Common Sense Media Review
By Melissa Camacho
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Disturbing docuseries shows abuse, trauma, smoking.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
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The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping
What's the Story?
THE PROGRAM: CONS, CULTS, AND KIDNAPPING is a docuseries about the trauma associated with being sent to troubled youth residential programs. Directed by Katherine Kubler, it brings together adults who, as teenagers, were housed in disciplinary facilities marketed to parents as schools and recovery programs designed to rehabilitate difficult or problematic kids. Kubler, whose father and stepmother forced her to spend over a year at The Academy of Ivy Ridge facility when she was 15, visits the now-defunct institution with other alumni. They share details about the physical, mental, and emotional abuses they all sustained while there. The methods by which they were kept from reporting what was happening are explained by lawyers, psychologists, and cult expert Janja Lalich. While there, they also collect documentation and other evidence of what transpired. Kubler also talks to (and in some cases confronts) former Ivy Ridge staff members and parents to discuss how they feel about what was done to her and her peers, and their part in it.
Is It Any Good?
The troubling docuseries sheds light on the poorly regulated multibillion-dollar "troubled teen" industry from a very personal point of view. The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping highlights how many of these youth programs evolved from a 1950s cult-like drug rehabilitation program that used "tough love" behavior modification tactics and "attack therapies" that continue to influence the way many current troubled teen facilities around the world operate. Katherine Kubler and others who were enrolled in The Academy of Ivy Ridge as kids discuss what led to them being sent away, how they were pulled from their beds and forcibly transported by escort companies in the middle of the night to the facility, where they were subject to destructive rules.
Archive security camera footage from the facility reveals some of the physical abuse residents were subjected to from untrained and undereducated staff, while survivors talk about how they were expected to victimize their peers to make it through "the program." While much of the blame is put on the parents for sending them to Ivy Ridge and for ignoring the signals of abuse, it also acknowledges that many of them were duped into spending tens of thousands of dollars so that their children would receive the help they needed. It's a lot of information for a three-part series, which makes the narrative feel heavy and disorganized at times. Nonetheless, The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping successfully communicates the trauma these adults continue to endure.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the reasons teenagers rebel or engage in dangerous behaviors. Does media play a role in motivating these behaviors? What about helping teens stop them?
Can shows like The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping help other survivors of abusive troubled teen facilities or programs? How?
TV Details
- Premiere date : March 5, 2024
- Cast : Katherine Kubler , Janja Lalich
- Network : Netflix
- Genre : Reality TV
- Topics : School ( High School )
- Character Strengths : Perseverance
- TV rating :
- Last updated : September 18, 2025
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