Trails Carolina Petition Reaches 1,000 Signatures
But the State's Dept. of Health and Human Services Remains Undecided On Program's License
This report discusses child sexual abuse. If you or someone you know is unsure whether to file an abuse report or just need support, contact the National Children's Alliance at www.nca-online.org or 1-800-239-9950.
NORTH CAROLINA–A petition to Governor Roy Cooper and the state’s Department of Health and Human Services has collected 1,000 signatures at this link here to close Trails Carolina, a “troubled-teen-industry” youth wilderness program in Lake Toxaway. Two children have died at Trails Carolina, the most recent a 12-year-old boy in February. Others allege sexual abuses and violations of the state’s mandated-child-abuse-reporting law.
Such events and allegations are nothing new in the U.S. “troubled-teen industry.” In 2007–08, for example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) probed the industry nationwide. According to Greg Kutz, then the G.A.O.’s managing director of forensic audits and special investigations, the G.A.O. found “torture and abuse of youth across the United States.”
Nevertheless, Governor Cooper’s administration is yet to make a final determination as to whether Trails Carolina may stay open. Thus far the state has pulled all children from the program, fined it $18,000, suspended its admissions and moved to revoke its license. Trails Carolina has appealed.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services told MartyG Reports last week that it had “no timeline” to decide that appeal. After the public reacted to that lack of a timeline, the department told other outlets it expected to resolve the matter “in the coming weeks.” Thus far no decision has come.
Today MartyG Reports spoke with the petition’s author, Max Rosenberg, and others about the thousand-signatures milestone. Governor Cooper’s Communications Director Sadie Weiner did not answer an email for comment sent five hours before publication. (If the governor’s office later responds, MartyG Reports will update this page.) Rosenberg tells MartyG Reports he is yet to hear from the governor’s office, but that media are showing interest in the petition.
Rosenberg’s connection to the petition “is very personal,” Rosenberg told MartyG Reports. “I am a survivor of wilderness therapy (Second Nature Duchesne in Utah) and know firsthand the torment that goes through a child's mind when they are separated from their family and friends and placed in the extremely unfamiliar and judgmental environment of a wilderness program.”
“It feels great to know that so many are becoming aware and also want to make their voices heard on the matter,” Rosenberg said when asked how it felt to reach a thousand signatures. “It makes me feel a little less alone. That loneliness is something that many [troubled-teen-industry] survivors feel, and I also wish to stand with them and let them know that together we are a force to be reckoned with.”
Christina Barnett agrees. Barnett recounted medical neglect at Trails Carolina and a sexual-abuse coverup in a wide-ranging interview last week that has since received social-media support across the partisan spectrum. Ryan Grim retweeted Barnett’s interview and Michelle Malkin liked the interview on Facebook. Grim is The Intercept’s Washington, D.C. bureau chief, a contributor at The Young Turks, a former MSNBC contributor and HuffPost’s former Washington, D.C. bureau chief. Malkin is a syndicated conservative columnist and former Fox News commentator. Today MartyG Reports asked Barnett how it felt to know her interview was widely read and that a thousand persons have signed the petition to close Trails Carolina. Barnett told MartyG Reports:
It’s absolutely amazing that so many people from different backgrounds have chosen to stand up for the voiceless children being sent to Trails Carolina and similar programs. Being sent to these programs leaves most, if not all, of us feeling discarded—as if we don’t matter. These programs are built around strategies like dehumanizing the children placed in them. So receiving so much public support means a lot to me and hopefully also to the other survivors who’ve seen that public support.
These programs also try to silence us, as most abusers do with their victims. So it’s been really difficult having such personal information about such a painful and traumatic experience available to the public. But I know it’s worth it, despite also being terrified to speak out against them. They must be stopped, not just to prevent them from killing more children, but to prevent them from abusing any more children, on any level, lethal or not.
The mood among the petition’s signatories, according to Rosenberg, is similar:
People are understandably very emotional, but also motivated to make a change, especially when it comes to Trails Carolina. Trails has now overseen the deaths of two beautiful and brilliant children who had tons of potential. People are obviously upset and disgusted that Trails thinks it's justified for them to seek an appeal of their license revocation after all that has transpired.
MartyG Reports also spoke with Chelsea Maldonado, a lived-experience advocate and researcher. At 17, Maldonado was sent to the now-defunct Tranquility Bay facility in Jamaica, part of what was the Worldwide Association of Schools and Programs. After the most recent death at Trails Carolina, Maldonado helped draft an open letter to the international adventure therapy community, publicly declaring that the industry’s wilderness practices “are contrary to the purpose of mental health care, and the mission and vision of [voluntary] adventure and outdoor therapies.” Maldonado told MartyG Reports: “It is incredible to see the survivor community’s ability to organize and impact change continue to grow. […] It finally feels like people are listening, including people in positions of power and even people within the industry itself. The time is right for reform.”
For insight on one underreported aspect of the Trails Carolina situation, MartyG Reports spoke with Emma Lehman, the producer of the Webby- and Shorty-award-nominated podcast Gooned. Lehman specifically explored the industry’s forced teen-transportation practices, which some call “legal kidnapping” or “gooning.” Under this practice, parents pay a private company to send a team to take their child, often by surprise and by force in the middle of the night, to an industry program. Lehman’s Gooned podcast is available at this link here.
“Gooning” is directly relevant to Trails Carolina: According to the Transylvania County, N.C. Sheriff’s Department, the 12-year-old boy who most recently died at Trails Carolina had been “transported per parents by two men” from his home state of New York.
MartyG Reports asked Lehman how the use of private paid transport reflects on the likely therapeutic value of programs, such as Trails Carolina, that are complicit with the teen-transport industry. Lehman told MartyG Reports:
The very fact that children are transported not only against their will, but often without their knowledge, at the beginning of a process intended to be therapeutic, speaks to the true motives behind this industry and the practice of “gooning.”
I'm a firm believer that interventions like therapy, psychiatry, mental health treatment, or rehabilitation for substance misuse and addiction are only as effective as the participant believes they can be—if one's introduction to a “therapeutic” program is forcible transport and opaque, if any, communication about the actual processes you'll be engaged in as part of your healing, how in the world does one “buy in”?
In cases where intervention is necessary (which is not always the case when a child is sent away), this introduction to an ostensibly therapeutic program is going to lead to that child’s shutting down out of fear, anxiety, confusion, alienation, and self-preservation. There is no room for that child to assess their own wellbeing, discuss options, or open communication with their support system about how they are feeling, what the root cause of the problem may be, and what next steps they and those who know them best believe would be effective.
MartyG Reports also asked Lehman what kinds of difficulties survivors face in coming forward to support a petition like the one to close Trails Carolina, and what it means to have the petition reach 1,000 signatures. Lehman told MartyG Reports:
One of the first interviews I ever conducted for Gooned was with a survivor in his mid 40s. We spoke for over an hour about his harrowing experiences, and during that hour he shared that he has been fortunate enough to heal to the extent that he's gotten married and started a family. I asked him at the end of our interview how he had first brought up the topic of the [troubled-teen industry] with his wife of many years. He paused, and then he said, “I kind of just lie. I don't think she would understand.”
This man, with a military career behind him, who had escaped his program nearly 40 years ago, who had a family and a fulfilling life, had (understandable!) trust issues so deep, had been so shamed, so silenced, and so stigmatized for so many years, that he felt he couldn't even share his experiences with his wife.
That particular part of the interview will stay with me for a long time. There is such a stigma associated with seeking treatment for mental illness, behavioral challenges or even just general support. Combine that with the shame placed on those in [troubled-teen industry] programs specifically, the fact that children and teenagers are so often written off as “bitter” or “troubled” and the fact that mental health and adolescent development are so poorly understood, and it's no wonder that survivors feel not only shame, but fear about coming forward.
I think another challenge with coming forward is that re-engaging with the trauma you faced can be extremely difficult, and not always productive. Many survivors have been so traumatized, and wish only to move forward with rebuilding their lives and healing that trauma, that reading about other deaths and abuses within the [troubled-teen industry] since they got out can re-traumatize them—especially those survivors who developed [post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.)] or [complex P.T.S.D.] as a result of what they went through. It is, of course, admirable and incredibly courageous to re-enter that space through activism, but for many survivors, especially recent survivors, it can be taxing and even detrimental to their healing journey.
It may seem like sticking your name on a petition, coming across a news blurb, or making a social media post are small acts, but it's important to keep in mind that to sign that petition, click on that blurb, or write out that post, survivors must not only remember their trauma and publicly identify themselves as having been sent away, but also sit with the knowledge that others have been put through what they suffered. That can be very, very heavy.
Trails Carolina has declined to provide specific comments in the past. Instead it provided a general statement on the most recent death:
We are still waiting for the medical examiner’s report on what may have caused the unexpected death of a 12-year-old boy on Feb. 3. Our hearts and prayers are with his family for this unfathomable loss. We have always had a good working relationship with [the Department of Health and Human Services] and we will continue cooperating with them to satisfy their concerns so that we may continue providing compassionate, quality care to children and families.
Trails Carolina also claims “100% of parents did not want their children to leave the program.”
Parents who choose to keep their children at Trails Carolina and similar programs were also on Barnett’s mind. She told MartyG Reports:
My heart goes out to the kids whose parents are aware of the deaths and still want their children at Trails Carolina, or any other troubled-teen-industry program. Trails Carolina is, of course, going to fight to stay open because it’s a business and wants to make money at the expense of these children. That stance won’t change, and no one should expect it to change. But the parents supporting it and other programs like it, the parents choosing to send their children to programs built around abuse, that have led to the deaths at Trails Carolina and other programs, should be more scrutinized because they’re the ones keeping the programs alive.
My parents knew about the innate cruelty within these programs before they sent me to Trails Carolina. They were O.K. with it, and even after the severe medical neglect I experienced at Trails Carolina, my parents didn’t consider for even a second that they should pull me from the program. Parents need to be seen as a more important part of why these programs remain in business. It is public knowledge that they’ve killed children, and parents still want their children there. I don’t expect Trails Carolina to close without being forced to close. It’s not realistic to expect it to do anything good for anyone. That’s never been a part of its business model.
The parents who continue to want their children in this abusive, deadly program are the ones who I hope change, or at least feel some public pressure to make better decisions to protect their children. They’re the ones keeping Trails Carolina from closing. If parents choose to protect their children from these abusers, the abusers will have no income to continue the abuse. Without the parents, there is no Trails Carolina.
The petition to close Trails Carolina is available at this link here.
MartyG Reports asked Rosenberg where the public may look for updates as the situation develops. Rosenberg directed MartyG Reports to the Keep Trails Carolina Closed Facebook page here and the Shutdown Trails Carolina Twitter account here.
MartyG Reports also asked Rosenberg what comes next for the community he has helped build if it succeeds in closing Trails Carolina.
“This is not just a singular incident,” Rosenberg wrote, referring to the wider “troubled-teen industry” and its wilderness programs. “This is part of a much bigger phenomenon and it has affected what I estimate to be over a million individuals. Many of them are no longer here to speak for themselves.”