Imagine: you’re a parent whose teenager is struggling. Maybe they’re navigating depression, substance use, trauma, or behavioral challenges. A trusted professional recommends a residential treatment program. A judge orders placement. Or someone tells you a wilderness program or therapeutic boarding school can help get your child “back on track.”
These programs are often presented as places where young people can heal. Some do provide important support.
But in recent years, survivors, journalists, attorneys, and policymakers have been raising serious concerns about abuse and exploitation within many of these programs. In some cases, they argue that what happened to young people may have met the legal definition of labor trafficking.
Human trafficking can take many forms. Labor trafficking happens when someone is compelled to work through force, fraud, or coercion. It can occur in industries like agriculture, domestic work, restaurants, and construction.
And according to a growing number of survivor accounts and civil lawsuits, labor trafficking can also occur in some residential programs for youth.
This is an emerging area of research and public awareness. Survivors are sharing their experiences. Lawsuits are moving through federal courts. Together, they are expanding our understanding of what exploitation can look like.
For Marla Sutherland, Research Manager at the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking, this issue is both professional and personal. Marla spent two years in multiple programs for troubled teens.
In her adult years, she started to understand those experiences as institutional abuse. “I didn’t make the connection between labor trafficking and my own lived experience at first,” Marla says. “It wasn’t until I started researching these lawsuits that I had my ‘aha’ moment about one of my placements at an all-girls group home in Montana.”
So, what exactly is the Troubled Teen Industry? And why are more people talking about it now?
What is the Troubled Teen Industry?
The term “Troubled Teen Industry” (TTI) refers to a network of programs that serve “troubled youth.” They may have behavioral, educational, or mental health challenges. The programs use “tough love” and other non-evidence-based interventions to reform youth.
Also known as “congregate care,” these entities can be public or private. They provide housing, treatment, or behavior modification in a residential environment. This includes wilderness therapy programs, therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, group homes, boot camps, conversion therapy programs, and faith-based academies.
An estimated 120,000 to 200,000 young people are in hundreds of care facilities across the United States at any given time. Roughly $23 billion in public funding is spent each year on programs intended to support vulnerable youth.
Young people are placed into these programs through many different pathways. Youth can enter through child welfare systems, juvenile justice systems, school districts, healthcare providers, refugee resettlement agencies, or parents/guardians seeking help. Many programs receive both private pay and public funding to cover the cost for these youth ranging anywhere between $5,000-$30,000 per month.
“Once a youth is placed in a TTI facility, they often stay within the system for many years before being released or aging out at 18 years old,” Marla says.
Not every program in the Troubled Teen Industry is abusive or exploitative. Some programs provide ethical, evidence-based care for youth.
“The combination of the lack of federal regulations and the industry’s lack of transparency has created a breeding ground for mismanagement of care and greed of profit over people to occur,” Marla explains.
How can labor trafficking show up in these programs?
Force, fraud, or coercion can take many forms. It is not always physical violence. It can include threats, psychological manipulation, withholding basic needs, or creating conditions where someone believes they don’t have a choice. These dynamics of coercive control exist in many TTI programs.
In some of these programs, young people are expected to complete extensive work every day. They’re told it’s part of “treatment” or that everyone has chores. But in some programs, that labor goes far beyond typical household responsibilities.
Youth may have to clean facilities, prepare meals, maintain properties, care for livestock, or complete landscaping projects. In some cases, survivors say that refusing to work resulted in punishments such as isolation, loss of food, and sleep deprivation.
Doing chores is a normal part of growing up. But when labor is extracted through force, fraud, or coercion—and especially when it benefits those operating the program—it raises legal questions.
Many survivor stories include physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Some share accounts of humiliating punishments, misused restraint, overmedication, neglect, civil rights violations, and hospitalization. There have been hundreds of documented deaths. Video footage from a Universal Health Services facility shows staff abusing patients. A former nurse said they treat kids “like animals in a zoo.” This was all done at the hands of the professionals who were trusted to care for the youth.
Reflecting on her own experience, Marla shares, “I realized our guardians were receiving both private and public funding to ‘operate’ the facility. However, they had the girls do free labor under conditions of force, fraud, and coercion. They profited off of our free labor and used the extremity of punishments and the conditional belonging of a ‘family’ to coerce us.”
Why is the Troubled Teen Industry in the news now?
Public attention to the Troubled Teen Industry has grown significantly over the past few years. Survivors have bravely shared their experiences through documentaries, books, podcasts, and advocacy organizations.
Documentary series like The Program introduced many viewers to allegations of abuse inside some residential youth programs. Public figures like Paris Hilton have used their platforms to advocate for greater oversight and accountability. Recently, Utah officials revoked the license of Provo Canyon School’s girls program and ordered it to close after years of abuse allegations.
At the same time, researchers and attorneys have begun documenting a clear legal trend. According to the Human Trafficking Legal Center, lawsuits alleging forced labor in teen rehabilitation programs have increased since 2020. By the end of 2024, a total of 33 civil cases had been filed alleging forced labor in TTI programs. Many of those cases remain active in federal court.
Several major cases, including a lawsuit involving Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, are helping courts examine whether coercive labor practices in some residential programs meet the federal definition of labor trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
Federal investigators are also taking notice. A 2022 bipartisan Senate investigation into residential treatment facilities concluded that abuse and harm that youth in many facilities experienced were direct results of business models that prioritized profit over children’s safety and care. It detailed lean staffing models, inadequately trained clinicians, and deadly conditions—while these facilities were securing federal dollars, “treating children as payouts.”
While more federal regulations are needed, Marla hopes this growing body of research and litigation helps other survivors recognize they are not alone. “It gives me hope that we can shine a light on what truly happens behind the closed doors of the Troubled Teen Industry,” Marla reflects.
Why does it take years for many survivors to identify their experience as abuse or trafficking?
One of the biggest misconceptions about the Troubled Teen Industry is that the young people in these programs are “bad kids” who need discipline. That belief has made it much harder for survivors to recognize abuse or trafficking in their own experience.
“TTI youth are viewed as inherently ‘bad kids,’ ‘troubled,’ dangerous, manipulative, or broken,” Marla says. “They’re told they need to be ‘fixed,’ and obedience becomes the measure of healing or treatment.”
Systems reinforce these perceptions. The adults in their lives interact with these youth based on the assumption that they are dishonest, manipulative, or attention-seeking. Disclosures of abuse may be interpreted as manipulation rather than credible reports.
“Many survivors spend decades thinking they deserved the ‘treatment’ they experienced,” Marla explains. They may blame themselves, internalize shame and guilt, or struggle to trust their instincts for years afterward.
In reality, many of the young people involved in the Troubled Teen Industry face increased vulnerability due to factors like homelessness, lack of familial support, or substance use. Many have complex trauma histories that can range from adoption, parent divorce, neglect, or sexual abuse. Being separated from their communities can further increase the challenges these youth face.
If you or someone you know has experienced a situation like this, help is available. Colorado’s 24/7 Human Trafficking Hotline connects survivors and community members with information, referrals, and support. Call the Hotline at 866-455-5075, start a live chat on our website, or search the Online Resource Directory.
How can we better protect youth?
While awareness and outrage about human trafficking is growing, prevention is just as important. So is protection for youth who are experiencing exploitation.
Marla encourages parents, caregivers, and professionals to carefully research any residential treatment or wilderness program before making a placement decision. She recommends looking for reviews, asking questions about daily practices, and investigating any reports of abuse. “Anytime coercive control tactics such as isolation, humiliation, conditional belonging, restraints, or physical punishment are present,” she says, “exploitation is present.”
Organizations committed to ending institutional child abuse like Unsilenced have also developed practical resources, including red flag checklists and information about evidence-based, community-based alternatives to institutional care.
Just as importantly, Marla says communities need to believe young people when they speak about their experiences. “The more we believe youth coming out of these programs, the more we raise awareness about the abuse happening inside the walls of these institutions,” she says. “And the more we fight for regulations that protect youth from institutional abuse, the more we inform social change that better supports youth in need of help.”
What does prevention look like?
Human trafficking doesn’t always look the way people expect. Sometimes it happens in places that promise care. Sometimes it happens inside institutions that are supposed to protect young people.
That’s why education matters. Anti-trafficking training is one of the most powerful tools for preventing harm. Every year, we equip thousands of educators, healthcare professionals, child welfare workers, law enforcement officers, and other frontline professionals with the knowledge they need to identify trafficking and support survivors.
We also do trainings with youth themselves at middle schools, high schools, and facilities for incarcerated youth. At 100% of these presentations, there have been multiple disclosures of violence, some of which has been human trafficking. These youth gain language and knowledge to describe what they went through.
The more we collectively understand what trafficking can look like, the better prepared we are to recognize it, respond compassionately, and build communities where exploitation is less likely to happen in the first place.
Training and education is critical in the effort to protect youth from human trafficking. Make a gift to LCHT today to fund more anti-trafficking training. You’ll help professionals who work with youth identify exploitation sooner and prevent harm.
Resources for further learning:
- Books about the Troubled Teen Industry from the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion
- Short Scary History Lesson: The Troubled Teen Industry #BreakingCodeSilence
- Who’s Watching the Kids?, a special on PBS examining privately run schools for troubled youth in Montana
- The Imprint Youth & Family News
- An investigation led by APM Reports into a for-profit company named Sequel