite behind this movement and this mission because we truly don’t want any other child have to go through what we went through. And there’s so many of us who didn’t make it out of these facilities. And the kids, who did make it out, there’s a really high number of them who have ultimately committed suicide. And so it is such needless suffering. And so I think everyone in what I’ve heard from the folks who went with us to the committee hearing is that it’s really a rewarding process to have people who are in these positions of power look at us and say, what happened to you was wrong and I’m sorry. Like, that really actually goes a very far way.

Miranda Pacchiana: Well it’s restorative justice in a sense.

Kathryn Robb: You know, I talk to survivors all, all over the world actually, but you know, obviously primarily in the States and I’ve been talking to them for 20 plus years and almost verbatim, they say the same thing. And this is more just in general, child sexual abuse, not troubled teen, I just don’t want this to happen to another child.

And it is the work, and it just kind of came back to me the spirit of that statement, it is the work of being able to advocate and lobby and speak to Congress and speak to lawmakers. It is that work that can be so healing because you don’t want this to happen to another child and that is so much part and ingrained in justice and accountability and really gives, um, survivors a purpose and a voice, and part of the preventive movement forward.

Caroline Cole: One of the first bills that we had worked on in Utah, um, Senate Bill 127, we had actually traveled with Paris to Utah to testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Paris was able to share her story, which was very powerful.

I was able to share mine with the committee, and then we also had another survivor whose story was especially heartbreaking. And I remember there was a Senator Kitchen who was serving on that committee and he looked at us, and this moment will stay with me for the rest of my life, and every time I tell this story I try not to cry, but he looked at us and he said, we failed you and I am so sorry. And everyone in that room was crying. An, I didn’t realize in that moment how much I needed to hear that: that we failed you and I’m sorry. And there was this, 14-year-old girl still in me who’s still hurting from this, who’s still, you know, at times feels like I’m still in that facility. And when I heard him say that, it’s like all that pain, all those moments of just desperation in that facility, um, I, I could finally heal a little bit. I could finally let some of that go. And so it is so powerful for survivors of all different kinds of abuse because there’s so many…there’s so much impact that happens to just your inner world, your perception of yourself, um, your opportunities in life.

Sometimes there’s a lot of just very logistical things that can cut opportunities short for people who’ve been subjected to things like this. And so, um, having that accountability, it can finally let us move on and, and live our lives. I’m in my mid-thirties now, I’m thirty-four, I’ve got three kids and, you know, it’s like I want to not be stuck in that facility anymore. And I think a lot of survivors also feel that way too.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Something that’s really important too is that it can be really scary to tell your story and we’ve helped to facilitate hundreds of survivors at both the state and the federal level come in, and they’re so scared, to share because, Congress and state houses, they don’t really feel very accessible to people who haven’t been in policy or people who don’t, really understand how that system works.

But for anybody here who’s a survivor, like, we learned very early on from one of our mentors, Amanda Wynn, whose motto is you have to pen your own civil rights into existence, and these legislators have to hear these stories. Like, policy can be so heady, the discussions, the conversations, blah, blah, blah, whatever. The stories are what’s going to stick with that legislator. The stories are what they’re going to bring up in those hearings when policy is being discussed. So, our goal is really how can we empower more survivors to go in because that is what is going tostick with them, is hearing your story, and they can onlychange based on what they know.

Miranda Pacchiana: It is very vulnerable to do. Um, and I just wanted to add to what Katherine and Caroline are saying, is that I think in addition to the incredible power of having your pain acknowledged and the injustice acknowledged, is that doing the work to help others, I think, is in a way, going back and taking care of that 14-year-old inside of you, Caroline, and the little girls that were inside of Kathryn and I, and, um, I often say that during the process of my lawsuit for child sexual abuse, I felt like the grownups finally came in the room and were like, okay, this is not happening anymore. This is not okay, you know, and there is no, other way I can think of to have accomplished that thing that I’d been missing all my life.

Caroline Cole: Mm, that’s so powerful.

Miranda Pacchiana: Yeah, this has been a really powerful discussion. Before we wrap up, is there any other burning points that either of you or any of the three of you want to add?

Caroline Cole: I think we covered a lot. the last thing, uh, that I guess I would really just want to leave people with is that, you can have an impact in your community. And whatever it is that you have been through, you can make a difference and you truly can prevent other people from going through that same experience.

And so, I hope what you take from this story is, of course, that, residential treatment facilities are terrible and never send a child to one. But I also hope that you walk away feeling empowered that you can make a difference. I never thought that I’d say I’ve passed eight laws and have introduced a federal bill. I mean, if that 14-year-old girl would hear that now, it truly is one of the most healing experiences. And so whatever that looks like in your life, you very much have the ability to organize in your community, to make a difference, to work with legislators, and I think a lot of advocates when they first entered this space, it’s like, where’s the guidebook to doing this?

I definitely recommend that you follow Rise Justice Labs and we had worked with them at the beginning of our journey and they really helped us to figure out what those first steps are and to get some infrastructure around what our goals our campaign and work was going to look like but there’s a lot of resources out there and there’s people who are so happy to take you under their wing and to show you but getting out of our heads and taking that first step is usually the hardest part and then the rest tends to work itself out

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: And if you’re outraged by, anything that we’ve shared , and you want to get involved, you can visit www.stopinstitutionalchildabuse.com. That’s where we put all of our calls to actions. You can sign up for our mailing list and Paris or one of, her team members, which is Caroline and myself and Chelsea, who’s already been on this podcast. We’ll share with you any updates or any requests that we have for folks who can really, step up and take that action alongside of us.And we need you, so please join us.

Miranda Pacchiana: And I think it’s everybody’s business because it’s all of our taxpayer dollars that are going to, frankly, to abuse children. And so we all have to have a say in that. I think that we assume that, as human beings, we’re all against child abuse, but the truth is that your values are where your actions are. And children don’t have a voice and they don’t have power, and so it’s up to all the rest of us to make sure that they’re well taken care of and that they’re not hurt. So I thank you so much for the incredible work that you’re doing, and this has been a really enriching and wonderful conversation. Thank you so much.

Rebecca Mellinger Grone: Thank you. Thank you for making space for this conversation, too. We absolutely love this podcast so grateful that we’re on board.

Miranda Pacchiana: Thanks so much.

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