Stream It Or Skip It? 

Teen Torture, Inc., now streaming on Max, is the latest docuseries to explore the “troubled teen industry” (TTI), a patchwork of programs that purport to treat adolescents who for various reasons have been labeled difficult or delinquent. Produced and directed by Tara Malone (Fallen Idols: Nick & Aaron Carter), this three-part series includes the participation of people it calls survivors of these programs, such as Danielle “Bhad Bhabie” Bregoli, whose “Cash me outside, how ‘bout that?” viral moment on Dr. Phil in 2016 led directly to her being sent into the TTI trenches. Various disclaimers are attached to the series – including a denial to participate from Dr. Phil – but the survivors and other observers interviewed here see the troubled teen industry as a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that’s been extremely troubled from the beginning.       

Opening Shot: “All teens, from the beginning of time, have been considered troubled. It’s all about fear.” This quote from Teen Torture, Inc. is accompanied by a supercut of scenes from the docuseries, including footage of news reports about the troubled teen industry, grainy video shot inside these facilities, and a guy dressed like a drill sergeant screaming in an adolescent’s face.

The Gist: “When a kid fails to get better, what do they do? They just punish them harder.” From the perspective of people who identify as survivors of TTI’s like Provo Canyon School, Bethel Boys Academy, Masters Ranch, and Agapé, these places are not about therapy, wellness, or the promotion of mental and physical well-being among adolescents. Instead, they’re full of “sociopaths who like torturing people,” cloak their cruelties in faith-based initiatives, or keep kids locked up even when the prescribed treatment programs fail, because the longer they’re in there, the more money they make. Teen Torture, Inc. includes footage from a 2022 press conference, where Paris Hilton denounced her time spent at Provo Canyon, a Utah-based facility that’s a major player in what local news clips call the state’s “troubled youth therapy industry,” and includes extensive interviews with Jen Robinson, a woman says she was a “captive” at Provo for three years. It didn’t heal whatever her parents sent her there for. And it led to an alleged sexual assault and suicidal ideation. 

“What we call the troubled teen industry,” author and TTI survivor Evan Write explains, “is really this kind of grab-bag of all these different programs based on this idea that no matter what it takes, we’re gonna make these kids follow the rules.” Labor camps, wilderness therapy, boot camp facsimiles, and boarding schools, but also religion-based programs, and even private, below-the-radar operations that illustrate how massively unregulated the teen trouble industry is. Parents signing over custody rights to these programs and limited or government oversight combine to create a situation where what happens inside these places stays inside, and kids can’t find any kind of way out. When Robinson’s escape attempt resulted in her alleged assault, she says the staff blamed it on her.

There are a lot of powerful, personal moments in the interviews featured in Teen Torture, Inc. But the docuseries also relies heavily on the kind of stilted reenactments that clog up a lot of today’s true crime stuff, repeated use of the same stock footage and personal photographs, and provocative statements that it doesn’t immediately back up with facts or research.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Program: Cons, Cults & Kidnapping is a recent Netflix docuseries about its former students revisiting a troubled teen-focused school that became known as a torture chamber. Paris Hilton elaborated on her own experience at Provo Canyon School in the 2020 documentary This Is Paris. And two different documentary programs explore Synanon, an infamous proto-TTI movement that devolved into a cult: HBO’s The Synanon Fix and Born in Synanon on Paramount+.

Our Take: They used to call it “tough love,” and it really has been around forever, or at least for generations, certainly since America developed the “teenager” as a sector to be marketed to in the years after the Second World War. That’s an interesting thread in Teen Torture, Inc. – where parents unsure of or frustrated with the growing power and visibility of their adolescent children chose to outsource management of them by paying someone else to do it. And it features plenty of harrowing commentary from “survivors” of these programs, individuals who describe physical or emotional torture, uncaring staff, and conditions likened to a high security prison. But while there is evidence in the public record of this kind of thing, Teen Torture is also pretty one-sided in that it can’t seem to get anybody from the TTI’s to present their side of the story. While the heavy-duty list of disclaimers bookending the episodes means they certainly tried to get them on the record, that it’s not here makes Teen Torture, Inc. feel at times splashy, like it’s part of the new wave of streaming true crime that loves to keep telling the bad parts over and over, without further interpretation of what it all means.      

Sex and Skin: Teen Torture, Inc. includes unsparing descriptions of sexual assault, forced strip searches, and human confinement.

Parting Shot: “It turned into this cultish, Lord of the Flies experiment, funded at the highest levels of the federal government.” That’s survivor and author Evan Wright, describing his experience in a program called Seed when he was 13, and it’s a startling quote. But what might be even more startling are the multiple pages of disclaimers that follow it, either from those who refused to be interviewed for Teen Torture, Inc., or as statements that dispute allegations contained in its interviews.

Sleeper Star: Danielle Bregoli’s combative Dr. Phil appearance catapulted her to viral fame and fueled the Bhad Bhabie celebrity persona. But in Teen Torture, Inc., Bregoli offers a moment of clarity that illuminates the kind of provocation that gets kids sent to TTI’s in the first place. “If he would’ve brought me out by myself to talk to me first, and not talk to my mother first, and was there to help, it would’ve gone way different.”    

Most Pilot-y Line: “There is no government source of information about what is really going on in some of these facilities,” Gloria Allred says. (The high profile attorney is representing a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted as a teen while at Turn-About Ranch.) “When a parent is relinquishing the care and custody and control of their child to a stranger, they need to know the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth, because they could be sending their child into a very dangerous situation. Many people at so-called treatment centers are not licensed mental health or medical professionals.”

Our Call: Teen Torture, Inc. is a STREAM IT, particularly for what it adds to the narrative contained in other recent docs about the troubled teen industry, which certainly seems troubled itself. But at the same time, the boldface quotes in this docuseries can make it feel like a one-sided argument.

BLURB