She Thought She Escaped But It Was Just The Beginning...

Something sinister was happening in the woods in Maine for years. This is the story of a young woman who unexpectedly became involved in this organization against her own will.

This video contains dramatic reenactment but no actual footage or pictures of anyone being harmed or who has been harmed. Viewer discretion is advised. This video is for entertainment purposes only.

Note about the intro to this video. Based on previous testimonials, this is a speculative account of what might have happened. It's unclear if this happened to the subject in the video.

And a huge thank you to the Scary Interesting team of writers, editors, captioners, and everyone else who make this channel possible.

[myathewolfeh]

Idk how a parent being told they will be unable to contact their child directly for months on end isn't a HUGE red flag. These are the kind of parents who worry more about their kid making them look bad than their kid's actual welfare.

[Lawrence_Talbot]

I remember learning about the Elan school in a psych class. It always baffled me how the two founders felt that punishment didn’t help kids and instead needed truly personalized therapy; but the end result was creating a literal cult that abused kids from Day 0. Freaking insane.

[christinekv]

The scary part is that these kind of establishments are common. The troubled teen industri, tti, is so scary and harmful. Many other places are even worse!

[thedaisiesgrow]

It’s probably worth extending this insight to other kids who run away— they are also generally running for a reason. Adults are far too quick to dismiss children’s reports of what happens to them.

[Exxar-Kuun]

My buddy in Arizona got sent to one of these by his mom. Same thing, snatched him in the middle of the night. He called it “treehab” except there were no trees. They were forced to march through the desert with only enough supplies to get from supply point a to supply point b to prevent runners. If you run they have choppers, dogs, and a goon squad to track you down. He said if he was given enough food and water he would’ve enjoyed the experience and probably been open to reform. Instead he just hated his mom for forcing him to suffer the torture and kept on fucking up. Sad to see.

[Monk-eee]

there is tough love and then there's the elan school. Where parents pay people to abuse their kids for them and it's all legal. Paris Hilton made a doc about her experience at an elan type school. And it is the biggest reason she says she has a strained relationship with her mother to this day. I don't blame anyone who can't be close to their parents after sending them here and paying for them to abuse their kid.... NO WAY

[Nylak-Otter]

Situations like the Elan school are why my mother and I had two passwords between us. One was a safety password that would be given from her to someone else in the event they needed to pick me up in case of an emergency, so I'd know my mother authorized it and they were safe.

The other was so one of us could tell the other that we were in danger if we were being observed or held against our will, and the word could easily be slipped into a pretty normal sentence without seeming off. (Interestingly, we established these when I was a toddler, but we didn't end up using them until she was much later in life aside from one incident when I was a child.)

I like to think that if I used that word while on the phone with her at that camp, she'd take me seriously and intervene.

[onemaddad]

My brother went to one of these schools a long time ago. It was awful. They came in at 4am and like you said, basically abducted him. They took him 6-7 hours north to the Florida/Georgia line, to a farm in the middle of NOWHERE. They weren’t allowed to call and talk to anyone, including family, for 6 months. After 6 months they were allowed to write letters that were heavily monitored. My brother described food depravation, sleep deprivation, constant praying and church services (it was a Christian camp). When my brother finally came home nearly 2 years later, he was completely brainwashed and militarized. It was a Christian, military boot camp for troubled youths. Just like this camp. He told us stories of kids escaping, only to be shot when they tried passing through farmer’s land that was close to the camp. The camp was in the middle of nowhere, with a couple farms around it. That’s all there was for miles. They even told the kids that they’re welcome to try and run. It was nuts. The school is now shut down. Thank God.

[MidgieTheCat]

I personally know a girl (now a young woman) who was forced into this school, and abused. She participated in the documentary, behind the scenes, as she was still so petrified of retaliation from people loyal to the school. She recently made attempts to take her own life. This is sad, sad, sad stuff.

[latimeriasdream]

The fact that a child’s rights can be so easily signed away by their parents sincerely scares me so much. These kids did indeed need help, but their own parents would rather give them away to random strangers who would essentially kidnap them in the middle of the night.

[juliagreen]

The introduction about getting kidnapped in the middle of the night is exactly how my parents thought I should be “transported” to the “troubled teen academy” in the wilderness they sent me to, River View Christian Academy in Whitmore, CA. They hired two strange men in a van to come to our house at 3:30am demanding I get dressed and come with them. I thought I was being trafficked. My “trouble” was an eating disorder. It’s so disturbing how a person under 18 can have every basic human right signed away by their parents. This industry is alive and well.

[lllaaauuurrraaa]

I was one of those kids who got churned through the Troubled Teen industrial machine (wilderness bootcamp), but came away mostly unscathed...except for the trauma of being kidnapped in the middle of the night by two strangers who flew me across the country and drove me 4 hours into the woods.

It's been 19 years and I still can't sleep without a locking bedroom door.

[ripwednesdayadams]

There are so many “schools” like this all over the US. My best friend in hs was sent to one. She was kidnapped in the middle of the night during our junior year, I didn’t hear from her or find out what happened until we reunited when she came home when she was 19.

She tried to unalive herself two times after coming home. She had bipolar disorder and the “school” didn’t treat her mental illness at all. What she and thousands of other kids have gone through is horrific. My friend was deeply traumatized by her experience and was never the same.

I know the school is overshadowed in this story by the girl being kidnapped by a murderer (which was obviously horrible). But I don’t think people realize how common these places are and that kids are there right now being traumatized and have nowhere to turn for help.

[Myster-Man-Channel]

How sad. Kids cannot be taught how to be good and kind through abuse. I have a challenging child, incredibly smart, deeply emotional. Over the years I've tried many things with him, and what I found was, he need kindness, he needs me to stay calm when he is out of control, he needs understanding, but he does need reasonable boundaries set and held to. These things make out of control kids feel safe and If they feel safe they can grow out of these phases of misbehavior. They don't need to be screamed at, hit, or given outrageous punishments.

[lunakat__]

What always gets me is that the thought of someone grabbing my kid out of their bed and taking them away is a nightmare. I'm not sure why these parents believed this would be the way to more compliant children. This would wreck me and make me hate and distrust my parents forever.

[ahkarivae]

your videos always save me from boredom at work. I like the slight change in pace!

[I_Am_SciCurious]

This happened to a friend in high school. She got excellent grades and was a really nice person. Unfortunately, her parents were incredibly strict and lost their minds when they found the remains of a joint in her room. She was terrified from the start and it only got worse. It took years after she got home to become normal again.

[lacucaracha]

r/JoeNobody is an amazing comic made as a kind of self-therapy chronicling how he survived Elan, how much of himself he lost, and how he (eventually) came home. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants a firsthand account of this fucked up place

[emmabennett]

My heart goes out to the kids who were forced into that place and others like it - the comments on this thread show how deep the rot goes and how many lives were tarnished, ruined, and shortened by such places. I'd never even heard of places like this before today. Thank you for sharing and for giving context to the young lady's situation - too often missing young people are dismissed as "runaways" as though running away is a childish whim, not an action born of strong emotion and usually a legitimate cause, and those who are taken miss out on the crucial first 48 hours as parents/carers/educators are simply told to sit tight and wait for the child to cool off and make contact.

[Cyn]

It is an injustice not to mention the school. I'm glad you told her whole story.