The morning I was abducted at 16, I woke up to strangers’ boots pounding outside my lilac bedroom. My mother kept everything pristine in our Northern California home—no one wore shoes inside. So I knew something was off.
My door burst open. A man and woman appeared—their figures so tall and wide they filled my doorframe.
“Come with us,” they demanded.
“No,” I spoke, then froze. The man inched toward me.
“I wasn’t asking,” He seized my arm. Immediately, his grip started tightening like a blood pressure machine, but he wasn’t measuring my life—he was taking it.
“Help,” I wailed.
They tackled me. I tried to break free. They won. Two months into eleventh grade, I was barely a quarter of their size. Face-down against my floral carpet, they handcuffed me. They carried me downstairs where my mom stood by the front door.
Natasia Pelowski is a writer from New York. She is pictured as a child, and with her mother (L, R).
Natasia Pelowski
“Only your parents can stop this,” the woman revealed.
“Sorry” my mother mouthed, but it carried no sound. My mom stood still.
My captors didn’t stop moving. They shoved me into the back of a cold, black car and drove away from my Silicon Valley neighborhood and my childhood. It was November 23, 2014. I’ve been tormented by nightmares ever since. All I knew then was what my captors told me: my parents hired my kidnappers.
I struggled with depression in high school, and my family trusted my principal for a recommendation for a wilderness therapy program. My mom and dad were convinced that forcibly removing me from my bedroom was an effective method of transportation.
That night, I was dropped off at a wilderness camp where I stayed for 53 days without electricity or shoes. I was repeatedly strip-searched, prevented from speaking to my peers for weeks at a time, and forced to work in fields. One morning, staff woke me up before dawn, blindfolded me, and told me to “follow the sound of their drums.” When the blindfolds lifted, I was staring at an open grave. They laid me into the six-foot-plot and read a eulogy to “represent the end of my old life.”
After wilderness, I was transferred to a residential center in Utah where I was isolated in solitary confinement for 24 hours, subjected to “attack therapy,” and witnessed multiple suicide attempts followed by staff berating the attempters.
I was released right before my 18th birthday, but a piece of me has been in that grave ever since. I developed PTSD like many troubled teen industry survivors. For ten years, I struggled to understand how my family could have abandoned me. It’s always haunted me that children are still being subjected to brutal treatment programs like mine.
Today, I know that my abduction wasn’t unique. “Gooning,” forcibly transporting kids, is how most are taken into the troubled teen industry. This corrupt network of juvenile mental health institutions known for abusing minors receives over $23 billion in public funds annually and holds over 120,000 to 200,000 minors at any given time.
They target affluent families that can privately fund their kid’s stay, maximizing profit. Largely unregulated, there are no federal licensing requirements for staff, no federal mandates to use evidence-based therapies, no requirements to report usage of seclusion and restraints, and no prerequisites to admit someone beyond a family’s worries.
I no longer blame my parents. Instead, I wonder why lawmakers who hold the power to save vulnerable youth fail to do so.
In 2007, GAO reports tracked young people’s deaths and urged reform. If Congress followed these recommendations, maybe I would never have been subjected to the abuse I experienced in these programs. Perhaps I wouldn’t have PTSD. In 2008, legislation sponsored by Representative George Miller of California attempted to regulate these congregate care facilities federally. Yet, no legislation was passed.
Last year, the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act was brought forth by Paris Hilton, a survivor of the troubled teen industry, and California Representative Ro Khanna sought federal oversight of this system. The proposal stalled in Congress.
Every attempt over the last decade to federally regulate these institutions has failed or stalled.
Recently, Paris Hilton testified supporting Senate Bill 1043 which would require facilities to report when they use restraints and seclusion to discipline youth. It’s a new opportunity for lawmakers to reconcile their failure to protect young people.
I hope Congress will use its power to support Senate Bill 1043 to free kids trapped in treatment of unwarranted restraints and isolation. It’s past time lawmakers take action to regulate the troubled teen industry.
A decade later, I still double check my door is locked every night.
Natasia Pelowski is a writer who lives in New York.
All views expressed are the author’s own.
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