Troubled Teen Industry Targets Adopted Kids

0:00An Associated Press investigation reveals the trouble teen industry, those four profit boarding schools and treatment centers, is now targeting. Adopted kids big time. While adoptees makeup just 2% of American children, experts estimate they feel 25 to 40% of spots in residential programs. These places charge up to $20,000 a month, promising to fix attachment issues from adoption. Many market treatments for reactive attachment disorder, or rad, claiming it causes bad behavior and adopted teens. But psychologists say, rad is super rare, meant only for kids under 5 who are severely neglected as babies. Facilities push this label on older kids with normal struggles like depression or anxiety, then use tough obedience therapies that experts call. Useless or harmful. Survivors describe feeling like prisoners with strip searches, restraints, forced labor, and limited contact with parents. Kids as young as 9 face violence, self-harm, or worse inside.

1:01Adoptive families send them hoping for healing, but many come out more broken, some never leave. Recent deaths have shut down spots like trails Carolina after a 12 year old boy suffocated and actual academy following two teen suicides. Family, help, and wellness, which runs over a dozen facilities, faces lawsuits over alleged rapes, grooming, and brutal punishments. Private equity fuels the growth, chasing profits with taxpayer money and minimal rules. Meanwhile, states find places like Discovery Ranch after a 17 year old adoptee hanged himself there last year, yet they reopened fast. Lawmakers are probing these warehouses of neglect, pushing for tighter oversight to protect vulnerable kids from this cash machine. That's your update from Durham News Today, powered by AI.