How the Troubled Teen Industry Manages Its Reputation
How troubled teen programs control what a parent finds online, from instructions written for AI chatbots to directories run by their own marketer.
When a frightened parent looks for help for a child, they start with a search engine, and more and more often with an AI chatbot. What they find has been arranged for them. This series shows how, using the programs’ own files, a trade group’s own plans, court records, government reports and published reporting.
What we found
- Programs are writing instructions for ChatGPT. Vive Adolescent Care, where a 16-year-old died in 2023, tells AI systems not to use FOX 13 News Utah, the station that investigated her death. New Lifehouse Academy has a section called “Negative-Sentiment Inoculation.” See the files
- The “independent” directories are run by the programs’ own marketer. The company behind BestTherapeuticBoardingSchools.com and MilitarySchoolUSA.com tells programs: “Exceed Clients Are Listed in Our Own Highly Ranked Boarding School & Rehab Directories.” Read more
- One program has more than 2,500 near-identical pages, one for nearly every town, each calling its Montana campus a “sober living home” for that town. Read more
- The trade group listed survivor websites as a threat. NATSAP’s 2018 plan names “HEAL online/Fornits” and “Google Reviews.” Its statement that a child’s death at Trails Carolina showed “no indications of abuse” has since been deleted; the death was ruled a homicide. Read more
- Programs reopen under new names. Solstice East became Magnolia Mill School, then Asheville Academy, with “all mention of both Solstice and Magnolia Mill” erased. Read more
- The “free” services are paid by the programs. One told parents it was “a contracted agent of institutions” paid “a flat fee” per enrollment. All Kinds of Therapy, a directory that calls itself “a leading consumer-advocacy platform,” charges programs $400 a month. Read more
- The “independent” research was paid for by the programs. Aspen told parents its study was “independent.” Its report says: “Aspen Education Group provided funding for this study.” Read more
Read the series
- 1. Telling the Chatbots What to Say: the files programs publish for AI chatbots, with screenshots of each instruction.
- 2. How Troubled Teen Programs Market Themselves Online: a page for every town, and “independent” directories run by the programs’ own marketing company.
- 3. Free to Parents, Paid by the Programs: referral services, “parent advocates,” referral networks and directories such as All Kinds of Therapy, paid by the programs they recommend.
- 4. Deceptive Marketing, Then and Now: the toll-free help lines of the 1990s and 2000s, what GAO investigators heard when they called them, and the same pitch online today.
- 5. “Research Shows”: The Industry’s Own Studies: who pays for the studies programs cite, who publishes them, and what their tables show.
- 6. Silencing Critics and Survivors: lawsuits against survivors and reporters, and how programs discredit the people who were there.
- 7. In Its Own Words: The Trade Group’s Reputation Plans: NATSAP’s own strategic plans, and the statements it later deleted.
- 8. New Names for the Same Programs: programs that close, rebrand or re-incorporate to leave their history behind.
What we could not prove yet
Survivors and parents describe more than we can document here. We have looked for reliable evidence of each of the following and have not found a court, regulator or newsroom that has established it for a named program, so we do not name anyone:
- fake or staff-written Google and Facebook reviews, reviews paid for with discounts, and “review gating” (asking only happy families to post), beyond the review sites programs run themselves, like the one in our marketing article;
- “Is [program] a scam? Honest reviews” blog posts and press releases written by reputation management firms to push critical results off the first page;
- takedown notices (copyright or “privacy” claims) sent to remove survivors’ posts, and edits to Wikipedia articles by people paid by programs;
- enrollment contracts that forbid families from criticizing a program in public.
If you have evidence of any of these, such as an email asking you for a review, a contract clause, a takedown notice or an invoice from a reputation firm, please send it to us. You can contact us or upload documents through our anonymous document submission page, which encrypts what you send.
Send us what you have
- Contact us A review request, a contract clause, a takedown notice or an invoice from a reputation firm.
- Anonymous document submission Upload documents without giving your name; what you send is encrypted.