Netflix Docuseries Spotlights Abuse in the Troubled Teen Industry: 'No One Thought to Clean Up the Evidence'

‘The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping’ shines a light on the abuse children endured at a now-defunct boarding school in Upstate New York

The promotional materials for the Academy at Ivy Ridge in remote Ogdensburg, N.Y., promised hiking, team sports, horseback riding, group settings that fostered learning, nutritious food and a place for troubled children to thrive and reach their full potential. The reality was much darker.

The children who attended the for-profit boarding school that operated between 2001 and 2009 were subjected to cramped bedrooms, solitary confinement, physical restraints and a strict points system that determined how long they would have to stay at the academy. At the time, parents and students alike didn’t know that the point system was designed specifically to keep children at the school for as long as possible.

In Netflix’s upcoming docuseries, The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping, director Katherine Kubler and other former students of Academy at Ivy Ridge expose what really went on behind the closed — and locked — doors at the Academy at Ivy Ridge.

Kubler was at the academy for 15 months before her father withdrew her, but she knew that she wanted to expose what happened at the school, and now she had all of the files from the nearly ten years of operation to help prove it.

When Kubler learned that the property where Ivy Ridge was located is now abandoned, she made her way there on a snowy February morning in 2020. Inside she found all of the former students’ files, including her own, scattered across the dusty hallways and offices that she was never allowed to see before. 

“No one thought to clean up the evidence,” Kubler tells PEOPLE.

Included in that evidence were restraint logs, surveillance footage of abuse and excessive force and infraction records. Now, another former Ivy Ridge student, Katie, who is in the docuseries, is working to organize and return all of those files back to former students who want them.

“Finding the building and all of our files just re-traumatized the whole group,” Kubler tells PEOPLE. “It had been years, so to have this come flooding back into our lives in such an extreme way was wild. But there was this renewed energy — because we finally had the validation and proof — so we’re like, ‘Let's do something about it.’”

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Being able to explore the school grounds was a first for Kubler. When she was attending Ivy Ridge, she didn’t go outside or ever see the boy’s living quarters. She was forbidden to smile, talk and look out the window. If the students broke the rules, they lost points, which would extend their Ivy Ridge stays — and cost their mostly unwitting parents even more money. 

During Ivy Ridge’s nearly 10 years in existence, it was beset by controversy, including a riot that broke out in the boys wing of the school in May 2005 and the school losing its accreditation later that year and being ordered to refund some tuition.  

According to a 2005 report from the Deseret News, the New York Attorney General's Office determined that Ivy Ridge was "grossly misrepresenting its academic credentials." In The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping, former students discuss receiving these fake diplomas and the multi-layered abuse they endured during their time at Ivy Ridge, which opened under the now-defunct World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP), a Utah-based organization founded by Robert Lichfield.

'A symptom of a much larger disease'

According to a 2021 report from the American Bar Association, it is estimated that the so-called “troubled teen industry” receives $23 billion of public funds each year.

“What I wanted to do was expose the methodology for how these programs operated,” Kubler says. “Ivy Ridge is just a symptom of a large disease that is the troubled teen industry. I don't want people to think, ‘Oh, Ivy Ridge is one bad apple or WWASP, it’s just this one organization.’ They're just under new names now.”

According to Unsilenced.org, WWASP operated at least 25 programs in the U.S. and Mexico. The schools were designed for “troubled teens” and marketed to parents as the best way to save their children.

“This idea of thinking that you can send your kid off to a one-stop shop, one-size-fits-all program that will fix them, that just doesn't work,” Kubler says.

Other schools for troubled teens, but not under WWASP, have faced controversy through the years too, including Trails Carolina. On February 2 of this year, a 12-year-old boy from New York died at Trails Carolina less than 24 hours after arriving at the camp. Since then, all admissions have been suspended and all children were removed from camp pending an investigation, WRAL reports.

“We really hope there's some justice that comes from all of this and that it will empower more people to speak out,” Kubler says about her upcoming docuseries.

After the school closed, the Ivy Ridge property was bought in 2012 by Chinese businessman James Ma, according to NNY 360, but the land has since been abandoned. If Kubler could decide what happens to it, she thinks she’d make it into some sort of museum for survivors of Ivy Ridge. 

“It has been so healing for so many survivors to return and make peace with it…” Kubler says. “I’d like to keep it up as a memorial, as a word of caution and warning to never let this happen again.”

The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping premieres on Netflix on Tuesday, March 5. 

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