The Last Stop (2017) - full transcript

Where would you all be
if you weren't here?

Where would you end up?

You'd either be in jail,
in a hospital or dead, okay?

It's time to take
your life seriously.

Get your feelings off.

You worthless piece of shit!

You're nobody to me!

I'll fucking slay you, you
foreign motherfucker!

You piece of shit!

I'll tear your fucking limb off
and beat you fucking with it!

Piece of shit asshole, I'll
fucking kill you!



I don't give a fuck
who you are, you're nobody!

You're stuck here for good,
and I'll makes sure of that!

Fuck you!

My parents tell me,
they're like,

"Well, next week we're going to
look at boarding schools

and just packing up
stuff for a week or whatever,

and we're just going to go look
at two or three different schools."

So I was like, "Okay, cool."

Called my friends, I was like, "Oh,
I'm going to be gone for a week.

I'll see you in like a week,
da da da da."

Packed a bag,
took all my music with me

because I ain't go anywhere
without my music.

Left everything else behind,
and I'm like,

"Well, I thought we were going
to Massachusetts."



And my parents were like,
"The plane is going to Maine."

I did not want to go up
to Maine.

I'd already heard a little bit
about it ahead of time,

and I knew it was going to be very strict,
though I didn't know just how strict.

It used to be that we had bad kids
who were locked away in reform schools,

and sick kids who were locked
away in mental hospitals,

but in the past decade we've
been seeking an alternative.

Instead of simply
punishing unacceptable behavior,

we've been looking for ways to
change that behavior.

This facility called Elan claims
to be able to do that.

Why was I sent there?

That's heavy, man.

Why was I in Elan?

From a very young age

things
went very badly for me.

I was pretty angry and
confused about a lot of things,

and I was just constantly
trying to distract myself.

So yeah, I was... whatever drugs
I can get a hold of.

If that was what it was, or just
not going to school.

Freshman year I'm trying to think,
I put roaches in a girl's purse as a prank.

Pre-lunch, so
she'd open them and whatever.

The school charged me with
assault for that.

Well, I was always in
trouble with the law

when I was eight or
nine years old.

If you had something that I
wanted I'd break in your house

when you
weren't there and take it.

I got jumped by a couple
juniors.

I beat the fuck out of
one kid who started it,

and they charged me with
assault and battery for that.

And then just a whole litany
of bullshit like that pretty much.

It was all the same like instigating
a fight or being involved in this.

Me, I could get laid,

smoke a
lot of bud, enjoy myself,

have good music like the Gifts
of the Grateful Dead.

I know for me it was pretty much
about getting as fucked up as you could,

dancing as hard as you could for as
long as you could and listening to music.

Or I could go home be in bed at
10 o'clock, get up at 6:00, go to school.

You know.

It was a no-brainer,

it was just when you start at 12
they get kind of a little pissy about it.

I started using drugs
when I was 13.

If you consider marijuana a
drug, I was 13.

I snorted coke when I was 14 at
some house party I was at.

Prior to me going to Elan,

I was mostly smoking pot and eating acid,
drinking occasionally.

Drinking was getting really
dangerous and out of control.

About a month
before I went to Elan,

I ran away off a home pass
from a psych hospital

and stole a bunch of beer out of
the back of a restaurant,

and they found
me on a friend's driveway.

I...

While on lithium and Prozac I
drank all this beer

and just basically passed out on
their lawn. They thought I was dead.

When I found out about Peter's heroin use,
I was very scared for him.

My mother came in my room,
and my friend and I were shooting up.

I ratted him out because
I was that scared.

I was going to buy Bud
for my girlfriend,

and I was getting me
Adderall for tests and shit.

I got pinched with that, it was like a
quarter of weed and a couple of pills.

And I was on probation
at the time,

so my mother called my
probation officer,

and I woke up
the next morning

and he was standing at the foot
of my bed with a urine cup.

Possession, intent to
distribute in a school zone.

Fucking horrible, at 15 caught
like a class whatever and whenever,

possession intent to distribute
charge. That's what ruined me.

It started when I was a kid at
about eight when my dad died,

and I got slightly out of
control with mom,

and couldn't
handle me and all that I guess.

And I ended up in one home.

When they started
sending me to group homes

and foster homes
and things like that

is where I learned how to misbehave,
and I learned about drugs.

Because I didn't know any of that stuff
living with my mother and my stepfather.

I didn't run the streets,
I didn't get in trouble, I wasn't truant,

any of that. It took me getting into the
system to learn how to do those things.

Back then they really didn't
have too many rules

about what you could and couldn't
do to kids, so I was rather abusive.

I was in the Connecticut
Junior Republic, it was a boy's home.

I was little, I was from Bridgeport, I didn't
know them, they didn't want to know me.

They wanted to rape me,
they wanted to beat the shit out of me.

And I escaped from there.

Then I got into some trouble with
the law and I was sent to Long Lane.

So a lot of bruises are showing
up on me. What do you think?

They didn't do anything. So you
take matters in your own hand.

You just get them all, get them
all at once.

I barricaded the room, I let them all go,
and that was the end of that.

I was institutionalized from
when I was 13 until I was 18.

There was a three-week break
that I did come home,

but that's when I took that
overdose of alcohol and Prozac.

After I had been in the
hospital for an overdose

I tried to kill myself
in the hospital.

I had broken a light bulb and actually cut
my wrists, and then I had also run away.

I'd been hospitalized several
times

and pretty much ran away from
every place my parents put me in.

The Dead were always on tour,
so there was always somewhere else to go.

The more I
escaped from another place

then I went to a worse
place and a worse place.

Until I
finally found myself in places

that were more brutal than I
wanted to deal with, put it that way.

Adolescents are very shrewd.

If you go into a hospital and
you don't want to stay there,

all you have to do is make an aggressive
gesture at a nurse and you're kicked out.

All you have to do is light your
bed on fire and you're kicked out.

So consequently, kids learn how
to get out of treatment.

They were trying to find a
school that would keep me

no matter how many times I ran
away.

Finally in August when I was
12 they shipped me up to Elan

because Elan said that
they kept runaways.

At Elan the first thing they learn is
you're not going to get out of here.

If you burn the place down we'll
sleep in a tent together.

No matter how many times you run away,
we will go and get you.

Why? Because we have a
commitment to you and to ourselves.

What I did was wrong, they did
CAT scans on me and all that.

And so...

They're saying I know I went
before a judge.

Instead of me going to Leahy
in Worcester,

which is like the juvenile
facility they have out here,

they offered up a plea
for me to go to Elan instead.

I was 12. They said you're
going away until you turn 18.

They were explaining that
it would be

more intense than
juvie pretty much.

I got on a plane,
I went to Elan.

The court officers

took me to an airport where
Dr. Davidson came down on the plane.

I had never
had a driver's license,

so I had never paid attention
to where we were going,

and all of a sudden I was in
the middle of the woods in Maine.

I was like I'm in the
fucking boondocks. This is nuts.

Some of the kids have mentioned
that they or their peers were snatched.

What does that mean?

Yeah, I remember that night.

Well, it's usually in the
morning you see.

When four residents

and generally big
people or taller and heavier,

will show up at someone's house

and go into a new resident's
bedroom and say,

"Hi Johnny, we're from Elan
and we'd like you to come with us."

And they talk very nicely,

but they're big and they're strong and
they're insistent and there are four of them.

And so it happens.

I was sleeping in my bed,
and probably at about 4:00 AM

two guys came into my room,
woke me up.

One of the guys said, "We're
taking you to your new school."

My mom was telling me this was
for the best.

I tried to run,
they grabbed me,

and they threw me in a van and
drove me up to Poland Springs, Maine.

So I get off the plane, and
there's two kids,

just gigantic huge kids,

maybe a year older or maybe two
years older than me, and two adults.

They're like,
"We're taking you to the school."

They didn't really tell me too
much about where I was going.

So all of a sudden we're
going up this dusty dirt road.

I just remember thinking, "God, this
place is out in the middle of nowhere."

And there's these scattered
house I feel like I'm going to summer camp.

And after you're in Long Lane for
six months anything looks better.

And a couple staff came with really pretty
pictures of the lake and the property,

and it looked really nice.

And they were talking about the
horseback riding

and canoeing and hiking
and house trips.

I thought that I was going
from complete lockup

to summer camp paradise.

I'm like, "Where's the swimming pool,
the horses and the tennis courts?"

So now when I arrived
in August of '73,

V-J Day as a matter of fact, I saw this
white Victorian house sitting up on the hill.

And my parents brought me in,

and I was taken right in to the
director's office, Joe Ricci.

We don't bullshit kids.

We don't tell kids that this is
some kind of utopia,

that everything is
going to work out for you.

And so they bring me into this trailer,
and we were being told about the program.

Looked my mother straight dead in the eye
and said, "This is the last stop on the bus."

Not one time did anybody say, even
hinted at what I was about to go through.

If you don't send your son here he's
going to be dead, you can count on it.

You have six minutes to say
goodbye to your parents,

and if you say anything disrespectful
to them I'm going to put you in a corner.

And I just looked at my dad and I just
was shaking my head, I started crying.

I was like... just looked at him,
because me and my dad were closer.

Me and my mom always had issues,
me and my dad were very close.

So I was getting my search to get
inside and my dad started crying,

and my mom was just
like, "I can't." And they left.

I couldn't believe they
were going to leave me there,

but after a while they did,
you know.

When I brought my kid today I
just cried.

I know, and the people in school
knew that he was coming up here to stay.

You know that if he doesn't
change he's going to get arrested.

You know that sooner or later he's
going to steal something to get money.

I worried them a lot.

The phone rings at 10 o'clock at night,
three o'clock in the morning.

They were getting calls 2:00,
3:00 in the morning from the cops.

You're shaking, you're wondering,
what's this call going to mean?

Your son's run away again. We
don't know where he is.

And that's the fear that we
live in. We're ready to--

- Crack.
- Just an example, ready to crack.

I love him so much. I wouldn't
want to lose him.

It's important for parents to
know that we understand all of that.

We're going to help your
child go through all of that

so that you can have the kid back that
you remember, and the one that you love.

I was raised by adopted parents

who were very devout Catholics,
my mother in particular.

And she had a bad temper, she
wasn't able to forgive me

because I had bonded with one
of the nuns at the infant home,

and preferred
her over my adopted parents.

I'd always had an active
imagination and a fantasy life,

but it became more intense when
I was around her.

My father, he wasn't much help.

Our father was never present,

and our mother drank too much.

Way too much.

I was taken away from my
mother when I was 13.

My mother had issues with alcoholism,
and she married an extremely abusive man.

Not only was he abusing my
mother, but he was hitting me.

I was in an abusive home
environment.

My mother was physically
abusive, emotionally abusive.

My mother used to tie me to the
radiator and beat the shit out of me.

She beat the crap out of
me on several occasions.

Threw me in tubs with
hot scalding water.

When I was 11 years old she told me get the
fuck out of the house and not come back.

I went to grab some cookie,

she kicked the chair from underneath me,
split my head open.

I ran into my bedroom
and tried to hide.

My eye right here above my eye,
the bone is fractured.

My mom came in with a belt and
beat the crap out of me.

Had it not been for Mr. Bright,

the people who live next door, I
probably would have been dead.

That's when the state removed
me from her.

My dad from as early as I can
remember he was physically abusive,

mentally abusive,
sexually abusive.

And no one knew about it.

My mother didn't know, it was only
my brother and I who really knew,

and that
wasn't found out until Elan.

In my 17 years at Elan I've seen a
lot of kids come through the program

who had had some horrible
relationships with family members.

Who all still love each other very dearly,
but had really hurt each other,

and had really done some pretty
self-destructive

and destructive things to other
people in their family.

And it all got twisted, and it
all got confused.

I think the trouble then is
where do you release this?

The hurt or this stuff.

Where do you then take this?

Because the perpetrators
aren't going to talk to you about it.

Okay, so where do you take it?

And I think for a lot of us

that
went through Elan that I know,

some things happened and the
parents needed to dump.

That was their solution.

So for me the first day was one
of extreme bewilderment,

and an ultimate realization
that I was in for a new kind of life.

I said goodbye to my parents and
Mark Rosenberg took me down to Elan VIII.

I went to Elan III.

They sent me to Parsonsfield.

I went... of course you
go straight to the dorm

and then you have your Kwell
shower, the famous Kwell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The louse shampoo and all that shit.
Going up there for your indoctrination.

You have to change your
clothes and remove your

jewelry and your
shoelaces and all of that.

Take your fucking hat off, tuck
your shirt...

I'm like, just the regular
emotions

of never hearing anything like
this before in your life.

They asked me,
why'd you run away from your last place?

Being 16 and you know, I was
like, "I wanted to get laid."

I took a girl with me.

And Marty said to me, "Well, you
can't get laid here.

You can't even flirt here."

My jaw kind of dropped,
it was like,

"Yeah, you say that,
but the students will say something else."

So some kid that was my SP in Clara
walks me up to Elan VII, which wasn't far.

But as I'm walking up there I'm
hearing screaming.

So I walked in the door
and the first thing they told me

was "You get to leave
when you change."

So I get in Elan, and I'm
looking around, in Elan VII, and I'm like,

"Okay, this kid is
scrubbing the corner.

This kid is wearing a fucking piece
of poster board around their neck,

this kid is in the corner,

and there's a bunch of other kids
just sitting around looking miserable.

I'd never seen
anything like that in my life.

Stand right there!

I just remember looking around
seeing people with signs and shaved heads

and somebody
wearing a clown outfit.

I thought everybody was
out of their minds.

I didn't have relatives.
I was brought in

during lunch time,
and I sat down at the table.

Immediately I turned to the girl next to
me, I'm like, "This shit is fucking crazy.

Where am I?"

Where the fuck am I?

And apparently she was a
non-strength.

Immediately I got pulled into
another room and I got dealt with.

So I started crying,
like profusely crying.

Threw a tantrum, I was like,
"I'm not staying here.

I don't want to be here. You
made a mistake, this is not me.

I don't know what the fuck is going on,
but you all are fucking crazy."

I was almost begging to go back
to the detention center.

It was surreal, to say the
least. It was unreal.

It was as if we were in
a parallel universe

and for some reason the kids
were all acting like they liked it.

Very bizarre.

So I'm continuing to cry, and people
are trying to tell me like, "Tighten up."

Using these terms that I've
never heard like,

"We're not going to
placate you."

At 16, I had no
idea what placate meant.

"We're not going to placate you.

You need to tighten up, you're
causing a scene.

You're
disrupting the community."

The first day at Elan

I had taken in the lunch line
two milks instead of one milk.

Next thing I know.

General fucking meeting.

Get in front of your house.

Oh fuck.

And all the kids are like, "Go,
go. Stand up there. Stand up there."

I find myself up against
the wall

with about, easy, 150
people in that place.

So I'm standing up there
and I'm still bawling my eyes out crying.

When you got a GM, they
break you down, man.

And Tanya just starts ripping me like,
"You fucking are manipulative.

You're a fucking lying brat. You
fucking destroyed your family."

You couldn't do nothing but cry.

"You destroyed your family. You
made everybody around you miserable."

They would talk about
what you'd done wrong

in these terms like you'd
murdered somebody.

The house is worked up into such a
feeding frenzy, and into such a battle mode.

It's like the gladiators in
the fucking Coliseum man.

You could feel the
house tremble.

Someone's thrown up there in
chains and they let all the tigers out.

So then she's like, "Does
anybody else have feelings about this?"

"Does anybody have any
feelings about it?"

"Who's got feelings
for him? Get him."

"Get his ass."

Next thing I know,
I have 50 fucking kids rushing at me.

People rush,
I mean chairs flung...

as they get out of their chair it
falls on the floor behind them.

They would bum-rush you.

They were this far away
from your face.

Screaming at--

The top of their lungs.

"You fucking asshole. How can
you do this? I can't stand...

I'm going to kick your
motherfucking ass.

If I knew you on the street,
you're a little mama's boy,

you'd be sucking my
dick, blah, blah, blah."

Spitting in your face the whole time
and you have to stand there like this.

When they finished with you, you
were completely degraded,

humiliated,
you wasn't worth damn.

Thank you very much everybody,
great to hear all of you.

Last week two judges in
Pennsylvania plead guilty

to taking over 2.5 million
dollars in kickbacks

for placing over 5000
teens in private wilderness

program in a juvenile
detention center.

What's shocking here is not just
the judge's horrific misconduct,

but the fact that the same thing
takes place all the time legally

in the private placements we've
just heard about.

Like the
private prison business,

this industry is about making
money by locking up children.

It is not about helping them.

The treatment they sell is
abuse. The abuse is not...

When I was in college and
in high school, I had a drug problem.

I became addicted to
cocaine and heroin.

And I was
afraid to get treatment

because what I'd read about
addiction treatment

was that the whole idea was to
humiliate and break and attack you.

And I thought that's exactly the
opposite of what I need

because the reason
I'm using drugs

is because I feel uncomfortable
and unsafe around other people.

And so when I got into recovery eventually

I wanted to understand where did
this idea come from

that we should break
addicts to fix them?

Throughout the 1960s
many new treatment programs

had been launched in and out of government.

Perhaps the most
publicized is Synanon,

a private organization founded
and managed by ex-addicts.

Best thing for people is people,

and Synanon provides the environment to
bring together people from all walks of life.

Synanon was founded by a
man named Charles Dederich,

an ex-alcoholic and frequent
speaker at alcoholics anonymous.

It was his answer to the dilemma drug
addicts were facing during the early '60s.

There was nowhere they could go for help.

During that time, drug addiction was seen
as much more severe than alcohol addiction.

So Dederich came up with a solution

using the 12 steps made famous in
Alcoholics Anonymous, but with a new twist.

He thought that AA
wasn't tough enough.

He thought that the 12
steps were all well and good,

but they really wouldn't work
unless you forced people to do them.

At the core of Synanon
were group sessions that relied

on highly intense confrontation
between group members.

-You're a little baby.
-Really?

I want, I want, I want.

When I want to go, I go.

The idea was to break down
their defenses

to make them reveal their
innermost deepest troubles.

Only then would they be able to
help themselves towards sobriety.

In Synanon, this ideology was
known as The Game.

Today it's more commonly
known as--

Attack therapy is basically the
idea that you've developed this

horrible bad personality,

and we need to attack you and break you

entirely in order to eliminate it
and to rebuild you as a good person.

Synanon achieved massive
success.

However, it wasn't long before
stories of abuse and cult-like behavior

began to emerge, and after a
lengthy legal battle with the IRS,

Synanon would eventually
shutdown.

But not without leaving behind a legacy
that is still being felt to this day.

After getting massive amounts of
publicity,

a major motion
picture, all the evening news,

all the big media was saying how
this is this wonderful cure.

It spread to New York where Phoenix
House and Daytop were founded.

Daytop Village is typical
of the halfway house concept.

Where the addict is slowly eased
back into society, one step at a time.

Synanon evolved into Daytop and
other therapeutic communities.

And Joe Ricci went to Daytop.

The man who
runs Elan is Joe Ricci,

himself a former
delinquent and heroin addict.

Joe came out of Daytop
in '67 or '68.

He went through the
program then he worked for it.

And ultimately wanted to found
his own therapeutic version of Daytop.

And then he was
introduced to Gerald Davidson.

Dr. Davidson was a Harvard
educated psychiatrist.

And they went up to Maine.

What I understand, Maine had
less stringent laws

on who could operate and
what kind of permits you needed.

In 1970 Joe Ricci and Gerald
Davidson opened the first facility

in the small town of
Sebago, Maine.

They called it Elan I,

and like Daytop, the program mainly focused
on rehabilitating hardened drug addicts.

It started out early, it started
out drunks,

and most of the
people were 18 and over.

As a matter of fact they were
well within their 20s.

Most of them were junkies,

and Elan truly was their last
stop before prison or death.

And then they were convinced
that they could take on other people.

Runaways, a lot of runaways.

Running away or being
truant from school.

Promiscuity.

Girls that had gotten
pregnant as teenagers.

Your very violent offenders.

Stealing cars, breaking
into houses.

Marty Maxwell was there, he was
there for robbing banks.

Mugging people.

There were a lot
of gang members.

- We had manslaughter.
- Held people at knife point.

Pedophilia.

Some kids I remember I
had heard had raped people.

Maybe half the people there had
been sexually abused consistently.

People that had very serious
emotional and psychological problems.

There were a lot of kids there

that had been put in every kind
of placement center or treatment

or whatever you want to call it that
their state could possible send them to.

They come from mental institutions
or juvenile detention centers.

And Elan was the last place
that they would send these kids.

We started to move into autism,
we started to move into Asperger's.

After I'd been at Elan for a few years
and I was receiving a general meeting,

the director suddenly turned to
everybody and said,

"Did you know that before she came to Elan,
she had been diagnosed as semi-autistic?"

We started to move into--

Murder.

It was the night before
Halloween 27 years ago

when 15-year old Martha Moxley
was found beaten to death

outside her home in upscale
Greenwich, Connecticut.

Among the suspects, her next
door neighbor Michael Skakel.

- Michael Skakel.
- Michael Skakel.

Michael Skakel.

A Kennedy cousin serving
20 years to life--

For a murder that shocked the
nation,

Skakel was convicted in
a 1975 murder

of his 15-year-old neighbor in
Greenwich.

It was at Elan during
group therapy

that Michael would allegedly
confess to killing Martha Moxley.

We got way out of our purview
there, way out.

There were kids there
who talked to boys,

and that was their only
problem.

They talked to boys, they came
from a religious family.

Some kids just acted badly

and I think their parents had the money
to send them there, so Elan took them.

For the most part these troubled
teen programs,

the evaluation they do is what I
call a wallet biopsy.

Do you have enough money
to afford it?

Then yes, your problem is severe
enough. That's it.

By 2011, the annual tuition for
one-year stay at Elan, over $54,000.

That's
far more expensive than

even the most expensive
university education.

Do you still
think it's worth it?

Yes, indeed.

Could you tell me why?

Well, what's the
worth of a life?

In January of '74 there
was a major fire.

Up in the attic this boy named Burt
set a fire because he hated the place,

and he knew that a lot of us
hated it too.

He knew that the neighbors
hated us and wanted us out.

So he set a fire and
because the old house

consisted
of wood it just burned fast.

After Elan I burned down, operations
were moved to the facility in Waterford.

This would be Elan II.

Soon the main campus in Poland
Springs was opened,

and then a maximum security
facility was established in Parsonsfield

to house state wards and kids that
were facing severe criminal charges.

Yes, Elan certainly was Joe
Ricci's big success,

and like any good businessman
he diversified his investments.

He bought the Scarborough Downs race track.

Scarborough Downs still
a cut above the best.

And ran for governor.

Hi, I'm Joseph Ricci,
Democratic candidate for governor.

Joe's empire was expanding
and so was the new troubled teen industry.

Parents, psychologists and
courts from all over the world

were sending their troubled
kids to Elan for treatment.

The troubled teen industry has
become connected.

Sometimes a drug rehab will
recommend a wilderness program,

and sometimes a psychiatrist
will recommend these things,

largely because they're
ignorant of what actually goes on,

and also because unfortunately

professional treatment is not
always so professional either.

You won't get out of doing it!

You and
everybody else has to!

You know this lack of quality,

you know this crap,
you know it just will not be tolerated!

Yeah, you're the first one
to do it!

Day in day out,
life at Elan is constant confrontation.

Unrelenting pressure.

I couldn't believe all the shit
that was left on those things!

Your feelings, your negative attitudes
are broken down, dissected, torn apart.

The idea
is to change your behavior.

The Elan program was two-fold. In
one sense there were therapeutic groups.

Primal groups.

- Encounter groups.
- A parent group.

The other side of Elan

was a functional working
microcosm of the work world.

Everybody had a
job around the house,

and everybody
had to make the house,

the society of sorts,
to function.

It was very Lord of the Flies.

Yes. I've actually explained it that
way to people I've known several times.

That's the best part,
it's the most ingenious fucking thing ever.

You have the prisoners
run the prison.

It seemed like patients
therapeutatized the other patients.

It's great because everybody
wants to move up.

We all know we want to
get out of this place.

That's the only way you can
convince people to,

I don't know, shut off their
real human convictions.

You're disgusting.

Because everyone here's trying to be
the exact opposite of what you are now,

and you want to hold on to it.

That's the disgusting
part of it.

You just better start being
honest with us man,

because everyone's getting
pretty hostile.

And I bought
into the whole thing.

I am going to do whatever
they tell me to do, okay?

I am going to hurt anybody they want
me to because I want to get out of here.

Elan does things a little
differently,

more of an emphasis on integrity
honesty, accountability.

Wellness kind of a model rather
than a psychiatric or illness model.

And the kids often don't know they're
being therapized, if I can use that word.

Each Elan house functioned through
the collective work of five offices.

The service crew were the janitors,
the kitchen crew handled the food,

the business
office filed paperwork,

the communications office
brought news from the outside world,

and the expediters
enforced security.

Each office was managed by
a specific hierarchy of positions

that each resident had to work
through in order to graduate the program.

I remember when you came in you
were non-strength and you were a worker.

Everybody went into service crew first,
and you were a worker.

Elan residents are taught
to obey authority.

They're made to work at menial jobs,
to do what they're told to do.

You just cleaned floors, you'd do this,
you'd do that, you'd dust this.

And then you had a ramrod.

Then you got some dudes coming around
with a white glove checking your work out,

and if it wasn't right,
you'd be there half a day again redoing it.

There was worker and ramrod, and
those were the two non-strength positions.

And in order to talk to somebody
else that wasn't a strength,

you had to have a strength being
aware of your conversation.

Monitoring your conversation.

You always had
somebody watching you.

You couldn't go
to the bathroom on your own.

Each household is a
tightly structured community.

New residents do the dirty work under
the supervision of more senior residents.

And then you would go to
expediter.

Once you hit expediter, that was
the first time that you were a strength.

Expediters were responsible
for security.

The expediter is a police man.

They're the line of defense between
the normal people and the lunatics.

The expediters had clipboards,

and they would be put on certain designated
spots throughout the houses called zones.

The expediters would watch the doors to
make sure nobody ran, and then at the dorm.

The night owl made sure that you
didn't run in the middle of the night.

In the households,

discipline is maintained by an
elite group called the expediters.

They relay orders, keep track of every
resident, and report negative behavior.

Some call them spies.

They would watch and
write down all the things

that people have done wrong
throughout the day.

They record the names, the actions
of everyone in every room continuously.

I'll have to tell you, this is probably not
very... something I should be proud of.

Nobody ever
ran away on my time.

At Elan there is no
privacy.

Incoming mail is open,
outgoing mail is read and censored.

Telephone calls are monitored.

Every conversation is subject
to eavesdropping and informing.

And then was it department head from
there? And then it was department head.

A department head

was basically
when you first became a manager.

Department head of
the kitchen crew.

And then you would go to shingle.
Shingle was the head of the expediters.

Michelle, take dining room zone.

Rachel, go to top zone please.

I'm pretty sure I was a shingle
for like a fucking year-and-a-half.

And then you had coordinator.

Coordinator of communications.

I loved being COD.

COD stood for
coordinator on duty.

Pretty much you ran the house for that day.

You were the boss,
you were in charge,

and you were accountable for
everything that went on in your house.

Well, first of all there
were directors,

and below them there
were assistant directors,

and below them were staff.

And the staff members were the
people in reentry.

I did reentry staff then I...
I never was officially hired.

It was a job for them until
they went home

or decided to stay.

You have hundreds of years of expert
people up here to walk you through this,

hold your hand, help you, push
you through a window,

pull you through a window,
and help you change.

So consequently the only thing you have to
do here is to be as hardworking as you can,

and to
be totally as honest as you can.

I don't know a lot about
the staff in Elan,

I do know that a lot of them were former
residents who had graduated the program.

And I don't know if there
actually were any staff there

with formal psych training
or anything.

I don't think so. I never saw a
psychiatrist while I was there,

I never saw a psychologist.

These were all people who
had no training, no psychology classes.

Their only qualification was that they
themselves had been through the program.

They thought that because they
had been through experiences

that, that qualified them to
handle disturbed kids.

There are no national standards
nor even a consensus of expert opinion

on how much formal
training should be required

of person involved in treating
troubled kids.

But both Dr. Davidson,
a trained psychiatrist,

and Joe Ricci, who
did not graduate from college,

believe that experience is
the best teacher

when it comes to helping the
type of kids who come to Elan.

...if you ask for help.

Now, when you get shot down
you lose your position.

Yeah, I was shot down. I got shot
down three times for having sex.

If you're going to be shot
down you have to scrub floors,

you have to GI the toilets.

No, no, no, no. They didn't
scrub it, they had toothbrushes.

It doesn't matter if the
floor is brand new.

You've got to sit there
and scrub it for 18 hours.

And God forbid you were fucking
shot down and you had to pee,

because you would have to go
through a worker, a ramrod,

a department head, a coordinator,
senior coordinator, and then to staff.

So it had to go through 11 different
people for you to get permission to pee.

And then you had to find somebody
to be aware of you while you peed

because you couldn't go in the
bathroom alone.

Throughout the day residents
functioned within their departments,

only breaking for meals,
meetings, a few hours

of school at night,
and of course, groups.

I remember there was
a box at the front of the house,

and there was a little
slip of paper.

Encounter groups.

You couldn't swear at somebody
or tell them you hated them

unless you were in a general
meeting or group therapy.

If you were to make me angry, you told
me to do something I didn't want to do,

I'd write, "To Todd from Gillian, anger."
I'd circle that, drop it in the box.

Everybody would sit in a circle
in one of the rooms,

and then the staff or the director
who was running it would say,

"Okay, get your feelings off."

And you would commence to basically
cursing each other out one at a time,

at the top of
your fucking lungs.

And that was supposed to be how
you dealt with your feelings.

In so-called
encounter groups,

residents are encouraged to
express their hostile feelings.

The result is usually a stream
of curses and obscenities.

You would yell at the person,
swear at them, degrade them.

- Cunt.
- Whore.

- Needle dick.
- Fucking slut.

You could say anything
you wanted to.

They'd stomp their feet, and
they'd be going like this.

Frothing at the mouth, grabbing their
pants like this. Rocking back and forth.

Some people's seats would be
popping up off the ground.

Screaming at me,
making eye contact.

Calling me a bitch and
all this stuff.

Sometimes it was for
the dumbest reasons too.

Somebody left their tube
of shampoo in the shower

because they were coming in
after me to use it.

I had no idea,
it was right there.

I used the Judy's Secret,

I did it then the guy that went in
afterwards, his shampoo was gone.

Well, he dropped a slip on me
and took me into an encounter group

and he's sitting there screaming
at me how he's going to kill me

because I took his tube of
Judy's Secret shampoo.

You know what? I'm sick and
tired of your garbage around here.

You know I've got to deal
with your--

If you weren't participating in the
encounter groups intensely enough,

it was you that would
be in trouble.

Most of the time
when I was in groups

it was a lot of going through the
motions and just yelling because I had to,

but there was one group in
particular

where a girl who I
thought I was really close to

had gone on her first
visit with her mother.

She told her that she shouldn't
be there

because there's girls who were raped
by their father and stuff like that there,

and she's not like that.

Then I was in a group with her

and that was the first time I
ever actually yelled and meant it.

I was crying so hard, I couldn't believe
that someone had said something like that.

As if I'm a disease and you are
better than me.

I can say that at that moment I
was glad that something in this world

was called an encounter group
and I wasn't choking her.

Back in the day when I was going
through a lot of places

being in institutions, there
were no encounter groups.

We would just simply beat
each other's ass on the spot if

something like that broke out.

After the shouting there is
an attempt to resolve hostilities.

With the ultimate goal of not
only having peace,

but having a better outcome in
your daily interactions.

They taught us that everyone in
the world has feelings,

and
that's all they are is feelings.

And the difference between a
positive person and a negative person

was how they reacted off
of those feelings.

We're talking about attempting
suicide by eating 15 pills of Antabuse,

and then going out and
having a glass of scotch.

We're talking about waking up in
the morning

and just because you don't have booze,
drinking shaving lotion,

just to get alcohol out of it.

We're talking about
going into convulsions,

and going into seizures and going into
blackouts that you almost never came out of.

I was at the point where
I was pretty wasted one night,

and I went out and I got a butcher knife
and started stabbing myself in my stomach,

which partly because I wanted my
father to come and say,

"It's okay Diana. You're going to be
all right, you're a very sick little girl.

We'll take you to the hospital
and sew you up."

I just wanted to know that he
loved me because I felt like he didn't.

I felt like nobody did.

You have to make the decision whether
or not it's worth it for you to live.

You have got to do
it for yourself.

I want you to
think about the times

that you could never sit somebody
down and spill your guts out.

And I want you to say, "I'm
lonely and it hurts me."

Hold hands and think about that.

Let's get in
touch with what you are.

I'm lonely and it hurts me.

You would think about a
feeling that you had that made you sad.

I'm lonely and it hurts me.

That you felt bad about.

Think about what goes on inside.
"I'm lonely and it hurts me," let's go.

I'm lonely and it hurts me.

I'm scared. I hate my father.
This person raped me.

I'm lonely and it hurts me.

It was trying to go to
your most inner child.

I'm lonely and it hurts me.

The hurt.

I'm lonely and it hurts me!

The wound's just left
unidentified.

I'm lonely and it hurts me!

Talk about it!

I'm lonely and it hurts me!

I'm lonely and it hurts me!

I'm lonely and it hurts me!

Get it all out. Get it all
out. It's okay to cry.

And it was supposedly a way of--

- Cleansing.
- ...cleansing out your problems.

You are watching primal
scream therapy,

which is intended to release a
youngster's deepest fears and emotions.

I had two primal groups
surrounding my father's death.

Do you remember what
you were screaming?

Yeah, why'd you leave me?

When I got into high school I
found amphetamines.

Then I found crystal speed,

and I did a lot of amphetamines and
a lot of crystal, and I would drink a lot.

Got thrown out of high school
and went to night school.

Then I got kicked out of night
school for truancy.

I had said to my father, "I need help,
I think I'm going crazy."

And he said, "Well,

I would like you to consider
going to Elan.

Your brother went there and it seems
to have done a world of good for him."

He said, "I'll call you every day to
make sure you're doing all right."

And two days later I made this
phony suicide attempt

thinking I'd end up in the plush Valley
Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey,

and instead I ended up
on the psych ward.

And my father
died the next morning.

He dropped dead jogging on a
business trip in Chicago.

They said the heart attack was so massive
he was dead before he hit the pavement.

So I felt so guilty about having
made that suicide attempt and thinking,

"Well, that probably contributed to my
father's heart attack, which killed him."

And my mother wanted me
to go to Elan,

and I'm pretty sure Peter at that point
was advocating for me to go there as well.

So I went to Elan.

We are in a structured
environment

where these kids may not know
how to have things organized.

Don't know how to keep anything
on time, how to do something,

and this teaches them to live in an
environment where there is actually discipline.

Along with their job, every resident
had a set of daily responsibilities.

Dropping slips was one of them,
and then there was the incident book.

At Elan there were three cardinal rules.

No drugs, no sex and no
violence.

Breaking any of the three cardinal
rules meant severe punishment.

But then there were
rules for everything else,

and this is where the
incident book came in.

The incident book was something
controlled by a shingle expediter.

Someone who you could kind of
compare to a police lieutenant or captain.

You had to be careful what you
said around everybody

because people were encouraged
to tattle on each other all the

time for every little thing.

Students
would book each other

or hold each other accountable
for breaking the rules.

They would say to the shingle,
"I want to book

an incident." They'd say,
"On who? For what?"

You'd get booked for goofing.

You could be walking around
with a shoelace that's untied.

Not doing your chore correctly.

Let too many cigarette butts
collect in an ash tray.

Because I was the house fatty,

I couldn't sit through a meal without being
booked by 10 people for eating too much.

This is my favorite,
stealing a pencil.

But stealing a pencil
isn't stealing a pencil.

Stealing a pencil is like a pencil was
on the ground and you picked it up,

and you didn't make a fucking
announcement on the pencil

to let everybody know that
you were taking the pencil.

Because you didn't want to take
those two extra steps

to raise your hand and make an
announcement

and find out whose fucking
pencil it is before you pocket it,

you have now committed a crime
in the kingdom of Elan.

The shingle would come up to you if you
were booked and say, "Valid or invalid?"

Your explanation had some weight,
but not a whole hell of a lot.

The injustice of it was guilty or innocent,
you usually got dealt with.

If it's an injustice,
deal with it.

Knock!

Who's out there? Come in.

I was dealt with a lot,
on a daily basis.

I mean, God I could knock 20
times a day, 30 times a day.

You say knock, the
person knocks.

-They'd say, "Who's there?" And you
say Julie, and they'd say-- -Come in.

You'd walk in and
you'd close the door behind you,

and you'd stand in front
of four other residents

with your feet shoulder-width
apart and your hands at your sides.

And they would say, "You know
why you're standing there?"

For stealing a pencil.

That was your responsibility!

You had to clean the bathroom
this morning!

You can
just lay back in the cut,

and it's just everything that
goes around here!

In the jargon of Elan,
this is a haircut.

The theory is that blowing the
most trivial incidents out of proportion

with angry shouting, will lead the supposed
offender to take a closer look at himself.

You're going to make
sure things get done!

So I suggest for the next time
you should put more...!

And if you stand there
and you react at all

like roll your eyes or,
"Yeah, right. Whatever."

It would just get worse and
worse and worse.

At Elan you succeed and
survive if you accept the program.

If you don't, there are punishments.
They're usually called learning experiences.

You had to make a
choice when you came to Elan.

You can choose to go through the hard
way or you can choose the motherfucker way.

From the hottest fire comes
the strongest steel.

But I caught on real quick.

I got smart the first day I was
there, and a couple of guys came

and asked me come in a room and
they just said,

"Hey, we can do this one way
or we can do it another way."

And I just went, "Really?"

And they go, "Really."

And I said, "Okay, cool."

I just didn't feel like
fighting,

because I intuitively
knew I wasn't going to win.

I wasn't buying into their
system right away.

My first year in Elan was
scrubbing floors and facing corners.

I had almost a general meeting
a day for probably six months.

So I was on the service crew for 30 days and
then I tried to run away and I got caught.

I wanted to get kicked out.

My first year that's all I
wanted to do.

That was my dream. My dream was
to get kicked out of Elan.

I had my clothes on all night
long in bed,

trying to get the guts to get up
and run out the door.

And finally when I did, I
ran right into the night man.

But had I known how hard
people had tried

for the past 20-something years prior
to me getting there to get kicked out,

and the things that they had tried
and they had never gotten kicked out,

I would probably
have conformed sooner.

Many Elan residents have
tried to escape, but they've all failed.

I split from Elan probably
about six or seven times.

Made it out of the state of Maine
every time, as far as California.

Anybody who tried to run
away was usually caught.

When they've managed to get off the
grounds, trackers are sent out after them.

They send student
trackers after you.

Next thing I know I get jumped
somewhere, and next thing I'm back.

You were brought back and
you were basically therapeutically killed.

And you often had
security precautions put on you

that were unprecedented
for any time in your stay.

When they caught
this 15-year-old boy

he was put in a rabbit
suit and leg shackles.

After I ran away, I mean I already
had no fucking shoelaces or anything anyway.

So they got me down to a sandal,

I can only wear
sandals, pocket, pockets out.

15-foot
spread from windows and doors.

A strength and a high strength.

They've got to be with me at all times,
and I'm in a pod,

which is each tile is like
a foot, one-by-one all right?

So I got nine, that was me.

That was me for
nine fucking months.

That's my pen.

That's where I live it's taped.

Taped, outlined,
if I went out of it, "Chief!"

What does it do?

Okay, it humiliates him and it
restricts his movement.

He's run away from
here four times, okay?

He's run away from every place he's
been before at least 17 or 18 times.

This boy's been in and out of
juvenile detention centers for years,

and faced charges of breaking
and entering and assault.

For him, it was either
Elan or jail.

So, I was shot down for
the next 30 days,

and I was a worker for
the next 30 days,

and then they
transferred me to Waterford.

I met the best friend I've ever had in
my life, a guy named Scott Ketchum.

And he had a sign,
and I remember exactly what his sign said.

I walked in and I looked over,
and the whole room had to be quiet

because he just walked in
and he said,

"I'm Scott, the hospital tot. I
like to make people laugh a lot.

I find it hard to see that I
have guilt and it's killing me."

Residents are made to wear
signs for days, sometimes weeks.

Bluntly spelling out their
problems and failures.

You would have to stand up every
morning at morning meeting and read your sign.

Hickory dickory dock,
responsible I am not.

I fell asleep like a little
sheep, ask me why I'm a dummy.

And the house would
have to confront you on your sign.

"Why are you a dummy?" Because
I fell asleep on night duty.

It was a big piece of
white poster board

and Elan was so nice that they
would let you make your own sign.

You could even put silly flowers
and dogs and cats on it.

I'm a lunatic, I totally lose control
when things don't go my way.

That's why I've been in
and out of hospitals.

Please confront me as to why I
have so little self-control

that I've become a blob.

Please ask me why I
continue to goof.

I'm a disgusting little coward.

If I continue to take everything as a joke,
I'm going to end up dead.

All I have in the future to look
forward to is getting raped in prison.

I got a sign as a result of the
fact that I broke cardinal rules.

I was kind of flirting with one of
the guys from Elan III in classes.

The lights had
gone out during school,

and we held hands for probably
about five seconds.

And they kept
telling me that I had guilt,

and I had no clue what they were
talking about.

Guilt was basically any behavior
you engaged in contrary to Elan policy

that was not found out,
but you carried with you.

Elan was very big on making
you feel guilty.

Every couple of weeks
they would say,

"Have you copped to your guilt? When was
the last time you copped to your guilt?"

And you'd write it out on a
piece of paper, what you did.

I couldn't figure out if
somebody had seen me in the dark

touch hands with this other
guy for five seconds, so I actually

copped to that as my guilt.

Two new residents talking to
each other without a strength

being aware of the conversation
might be a relatively minor form of guilt.

You know.

Kissing someone on the back stairs,
you're getting a general meeting.

So I got shot down, I
got a general meeting,

and I got a sign about,
"Ask me why am I whore,"

because I held hands with
somebody for about five seconds.

I remember this poor girl named
Jennifer.

She liked a kid,
and they put a whore costume on her.

Oh, oh. Costumes.

Every morning she had to
get up in front of the whole house,

dance around and strut like she
was a whore, and sing this song.

How do you tell somebody that
had been sexually abused

since they were four years old
that they're a whore?

Growl!

I think I was oversexed
because I'd been abused,

so I was sexually provocative.

I was sexually abused when I was
younger by someone close to my family,

and it had gone on for a
very long time,

a period of eight years and
just kind of the backup of dealing

with that problems in school.

I'd entrusted to a friend that I
was being sexually abused,

and that friend got mad at me and
decided to spread it around the school.

So I was known in junior high

as the girl who
fucked this person.

I think that I just wanted out.

I just wanted
everything to be quiet.

They used to put people
in some humiliating costumes.

Me and this girl would dress
up as the Bobbsey Twins,

our hair was put up
in pig tails.

We were very immature and we used to
act up, and they wanted to humiliate us.

The costume would always suit
the person who was put into it.

My subject was terrible
with the math.

If you didn't do well in it,
they'd make you wear this big dunce cap.

If their behavior is
deemed infantile,

they're made to wear diapers over
their clothes, and to carry rattles.

I don't know how I was being a
baby, but I guess I was.

I had
the bonnet and the big rattle.

Denise Hubbard, she had
syphilis,

and they made her wear
tampons in her hair.

I thought
that was downright disgusting.

Why would they do that?

Because she has syphilis. That
was their way of treating her.

Take my buddy Kevin
Hicks for instance.

Rolling.

He pulled a couple stunts, and
they put a costume on him.

Oh I was out of control.

And so, I was shot down, I was
in Parsonsfield

and we had a morning meeting,

and I said I think that we
should get a house dog.

Elan III has a beautiful
golden retriever,

and wouldn't it be nice if we
could get a dog for the house.

Next thing I knew,
I was getting a general meeting

for suggesting that we should
have a house dog,

and it was determined that I
should be the house dog.

And I was not allowed to speak.

I was only allowed to bark once for yes,
bark twice for no.

I had to walk around on fours,
for my dinner I was given a dog dish,

plus I had to do tricks.

They would teach me tricks and I would
have to do these tricks on command.

Jennifer was mummified, they
wrapped this white bandage tape

all round her head,

leaving an opening for her
nose so she could breathe.

And then a leash was put around her neck
so that she couldn't run off on her PO,

personal overseer.

I drew a picture of that,
among a lot of other pictures.

It was tough being
there as a kid.

My best memories it seems were
when I was acting up with somebody else.

Just being silly, goofing on the
program or making silly wise cracks,

running around the room.

To my mind, it
was merely playing,

but to the
directors it was anarchy,

and we had to be dealt with
swiftly and forcefully.

Joe, you make no bones about it.

There is corporal punishment
here at Elan. Tell us about it.

What are the stages it comes
in, who's it administered by?

Well, it's administered by the
kids first of all.

Corporal, it's a harsh term.

Do you remember Kim Freehill?

Kim was from a wealthy
family in Long Island.

After she had only
been there a month,

she had lice, and I think that
episode really hit her hard.

All the females, we had to wash
all our clothes,

put the pillows in plastic bags,
and everybody had to get Kwelled again,

and I'm sure it was mortifying for her.

And after that she just
started kind of unraveling.

So then they gave her a GM

because she was
starting to act a little nuts.

Like mental patient issues,

and during that GM she just let
go and peed on the floor.

So they took her and threw her in a
cold shower with all her clothes on,

and then
brought her back dripping wet

to stand in front
of the house again.

But she wasn't cooperating

because she was in the middle of
a nervous breakdown.

So they spanked her.

It's one resident spanking another resident,
and it's done with a ping-pong paddle.

For the first two years that I was
there, they would spank with a clipboard.

Clipboards, hands,

anything here.

Usually a person won't get
spanked more than once or twice.

Usually when they use a paddle

they may have four or five
people spank a person

like three to five times each.

They'd have the students lined up,
five or six of them,

and they would each have to take
a turn at paddling the wrongdoer.

So she was being spanked

repeatedly in wet pants.

When they spanked me they
didn't have to spank me so I turned

black and blue, simple as that.

And that was just one time after
another. I was so sore I couldn't sit down.

Kim had scabs

that had to be three quarters
of an inch thick on her rear

from being paddled.

Oh yes, it was painful.

I had to learn fast
to hold back my tears,

because I thought, I'm
not going to give them that.

I won't look weak in front of
them. Better to look angry.

I would cop an attitude instead,
even if that got me in more trouble,

it was better than
giving them my tears.

They thought I needed it because I
supposedly was a terribly big baby.

If you're going to act like a baby,
you should be treated like a baby.

So after hours and hours of this
GM, which was horrific,

horrific GM, she was just gone.

Just catatonic.

There's no federal
regulation on these places,

and the state regulations are
very weak.

Nail salons are more regulated
than guys

who come and kidnap your
kid at 2:00 in the morning.

The treatment we saw
called for isolation.

And that they're more
regulated than facilities

that lock up kids and are
allowed to physically punish them.

They couldn't talk
to each other.

We have had a completely
dysfunctional congress for a long time now,

and there has been regulation
that has passed the house twice,

but has never
really gone anywhere.

So the chances of getting
regulation

through this congress
are pretty low.

I tried to kill myself there.

My biggest punishment was they
put me in a corner.

See, I love to talk,
I really don't have a problem talking, so

I had to sit in the corner.

Everybody's doing whatever
they got to do all around me.

This is in Waterford,
and I'll never forget,

because I got the scar right
here on my finger.

I had a piece of chicken and I
made an X on my finger.

I was trying to kill myself.

I was in the corner
only a few times.

Each stay was between
three to five days,

which I understand is not an
extremely long time.

It's exactly what it
sounds like.

Like when you're a child and mom
or dad says, "Go stand in the corner."

You go stand in the corner, face
against the wall.

And you stand, and you stand,
and you stand until you cannot stand.

And then you sit.

But it was worse
than that for sure.

It's not just like facing... it's not like
five-minute fucking like turnaround.

You were fucking in
there forever.

You talked about
Donovan earlier,

dude they shut him away for I think
like four months straight one time.

I've seen people that had been
in the corner for six months.

Oh my God, I literally would
stare at a spot on the wall

until it would just fuzz
out on you.

You could count the holes
in the wall,

the nooks and cranny,
the dots on the curtain.

You were eating standing there,
you were sleeping in the corner.

They would bring a mattress,
you would sleep right there.

And as soon as the sun came out,
you'd go back and face the corner.

You're going to do that for week,
after week, after week

until you've been good for days, and
then they decide they want to let you out.

Yo, I'd rather take an ass
whooping than sit there.

That is just my opinion because
I mean, wow, that's torture.

And then the poor person that had
to sit there and watch you was another kid,

which was like
your support person.

And that was the only person
you were allowed to talk to.

I had this imaginary friend when I
was in the corner too, her name was Emily.

She was a colonial girl a few
years younger than me.

But even her
presence didn't help

when people were allowed to come
up and swear at me.

They were given open swearing
privileges directed at Mary O'Brien.

Anybody who wanted could come up to me
while I was in the corner and cuss me out.

Tell me how ugly, stupid and fat I was,
and how I was a loser,

how I made them sick.

It was so humiliating that I used to make
her go away while they were doing that,

because I didn't want her to hear
me being called all those names.

Duck in a Raincoat
is full of scandal.

News Center's Sharon
Randall tells us about it.

The book begins in Port Chester,
New York, where Ricci grew up,

and takes the reader down the
sometimes bumpy road of Ricci's life.

The opening of Elan,
his lucrative drug treatment center.

The mysterious fire that destroyed
the clubhouse at Scarborough Downs,

a failed run for the 1986
Democratic nomination for governor,

and of course the famous
lawsuit against KeyBank.

When you first meet
Joe and you're a street kid like me,

and let's make no mistake, I
grew up on the street.

I hung out in Providence,
and I hung out in Cranston, and it was...

Anyway, there were a lot of
Italians yadda yadda yadda.

So Joe, there's no mistaking who
he is and what he is.

He was cool, he was confident.

He always had a lot of money.

- He had a Rolls Royce.
- He was eccentric.

- He had a mink coat.
- He was extremely grandiose.

If he walked in the room you'd
want to stand up to greet him.

- He was the man.
- He ruled everything.

And so he was Italian.

KeyBank had cut off
Ricci's line of credit

because of rumors he
had ties to organized crime.

Ricci sued, and a federal jury
awarded him 15 million dollars.

Well, in my simplicity,

I looked up to that.

Joe was my idol. I wanted
to be like Joe.

And he bought into me,

and I bought into him,
like he did with a lot of other people.

Kind of took me under his wing,
buys you a lot of stuff.

He bought me all my clothes, he
bought me my first car.

For Christ's sake, he
owned the house I lived in.

So I was bought and paid for
pretty much.

He got his
major judgment based on

the fact that his civil
rights were violated.

Yet throughout the book there
are accounts of many times

that other people's
civil rights were violated

by his treatments
center for troubled adolescents.

And that's part of the story
that Curley contends the media missed.

You'd want to please him,
basically for your own survival.

- He was mean.
- He was paranoid.

He'd make
you feel like dirt.

He was very concerned
about his own image,

and his importance.

If you threatened his power,

he could be quite unfair with
the retaliation.

If he wants to act like a criminal,
he'll be treated like a criminal.

It's that basic.

I had no really dealings of him, then a
few times he ran the general meetings.

And when he ran the general meeting,
they stomped the shit out of you.

You got the worst of the worst.

Duck in a Raincoat is
packed with personal accounts

of brutality
and intimidation at Elan,

Ricci's drug treatment center
for young people in Poland Spring.

But in 1971, state investigation found
no evidence to support such claims.

If Joe is so bad and so dirty,

why hasn't anybody been able to
make anything stick to him?

Because he's very good
at what he does.

What he does according to Curley
is cover his tracks and dupe the media.

He has money, which certainly makes people
credible in the United States of America,

but how he made that money,

is some of the things that are
questioned in this book.

It sounds like the
founder of Elan was a sociopath,

and there's evidence that sociopaths
rise in these places very easily.

There was a study done of using the
Synanon kind of method on sociopaths,

and they
found that it made them worse

because basically it told them
that hurting people,

which they enjoy doing,
is good.

So it basically trained
people to be better sociopaths,

which is kind of scary when you think about
the kids that are sent to these places.

And Elan was definitely among
the worst that I have heard of.

I think the difference is the
level of violence.

Elan explicitly used the ring.

We have the ring, which
everybody misinterprets.

It's not a boxing ring, it's a
ring of human people.

Elan's boxing ring was
used as a last resort therapeutic tool.

I once heard a staff member
refer to it as an exercise in futility.

Pretty much to prove that
violence will get you nowhere.

The ring was used for bullies.

If you went in the ring, it's because
you physically threatened somebody.

Any kind of violent action
resulted in the ring.

It occurs within a
general meeting.

They have, let's say 10
students,

15 students form a circle.

You would literally form a
human circle around someone.

And the bully is introduced as
what he is.

In this corner is the bully

who's trying to turn this
facility into a detention center.

I got put in the boxing
ring a number of times.

I was in the ring for the good,
fighting the perpetrator.

And in this corner is
the house champion

who's going to show him why it
can't be done.

They would put you in the boxing ring with
somebody who was sure to kick your ass.

You're supposed to be fighting
for the house.

Truth, justice, the Elan way.

You put a pair of gloves on, and the
other person put a pair of gloves on.

The director goes ding.

And may the best man win.

And you never won.

We never allowed
the bully to win.

You might win one or two rounds.

No, I didn't even try. I
just went down like this.

You might beat this person, you
might beat that person,

but they
keep coming, they keep coming.

They keep sending a fresh
person.

And when that person got tired,
they would send somebody else in.

You were boxing with six,
seven fresh people.

So if you actually fought,
you'd really get beat up.

It was sort of you could
say a kill situation.

Violence is ultimately futile in
the real world.

Even if you do win a fight,
there's always someone bigger than you.

There's always a cop there to
arrest you for assault.

No good is really
going to come of being violent.

I'd always heard
before I'd seen one

that the only people
who get rings are those

who actually are violent
and lash out at others.

But I saw people get rings

who did nothing other than sit in
the corner and refuse to respond.

And they used the ring almost as if
to try to shock them into responding,

to wake them up.

I was an expediter,

and I was stationed at the
kitchen door POing the shot downs

who were washing dishes and
scrubbing the floor.

And one resident put on his
coat to take the garbage out,

and I forgot he went out there and shut
the door behind him, and he ran away.

So I was shot down for that.

And for me,
I felt terribly guilty

because if I had been
doing my job,

he wouldn't have run away and
come back and be brutalized,

be brutalized.

- Who is this?
- This is Michael Skakel.

Do you want anyone at Elan to
know you were related to the Kennedys?

Absolutely not.

They gave him a general meeting.

He was being confronted as to
whether he murdered some girl,

and he kept saying,
"No, no, no."

He was put in the ring,
they broke his nose,

and he kept
saying, "No, no, no,"

and then would get beat again
until he submitted

and said he didn't
know if he had done it or not.

Just to say this first.

So much stuff

that you could never imagine,

that you couldn't line
it up in your brain,

happened so fast.

Everybody was genuinely
scared

of what the next 10
minutes would bring.

You know from the electric sauce
to the rings to the spanking to the GMs

where they're slamming you
against the wall and then the haircuts.

And you never knew who it
was going to happen to. It could be you.

And it was
going to happen to you.

There was no way
to prevent it.

You could be as good as
possible,

and then they would deal with
you for being a goody two shoes.

Just constant violence is the
way I look back on it.

General fucking meeting!

You can't get no lower than watching a
person, snot's coming out of their nose.

Stand right there!

People were yelled at right out in
the open, right where they stood.

They're throwing up.

70% of my time I was
being yelled at.

They pissed and shitted
on themselves.

You were basically
therapeutically killed.

-They're bleeding from the mouth.
-It was a fucking nightmare.

Then you take the person,

they throw all that stinking
nasty ass electric sauce on them.

They put cigarette butts
in it, leftover food.

God, I watched people
going to the toilet one time

to pull out water from
the toilet.

They roll him around in there.

They would dump my food on me.

Pick the person up.

Thrown at me.

Slam them up against the wall.

Throw somebody against one wall.

And they would
kick your ass.

Run over and slam them
against this wall.

Pshhht! Blood everywhere.

All the while screaming at them.

And the only sound that you could
hear was the person screaming for his life.

I mean, so fucking noisy.

It's insanity.

Everybody runs up there.

Screaming, swear at you.

I'm 16 years old, I have to
deal with fucking mental patients.

Breaking light bulbs and
cutting themselves.

Kids drinking fucking bleach to
get fucked up so they can get out of here.

- Students can't escape here.
- They would break you down.

Throw you back in that
same shit all over again.

You would sit in the
corner. Stand in the corner.

Your clothes rip off.

And they'll have general meetings
where you'll get spit on every day.

Slam you against the wall.

Now if that is robbing
him of his dignity.

- And that's all you would do.
- And robbing him of his freedom.

- And repeated a couple of times.
- Then yes I'm guilty of it.

-You give.
-I'm going to hurt anybody you want me to.

You stop.

You still think it's worth it?

There was some real life
bullshit and turmoil.

There's no way that, that can
get sugarcoated at all.

It wasn't every day.

It was like three quarters of
the fucking existence,

there was outrageousness

and 15-year-olds should not be
hog-tying and zip-tying 17-year-old kids.

Anybody could know that.

Dominic should not have had to
break two people's arms

to get attention,
you know what I mean?

Like throwing chairs into walls and shit.

And if you are a normal
person with enough self-control,

I remember one thing
I always did.

I was like, "I will not act out,
I will not do that,

because as bad as this sucks,
and as bad as it is whatever."

I was like, "These kids are
just doing their fucking job

because they want to
get out of here."

When I was making this film,
a lot of people asked me did Elan help me?

And I don't really have
an answer to that question.

Maybe it did, I don't know.

Maybe that's why I'm sitting
in front of this camera.

What I do know though is that
amongst all the day-to-day chaos,

and the day-to-day grind,

there were some truly
caring people there that

really just wanted
to see the best for us.

I thought you were a shy kid,

and I thought that you are
willing...

you expect the world
to change around you.

And you really
didn't like anything.

You weren't into anything, you
just sat.

And you really
didn't like yourself,

and I think that you
were so lonely

that you probably would have committed
suicide if you didn't get some help.

I was lonely, I was depressed.

I was drinking a bottle of cough
syrup probably every day to get high.

I didn't really want to be
in reality,

because reality was that my
parents were getting divorced.

College was on its
way, life was changing a lot

and I didn't really want to deal
with all that.

I didn't grow up in a situation where
my parents put responsibility on me.

And in a way Elan taught me a lot of the
things I didn't let my parents teach me.

Self-discipline,
honesty, integrity,

getting in touch
with your feelings.

I always just blocked
them out.

But I thought that you're nice, and I
thought that, "We'll figure something out.

We'll find something that he enjoys,
and we'll build on that."

What'd you think of me?

I thought she was kidding when
she said her name was Missy E,

I thought she was making a joke about
Missy Elliott, but she was really funny.

I thought I would
like her, and I did.

What did George Bush get
on his SATs? Drool.

I was honest and funny, and I was
straightforward. I call it like I see it.

Where are you going, Ben?

The bathroom's always a
mess, . All right?

Did you hear me ask
you a question, Ben?

Did you hear
me ask you a question?

Yeah. I said.

What'd you ask me?

Do you have to use the bathroom,
is that what you said?

Then find a seat.

Why don't you grab your?

I'm not really afraid. That's
why I'm doing this interview.

I really am not afraid.

I do care, that's why I stayed
there for 20 years.

I was invested,
and I would bring it,

and I would bring individual
attention.

I paid attention. My technique is
if you talked to me, then I listened.

If you bother to write
something, I read it.

And then if I found something
that we had in common,

I would sit there and bring it
up so we could relate.

And then maybe develop some
trust at some point.

Whether it would be you tell
me one of your biggest secrets

that you never want to
tell anybody.

Were you ever able to
confront your dad about what he did?

At the end when they
realized that my mom had caught on,

that I'd already graduated high school,

and that I wasn't supposed to be there
anymore, she was going to pull me out.

And that's when I was like, listen, this is
going to be my last chance to speak to him

with people here to help me out
if this doesn't go well.

And so they gave me the phone
call and Missy came with me.

I called him, he's from Chile,
and I called him there.

I just asked him why.

I just asked him
why he lied about me

because he told my mother that I
was a drug addict and I was a liar,

and that I was
just making things up.

He was just like, "Why would you
say that about me?

You know how much I love you.
Why would I R-A-P-E-D you?"

He wouldn't say it out loud, he would
just spell it out, it was very strange.

And he just pretended to be
innocent like he always did.

At that point I just realized,
I was like,

"Listen,
have a good life." And I just hung up,

and I've never spoken
to him or seen him since.

How does that feel?

Great. That I was
able to walk out of there

not bawling my eyes
out like he had hurt me.

It was over and I felt better about it.

I enjoyed some of the
stuff there that went on.

As far as rings and general meetings, they
were never fun, you know what I'm saying?

But I think putting things in labels
like wrong, right, good and bad is unfair.

Yeah, the ring was wrong,
but I was always out a group.

Some of the people, all those
people for how horrible,

they got to release a lot of
pain too in those rooms,

with a trusted group dealing
with really private issues.

That's something many kids never got to do,

and many people
will never get to do.

And so I think that some of it
was so brilliant it was ridiculous.

My first director didn't believe
in the ring, spanking, costumed.

His thing was if it got to a
point,

he brought you up to his
office, he sat you down.

You could talk for an hour,

or you could go into his
office at seven o'clock at night,

not get out of there until
seven o'clock in the morning.

So he talked to you.

Oh, Mr. Friedman talked to you,
but you wanted to listen.

About two weeks before I left

I was in a special group with my
sister who was in Elan VII,

and my sister told me that she thought
I'd be successful in the outside world.

And I said,
"Well, successful how?

Go through a hard time maybe
smoke some pot and come out of it?"

And I got asked by Kate Hawkins, the
social worker there, "Is that an option?"

And I didn't say anything.

So clearly it was an option for
me to go out there and smoke a

little pot and come out of it.

And she said to me, "Pete,
you better not pick up a joint out there.

Some people can handle
it, you can't.

I'd like to also remind you that
alcoholism is a progressive disease,

you pick up where you left off."

Now, I hadn't heard that since AA
meetings about three years earlier.

So when I heard that it just
brought me back, and I was like,

"Okay,
that option's off the table."

And I've been sober since the
day I left.

God willing all of
21 years in October.

A diploma in recognition of the
growth that she's achieved--

There's no doubt that
Elan had a role

in changing a lot of people's
lives for the better.

It would be unfair for me to say
it didn't.

But in the end,
when you look at the bigger picture,

the damage that Elan caused far
outweighs the good.

Elan claims its graduates are
now leading happy productive lives.

That they're staying in school,
going to college and working.

The drug use is way down, and
criminal involvement cut by more than half.

It claims that two thirds of all its former
residents are now leading productive lives.

That figure has not been
scientifically verified.

But parents of some former
residents dispute these claims.

When Rhode Island parents complained,
the state investigated,

and found that of a 117 former
Elan residents from that state,

70 had been arrested,

and that one is serving a life
sentence for murder in South Carolina.

There is absolutely no
evidence that this does anything other

than produce post-traumatic
stress disorder, depression

and in some cases a brief period
of compliance.

A lot of people will
tell you it worked for me.

I can't say that 12-step
program saved my life

because that's what happened to help
when I ended up getting into recovery.

I mean I can say that,
but the reality is that I don't know that.

That's an anecdote.

And even if it's my anecdote and I believe
it very strongly, it's still an anecdote.

And if we're going to say that addiction
and mental illnesses are diseases,

then we have to have medical
standards of evidence.

And by the medical standards of
evidence,

there is no data that suggests
that this helps people,

and there are lots of things
suggesting that it does them.

I got out right when my
class was graduating.

So, it was like being a rock star
for a month, because you're out,

you hit every grad party, and
you got out of like...

People were like, "We thought you
were dead, we thought you were in jail,

we thought you were whatever." Like
this incredible high for a month-and-a-half

and then it's just like boom.

Because then you've got to start to
figure out how to do things like an adult,

or what the real world is,
and everything like that.

And then you get up there and
I'm like, "Oh fuck, dude,

I don't have a clue what the
fuck I'm doing."

I didn't know what I was doing
with anything.

I started going to school, I
didn't know a God damn thing.

I didn't know a God
damn thing.

I didn't know how to fucking sit
in a real class, real homework,

real work, real everything. I don't
have a fucking clue dude, I didn't care.

Started seeing one of my best friends
when I came home from childhood,

he was all fucked up
when I got back.

He was down with oxys,
and I remember I never understood it

because I never did anything
other than really drink or smoke,

so I didn't understand what
shit was. And he was just like--

Why don't you try it?

Did that and then I've been on
like an off and on like...

Five years, I've been on an off
and on five-year drug bender.

I'm at rock right now.

I'm at rock.

You got me at a great time.

I went basically from Elan to
college,

which was totally fucked up for
me because I had no social skills.

The education was minimal,

and basically when I went to
school all I wanted to do

was do everything that I
wasn't allowed to do at Elan.

I partied, I sold drugs, I did
drugs and went to concerts.

And I did everything that I felt I
lost out on when I was a teenager,

I made up for like
tenfold when I left Elan.

And then I got into
heroin and I loved it.

I ended
up doing it for like 20 years.

It was like the love affair,
just started,

and it was like an every day,
every time I could get it thing.

And then that started me off stripping
because I realized how easy the money was.

So that's what I did for 10
years probably.

And I felt guilty
about things I was doing,

but the fact that I felt guilty about
it didn't stop me from doing them.

It just made me more miserable.

It just made me want
to get high more,

and made me want to do whatever
I could do to get away

from the way that I was made to
feel about myself while I was there.

Because I was really made to
feel like I was

the biggest piece of shit on the
face of the Earth,

and I was always just going to
be good for nothing.

And that was really what Elan
instilled about me to myself.

I was into some
very dangerous stuff,

and there's a distinct possibility that
if I didn't go to Elan I could have died.

There's also the possibility that I could
have straightened myself out, I don't know.

But the way that Elan

had taught
me how to live my life

worked.

I didn't act off my feelings,
I didn't get my feelings get to me.

I went to college,
I met my wife, I had a family.

But all of a sudden,
I got to be about 33 years old,

which was maybe 15 years
after I had left Elan,

and all of a sudden I found
myself I couldn't deal with anything.

Something had changed inside me

that my feelings totally
overtook me.

I had missed my childhood,

and that bothered me because I
knew I could never get it back.

By the time I was 36 I was

shooting 25 bags
a day of heroin.

I think Elan
really fucked up my life.

I hear the negative screaming
at me in my head frequently,

and especially when I'm down or
I'm feeling insecure about...

instead of giving myself a pep talk,
those voices come in my head.

I can't say what would have
happened had I not gone there,

and maybe I have a little
bit of mental illness besides.

I think that's why most people
end up there.

They're acting out in some way,
but it really fucked me up.

One of the reasons that Elan

and these emotional growth
boarding school kind of places

caught on with parents is a lot of
parents wanted to avoid psychiatric labels,

and wanted to avoid
medications.

And so, they kind of figured,

if I send my kid to a
place for bad kids,

it's better than sending
them to a place for sick kids.

And they didn't realize how
weird that actually is.

These places sort of show that
there's still an enormous stigma

on mental
illness and addiction,

and we see teenagers

as diseased just for being
teenagers.

After Elan I was sent
to Perkins School for the Blind,

which to me felt exactly like
leaving hell and going up to heaven.

I have a condition known as
coloboma .

My retinas and my irises
didn't form all the way at birth,

so I'm at the line between
legally blind and visually impaired.

Not only was the campus so
beautiful like I'd never seen before,

but the attitude there among
people was so much different.

People were more patient and
understanding,

you didn't have
people screaming at each other.

See, I was already messed up when I
went to Elan, so Elan messed me up further.

I felt bad enough about myself
as it was,

but they made me feel
even worse about myself.

I left there
feeling like this big.

I've been
in counseling for years.

I go to the Providence Mental
Health Center.

I still draw pictures of people
that I like, and I make dolls of them.

I was
born with a vivid imagination.

It does help me.

They were trying to take
away my fantasy world

and everything connected
with it,

but they didn't have anything better to
offer me, so why would I have given it up?

When I left Elan, I did not
leave on good terms.

My parents would not allow me to
come home because I didn't graduate,

and I was hitchhiking around,
went to some Dead shows,

but I was
homeless for a couple years.

Actually just recently I had access
to my psychiatrist's recommendation

to send me to Elan,

and the recommendation
specifically stated

that I needed a warm psychotherapeutic
environment that was structured,

and that anything outside of those
would probably lead to me killing myself.

I didn't have a great life,

I was sexually abused, I was
physically abused.

I actually was recently
diagnosed with PTSD.

I suffer from severe
anxiety, I have night terrors,

and most of the time

I'm dreaming about Elan.

My husband wakes me up a lot
saying that I was screaming,

and I truly think that if it wasn't
for my husband's patience

and love and understanding

that I really think that doctor's
report probably would be true.

I probably would have killed
myself by now.

I'm intelligent enough

and I've seen enough in the world
to know that once you go to a needle,

the only thing after that is
death.

So I'm sitting there and I've got my bags
lined up, and I'm ready to do my ritual.

Because it's very ritualistic to prepare
your stuff and get everything set up.

The process is almost part of
the whole addiction,

but I'm thinking to myself

kid, you know better than this.

I threw away so many
opportunities,

a college education,
a chance to start over.

I didn't know how to handle being
social in a normal functional way,

because all I knew about being
social was what I'd learned through Elan.

So I struggle, my cousin takes
care of me

because I can't even go to the
grocery store

without worrying about being
caught in a loud place

or in a situation that I'm
around a lot of people.

My first
instinct is to shrink down.

I never had panic, I never had
anxiety before Elan.

I didn't understand what a
panic attack was until I got there,

and now I still have them 20 years later.

But I know for a fact

when I'm down shooting up the
syringe full of brown shit

that I'm
going to feel real nice.

When I escaped Elan,
I did it third time successful.

They let me out into the house,
they made me go scrub a dumpster,

and I popped out of the dumpster
and ran like hell.

So I went into the woods
where I met a guy named Sticks,

who was an old
shell-shocked Vietnam veteran.

And he lived out in the woods,
and everything

he made was built out
of sticks and stones.

I guess that's how he got his
name Sticks.

Anyway, he taught me the art of
living outside.

So I got pretty good at it, and for a
little over a year-and-a-half, two years,

something like that, I never
came out of the woods.

I just lived in the woods all
that time.

And I guess it turned out to
be a good thing because all that,

I ended up really learning the
art of survival.

And now that's what I do up
north is I teach wilderness survival.

So to me it was quite the
learning experience,

and I've learned many things
since then

because I've just
constantly been on the run.

Elan being the last place I ran from.

One of the times I was on the run,
we stole this kid's mother's car.

When I came back the
sheriff's in the house saying,

"You're fucking leaving,
and there you go straight to jail."

And ended up being sentenced to two years,
which sucked,

but I learned my lesson that I
wasn't doing that again.

Because as a juvenile I did all
kinds of stupid retarded ridiculous shit.

Once they put me in jail I realized
that I liked to go to the refrigerator

and get a coke when I want.

I liked pussy,
there was no pussy in jail,

and then nobody's chasing me
anymore.

Now I'm 18, nobody's trying to
tell me what to do.

So once people stopped trying to tell me
what to do, I didn't have anywhere to go,

it was on me.

So once they stopped chasing,
I didn't have to run anymore.

I was there to be punished,
I was there to do five years.

When my five years was up
I was gone.

Elan didn't hurt me with
words and things like that.

Those have
no bearing on my life,

because as far as I was
concerned I had no home.

I was already being abused,
I was already in the street.

You wasn't hurting me because I
couldn't make a phone call,

I had nobody to call.

It didn't hurt me because
Christmas I didn't get no present.

I had nobody to give me a
present anyway.

I had no one to say
Merry Christmas to anyways.

So it didn't hurt me along those
lines, it caught me other ways.

It caught me because I got
no education.

I didn't learn
anything along those lines.

It didn't prepare me for
the day when I turned 18

and they sent me to
music schoolup in New York.

I was in a school,
I couldn't read the books.

What was I going to do?

I started drinking,
I got arrested a couple times.

They sent me to ,

but the next thing you know
I started committing assault,

I started robbing people.

You do what you have to do to
make it.

My stomach growled,
I see somebody walk down the street,

you do what you've got to do,
that's dinner.

It's nothing to be proud of or
anything like that,

a grown ass man has to rob
somebody just to eat.

But that's what I did.

I'm glad I worked at Elan.

I'm glad I met you all.

It's like you were my children,
but I'm not happy with...

I'm sad that other
people didn't get

what everybody else could have
gotten and whatever else.

And I'm sad if they felt like they were
abused or whatever else, for them.

But I'm still going to
go to sleep tonight.

I can't remember exactly
how I found out about Elan.

I probably read an article
about the Michael Skakel case.

Throughout the '80s and '90s
Elan had gone through many changes.

Due to ongoing pressure
from social services

and modern age views on mental
health treatment,

many of the humiliation tactics such as
costumes and spankings were dropped.

By 2001, Elan no
longer used the ring.

However, it really wasn't
until the Michael Skakel trial

that Elan's violent past
came back to haunt it.

I got to do an op-ed for
theNew York Times a few years ago,

and I called up the New York
State Department of Education

and was horrified to
discover that they were

sending some learning
disabled kids to Elan.

The state went in and did an
investigation,

and that's when New York said,
"We're not sending any more kids."

What was interesting
about that was Maine

had been doing investigations for
years and never finding anything.

New York in its first investigation
found kids restraining other kids,

sleep deprivation, attack therapy,
they found all kinds of bad stuff.

Why? Because Maine always
announced when it was coming in advance,

and New York just went in.

And I think it's pathetic that
the State of Main for decades

announced when it was
going to investigate a

place that was known
to be abusing children.

However, in the end there
was a greater force

that brought about the
end of Elan's 40-year reign.

Elan wasn't closed
because of laws

or because it broke any
specific state regulation

or violated any codes.

They were closed because they
were hit in the wallet.

The internet closed Elan down.

In the beginning I was
like I'll just be me,

but people started
coming out of nowhere

and sending me death threats.

These people may just
have a vendetta against,

"Oh, that's the guy who closed it?
That's the guy who made us go bankrupt?"

So when I started my crusade
against Elan,

it was maybe 10 years after I
got out, and I just thought,

"I'll just make a blog
about it."

But at the time that really
wasn't enough.

I went on this website my
friend showed me.

He said, "Check out this
website, it's called Reddit."

And I made a post,
and I already had a long bullet point list.

I was very excited, I hit submit,
and let me tell you it went totally viral.

It had 5000 upvotes, it was on
front page.

It had thousands of comments.

Maybe 10-15,000 comments.

I can also remember very vividly the first
comments, and it was some guy who wrote,

"You know,
I didn't believe this when I first read it,

but then I went on Google
and I typed in the Elan School,

and I can't believe what I'm
reading." That was it.

Once this Reddit community
got a hold of it,

which is like hundreds of thousands
of people, it just spread like a virus.

It went all over the internet.

We had all said to each other on many,
many occasions as residents in the house.

If we could all get together
and make somebody listen to us.

But we didn't have
social networking,

we didn't have emails,

we didn't have the internet,
we didn't have all these things.

But now with the internet

and parents who are considering
sending their kids there,

they're going online and
googling Elan

and seeing all these former residents
who have nothing good to say about it,

or most of them don't have
anything good to say about the place.

And that was it. That was it for Elan,
and a lot of other alumni helped me.

People insisted on being heard,

and people wanted their story told,
and people wanted a sense of justice.

So in effect we shut them down.

But again, I wish I had
happened years sooner.

So looking back, would you
have left Elan when you had the chance?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would have.

Yeah, with what I know now,
yeah I would have ran as far as I could.

The people who have been to
Elan have been through a very personal war.

They by and large are truly some of
the boldest individuals you will ever meet.

Going through hell and getting spat back
out will definitely teach you some shit.

The way I look at it anything that doesn't
fucking kill you makes you stronger.

You know, as the name you have
now, The Last Stop,

minus jail, it really kind of
was the last stop for me.

I mean,
they wanted to force change.

Sometimes change isn't easy.

And to this day

I believe Elan was the best and
worst thing that happened to me.

This is a book that I published.

It did help me a lot writing about
all of the things that happened,

getting it off my chest, and I
designed the picture for the front cover.

It's like an institutional setting
with me sitting there daydreaming

about a man
who I wish was my father.

That was the way I sometimes was
amid the chaos.

Sitting there with the
sketchbook and the crayons.

And then on other occasions I
was a part of the chaos.

I grew up,
I wanted to be a thug,

I wanted to be a gangster
because that's all I knew.

But then I might watch TV, I watched
the Hallmark channel, want to cry.

Be like, "Wow,
this is the perfect family.

What the fuck happened to me? I
wish I had that."

But it's not
going to happen.

I've definitely spoken to my
family about Elan.

On a smaller
scale though with my family

because a lot of them wouldn't understand
exactly why I got sent there to begin with.

They don't know about my father
and the stuff that he had done to me,

so they wouldn't really
get why it all happened.

But with my friends I feel very open
about talking about everything with Elan,

because we have something to
talk about,

we can all relate on such
specific things.

It's fun and it's funny, but I would say
the relationship that I formed with Jessica,

I would say the same as some of the
best friends I've had since childhood.

I still think about Elan.

I think about the friends I had there,
if they're still around or not.

I know most of them ain't.

It kills me because I know that
there's other kids.

I just know there's other kids that left
out of there and felt the same way I did,

and they didn't get a chance to
find out what I know now.

I don't know why I was spared,
I don't know why I'm still alive today.

By all means, I should not even
be sitting here.

I just know so many kids
killed themselves

and died of overdoses.

And I don't care, we have problems,
but we were kids,

you know what I mean? And they
took everything.

They took
everything away from you.

The people at Elan VI,
I would like to say I'm sorry

if I hurt them.

I was doing what I was told.

I was doing what I felt I had to
do to get out of there.

It was not a personal
thing against them.

If I hurt
somebody, I'm sorry,

and I hope that they can find it
in their heart to forgive me.

Well, I'm hoping that there will
not be any more troubled teen industry.

There's always been this
sort of thread since Sparta

where we can make tough people
by putting them through tough things.

But that doesn't mean that we
should traumatize people.

I think that everybody wants
to be heard, especially teenagers,

but they also need to hear.

Anything
else you'd like to say?

That's probably all
I'd have to say about that.