The importance of this recording -- what Elan calls "getting feelings off" -- cannot be overstated. From 1970 through 2011, this deranged ritual was the primary component of Elan's treatment program for students. A teen would be made to stand expressionless, several feet away, while being yelled at by;

"[Don Schlosser, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services] told the Associated Press that the department's evaluation team had 'never seen anything quite so bizarre and degrading.' He said 'the whole concept of this program seems to be a brain washing technique.'"

From the Associated Press and Maine Sunday Telegram, March 25, 2007.

"We were taken on our tour by a resident, 'Chad', who was 17 and had been in 'school' for two years. He introduced us to 'Karen' who had cheeks smeared with rouge, heavy eye makeup and a billboard sign across her back that said: 'I am a whore. I whore around for attention. I do this because I hate myself. I hate myself because I am a whore.'

Testimony in An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens (2000) from "Arleen Lewis," the 20-year manager of a juvenile justice agency. She called Elan a "national disgrace."

"As the residents surged over the scuffed linoleum of the dining room, knocking over metal chairs, Kim curled into a ball. 'You fucking bitch, fucking whore, fucking fuck-up!' Kim was enduring a 'learning experience' ...

'[We] were whipped into a mob,' says Arnold ... 'It was brainwashing. People like Kim were gonna be junkies or hookers if we didn't make them get their shit together.' Arnold soon added her voice to the eardrum-breaking sound of 100 young adults caught up in the adrenaline rush of anger. To an outsider, it must have looked like madness, a Lord of the Flies outpost with castaways who were regularly dressed in tinfoil, diapers, and 'hooker' skirts. Some had signs around their necks that read: I'M AN EMOTIONAL VAMPIRE or ASK ME WHY I'M A BABY or CONFRONT ME AS TO WHY I'M A WHORE. All were red with rage. 'Kim,' Arnold recalls, 'was semi-catatonic.'"

From Details Magazine, November 2001.

"Roughly 150 students pay about $44,000 a year to attend the school, which still practices a controversial behavioral modification program that relies on shouting sessions, long hours in a corner and sometimes even boxing matches to rid unruly teenagers of their anti-social mind-sets. At Elan, smiling without permission can lead to a session of cleaning urinals with a toothbrush that can last for hours."

From The New York Times, June 2, 2002.

"We were told we had to partake in an act called 'getting our feelings off.'  This consisted of us yelling, swearing at and degrading our fellow students ... when another student got their feelings off for you, you had to just sit still and not move a muscle because the slightest movement would suggest you were 'reacting.' I remember being called such names as 'psycho,' 'bitch,' 'asshole,' 'hospital case,' 'freak,' 'disgusting,' 'stupid,' 'crazy,' etc.  I was told things like 'I fucking hate your guts,' 'I hope you fucking die,' 'stay the fuck away from me,' 'I don't fucking like you,' 'fuck off,' etc.  I was called more derogatory names, but this is just to give you an idea of what is systematically done.

If we did not 'get your feelings off' we were punished and told that we were never going to change ... if we retorted back with anything, we were sent to scrub floors, toilets, sink, showers, sometimes whole rooms as a form of discipline for hours on end.  We were taught that not getting our feelings off was wrong and a punishable offense.  I still hear the screams of my fellow students throughout the day at times.

People who disobeyed the rules were treated poorly. A girl who was in my dorm decided to kiss another guy [ed: an extremely rare occurrence, since no opposite-sex contact was permitted].  There was no sexual relationship and nothing more than a kiss. She was told she was going to end up just like her mother because of it--her mother was found dead on the side of the road in Georgia a few months prior. The girl was considered a whore by the whole house.  The staff had convinced us of this by telling us that was what she was. She was then made to clean trashcans, toilets, bathrooms...just about everything, while the rest were told to relax. If you were considered 'shotdown' (moved to the lowest position in the program), you had no privileges at all."

Jessica Charnov (2004-07) testimony, 2009.

"Deviation from expectations will lead to heavy verbal confrontation ... Elan is not for the faint hearted. While the atmosphere is highly confrontive, most of the confrontation comes from peers ... humiliation is stated clearly as a therapeutic tool.

It is the responsibility of the higher level students to be the first line of stopping runaways, and intervening in other negative behaviors, a job they seem to do quite effectively. This is even to the extent of having a student sentry on duty all night every night (in shifts)."

From Woodbury Reports, June 1992. This report, from a trade industry magazine, comes from one of the few friendly tours given of Elan. A 2007 report from the same organization simply didn't mention these practices, which have since become more controversial (illegal, as in the case of New York and other states pulling publicly funded children from the program), and which are the sole component of Elan "therapy." Most of the other components ("bustling offices") mentioned on the tour were only operated for show and have never existed in practice.

"Elan functioned as a separate society with its own dictionary of terms.  A 'general meeting' was called after a resident failed to comply with program requirements. At this meeting everyone in the house gathered together and verbally assaulted the person. If this resident did not voluntarily submit to this verbal assault from peers, he or she was then forcibly dragged before the group.

Description of the Elan program from Duck in a Raincoat (1991), a biography of its scandal-wracked founder.

"I went through months of living in corners in dissociative states of mind, self-harm, extreme emotional and physical abuses. Things from 30 people at a time screaming in my face and spitting on me to being placed in restraints, to being placed in the boxing ring to fight against other peers as disciplinary measures. I went through extreme humiliation and degradation ... I am 37 years old and there is rarely a day that goes by that I don't have flashbacks or go through some kind of emotional turmoil due to the abuses I suffered during my stay in the 'program.'"

Testimony from "Jackie," c. 2006.

"Elan School has group sessions that take place to force the students to scream at each other ... once a student in Elan School 'deserves' to leave the corner, they are then put in front of the dining room to get screamed at by four other students at a time and then 'confrontation' takes place to admit their misdoings.

Every day at Elan I would suffer from serious nightmares due to the staff giving deep confrontation in regards of my childhood. They would try to force out stuff I did not want to remember. As result I ended up suffering critically, I was not able to make it through the Navy after Elan (I was never part of the war) and they honorably discharged me with a personality disorder diagnosis."

Tayro Knight (2002-05) testimony, 2009. Note the heavy use of euphemisms, a hallmark of Elan and the cults it descended from.

"The trouble with tough love is twofold. First, the underlying philosophy -- that pain produces growth -- lends itself to abuse of power. Second, and more important, toughness doesn't begin to address the real problem. Troubled teenagers aren't usually 'spoiled brats' who 'just need to be taught respect.' Like me, they most often go wrong because they hurt, not because they don't want to do the right thing ... a surprisingly large number are sent away in the midst of a parental divorce; others are enrolled for depression or other serious mental illnesses. Many have lengthy histories of trauma and abuse. The last thing such kids need is another experience of powerlessness, humiliation and pain.

For one thing, longitudinal studies find that most kids, even amongst the most troubled, eventually grow out of bad behavior, so the magic of time can be mistaken for the magic of treatment. Second, the experience of being emotionally terrorized can produce compliance that looks like real change, at least initially."

Read the article by Maia Szalavitz, author of troubled teen industry book Help At Any Cost (2006).

The ultimate, stated goal of Elan's program (once a student has spent years abusing others) is "graduation." It's easy to see that Elan has an interest in delaying the process.

Contrary to what Elan's marketing materials implied, less than 10% of residents graduate. Less than 10% of residents complete the program in the "average time" of 24 months or earlier.

In late 2004, the National Institutes of Health released a "state of the science" consensus statement, concluding that "get tough" treatments "do not work and there is some evidence that they may make the problem worse." At Elan, survivors typically claim to leave with post-traumatic stress disorder and exacerbations of their original problems.

Find the report here.

"The bigger picture suggests that tough love tends to backfire. My recent interviews confirm the findings of more formal studies. The Justice Department has released reports comparing [Elan-style programs] with traditional correctional facilities for juvenile offenders, concluding in 2001 that neither facility 'is more effective in reducing recidivism' ... Unfortunately, in the world of teen behavioral programs, there are no specific educational or professional requirements.  Anyone can claim to be an expert."

Read the article by Maia Szalavitz, author of troubled teen industry book Help At Any Cost (2006).

"Kiriaki Vlahopouliotis, 23 ... said she still has not told her mother details of her time at Elan. 'It will only make her feel worse,' she said. 'There's no horseback rides, there's no skiing. There's scrubbing toilets and floors all day. My parents had no idea when they sent me that in two years they'd only see me three times or that I'd get to talk to them 15 minutes once a week, if I got my telephone privileges.'"

From The New York Times, June 2, 2002. There was no humor in the Elan facility, except when staff would joke that "this wasn't in the brochure!" They famously described their program to educational consultants with stock photos of vacation spots. Needless to say, none of what was shown to them existed.

"The student to staff ratio at many times is about 1:40. The children could clearly take over at any time which is why a strong level of brainwashing will occur when your child steps foot in the door."

Survivor narrative, homepage of Elan School blogspot, 2010. The administrative and program staff are generally longtime employees and program graduates with failed careers elsewhere. Elan has trouble filling new positions (plenty of horrified new hires lasted for one day) and keeps suspicious of outsiders to the company. Having sufficient qualified staff on duty would dent Elan's humongous profits.

Even though Elan had over 100 students, many of whom were referred there for mental health reasons, only one psychologist was ever on staff at one time. His job was to speak with new parents, not to monitor children or the program itself.

"For 31 years, Elan--which remains open to 184 residents at $44,596 a year for a two-year program--has been among the most controversial of the nation's residential therapeutic communities. Though the school no longer employs such Draconian methods, its administrators claim that the behavior modification they practiced was the only effective way to salvage delinquents. The approach--tearing down destructive character traits through relentless peer pressure."

From Details Magazine, November 2001.

Joe Ricci's Elan is well-known even throughout the residential treatment industry as one of the few direct descendants of Synanon, a defunct cult that--seriously--pioneered the use of North Korean brainwashing techniques to control its members.

Found in Mother Jones magazine, October 2007 and in Details Magazine, November 2001.

"[Joe] made me feel really worthless, you know, like I was an absolute nothing. He came in and I was called up along with a girl named Nancy, and another girl named Marie, two guys named Ray, and Johnny, and another kid named Sean. So when Joe Ricci came in to the house we were all sitting down around a table, and he announced:  'We have some cancer in this house,  and any good surgeon knows the best way to get rid of cancer is to cut it out, before it spreads.'

Then he called all of us up in front of the house, and asked everybody else if they had any feelings for us, so we all got screamed at. Then they put us in the boxing ring, you know. Then at the end of the meeting, Joe Ricci says, 'Now we're gonna put you upstairs in one of the rooms.' It was [6'x10'] and they boarded up the windows, boarded up the door and locked it. And [Joe] said, 'whatever goes on in there goes on.' It was in July ... I know it was in July, because it was my 16th birthday the next day ... it was horrible. Six of us all stuck in there together."

Testimony from "Stephen," in the Joe Ricci biography Duck in a Raincoat (1991). All six students were subsequently raped while locked in the room on Stephen's birthday and over the course of several weeks. Joe Ricci founded Elan in 1978 and ran its day-to-day operations in a similar fashion until his death in 2001. His wife owns the property today.

A girl was raped while on one of many outings with Joe Ricci. While Ricci was not accused or implicated, he demanded that she recant her story after the police found her bruised a day later. Formerly the "highest ranking" student, she refused, and was subjected to verbal abuse and months of isolation before escaping.

Sharon McCarthy-Wittwer (1984-86) testimony, 2010.

"In many ways, Elan embodies the contradictions of its founder, Mr. Ricci, a recovering addict, a horse track owner and a two-time candidate for governor, whose antics kept the local news media busy for years.

Elan did at least one thing well: it made money. With profits from the school, Mr. Ricci bought a run-down harness-racing track in Portland, Me., called Scarborough Downs. Through the years, his behavior became increasingly erratic. He gave an expletive-laced tirade against a Maine harness-racing official over the Scarborough Downs public-address system. He was sued three times for sexual harassment, once for threatening to kill a female employee. He lost one case and settled the other two."

From The New York Times, June 2, 2002.

"I recently received a phone call from a local contractor who I have done business with over the years. He was called by Elan to evaluate/repair a variety of problems throughout the complex. He could not believe the condition of the facility, explaining its rundown condition and comparing it to a shantytown ... I learned that the Poland complex need for repair exceeds the value of the property. This, coupled with a score of existing liens from suppliers and contractors seeking payment, has the Poland property stalled in court. The real estate industry calls this type of property a white elephant. 

This has already affected the resident population as parents who visit expect better conditions for their 50K. It was trendy to get well in log cabins in the 1970s, but not in the '00s when you market yourself as a private school for college-bound kids. Factor into this the incredibly bad press Elan has absorbed of late, and there you have a real mess. 

I expect a slow demise for the Elan School. The gross mismanagement of the facility on a business level has them ankle deep in red ink. I predict that Elan will slowly gear down toward a scheduled date to close. The current owners will liquidate everything and retire."

"John," responding to discussions about the frequent power outages at Elan's isolated facility, posted this on a forum in 2003. Visitors to the Elan property will have no difficulty verifying this for themselves.

Why have large states, including Massachusetts, Illinois and New York, issued dramatic and condemning reports before quickly pulling their wards from Elan, while Maine continues to allow Elan to operate?

"While New York conducted a surprise inspection, it is the policy of Maine's education department to let schools know when state officials are going to conduct a visit, said Edwin 'Buzz' Kastuck, whose responsibilities within the department include school approval."

From the Portland Press Herald, March 25, 2007. Was Elan an accredited private school? Not really. It belongs to NATSAP, known in the industry as the last resort, pay-to-enter trade organization which accepts programs refused certification by legitiimate groups. NATSAP offers its official seal of approval without offering accreditation, licensing or regulatory compliance reviews. In their final years, Elan also touted membership in NIPSA, a similar group with a broader membership of for-profit schools and religious schools.

"The school curriculum is fabulous for an unmotivated child. With no tests, exams, or projects it couldn't be better. When parents receive news that their child (who was once possibly failing in school) is now getting great marks, they could only think that Elan is doing something right. That is one of the tactics Elan uses to deceive parents and school boards but ultimately rob that child of a real education."

Testimony on HEAL Online from an anonymous survivor.

"School was the easiest school I had ever been to, you had no homework except in a study hall on Fridays ... unfortunately, the lack of good school makes life difficult when you get out because the classes, since they switch every 5 months and 2 in the summer, did not have enough time to cover whole subjects like biology, chemistry and math. We would end the classes only knowing the most basic material. I myself had to be held back because I was only given 1 math course and no language my entire stay."

Nick Schwamb (2007-09) testimony, 2009.

"School is skipped when a student is in the corner. The reasoning behind that is because they state that it is a 'privilege' to go to school."

Tayro Knight (2002-05) testimony, 2009.

"At night a student stays awake to guard the dorms of his or her gender. Every ten minutes for eight hours a night a 'bed check' is conducted. Each student has their sheets lifted up and a flashlight is shone on the student's body to make sure they don't have any hidden clothing to take with them in the event that they try to run away. Could you imagine having your sheets pulled up every ten minutes for eight hours every night for years? Can you imagine that students are expected, who are in positions of responsibility, to stay up all night and be a 'night guard' and look under their fellow residents' sheets, utterly invading their privacy and human rights? And if you fall asleep as a 'night guard' you could be punished and be made to scrub the floors and have your shoelaces taken away."

This excerpt comes from the Elan School Class Action Facebook group.

"Sometimes people would be stuck in the corners for weeks or months on end. If you tried to 'sign out' at 18 years old they would wait for days and sometimes weeks and wouldn't let you leave until they put you through hell.

I didn't feel safe and taken care of if I had gotten sick. If I felt sick I was not allowed to stay in sick--the staff wouldn't let you go to bed unless you were violently vomiting. Many people had to run on 3-5 hours sometimes because the staff wouldn't let them go to sleep after 'taking an SP' or something because they 'needed them on the floor.'

We mostly didn't go outside all week except for gym for one hour on Tuesdays. If the staff thought that the house did really well we may have been able to go out for a couple of hours on Sunday."

Nick Schwamb (2007-09) testimony, 2009.

It is a 12+ step process to ask for permission to use the bathroom (which students are not allowed to do alone). This usually takes several hours, and the request is often written up as an "incident," or disciplinary infraction, for being viewed by staff or "higher up" students as a complaint or interruption.

Read about the process in detail here.

"Some accounts by recent graduates suggest that little has changed at Elan since Mr. Skakel attended in 1978. Tatiana Karam, 21, who attended Elan from 1996 to 1998, said she witnessed three or four boxing sessions, or 'rings' as they are known, and said she saw a student placed in a corner in plastic restraints for so long that she became malnourished and was sent to the hospital. Ms. Karam said that phone calls to her parents, who spent more than $100,000 on her schooling, were monitored and that the students who accurately described life at Elan were punished for being 'manipulative.' But Ms. Karam, the Northeastern student, said: 'Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. I'll never forgive them for what they did.'"

From The New York Times, June 2, 2002.

"The girl's name was Kim. She was 17. Moments before, she'd been spanked with a paddle in front of the 100 fellow delinquents and drug addicts--more than two thirds of them men--who made up the student body of the Elan School, a therapeutic community of last resort that, during its seventies heyday, may have been something far from therapeutic."

From Details Magazine, November 2001.

"'The Corner', which is really a term for being put into isolation, is used to take a child who is not conforming with Elan out of the population. Another student is then placed with them as a 'support person.' This support person could be subject to the other student acting out, which could involve attempts at self-mutilation, being spat on, sworn at, screamed at, exposed to the student's genitals, exposed to them masturbating, among other lewd acts. The support person may be expected to physically restrain the acting out student. Sometimes the support person had to hold other students down on the floor and have plastic restraints put on the student so his or her hands were tied behind their back. If the support person may take their eyes off this other student in 'the corner,' and he or she decides to self-mutilate and succeeds, then the support person will be stripped of his or her position of responsibility and made to scrub floors for a time of two to three days. Can you believe that this is allowed to go on? A fifteen year old child being forced into this responsibility if they want to succeed in Elan?

Sometimes this student who is acting out could be in the corner for over a month--spending their days facing the corner of a wall and sleeping on a dingy mattress on the floor. This student could spend a month acting crazy like this and then stop and come out of the corner only to be put right back in because he or she starts acting out again. Usually there was at least one student in the corner for the two-year period I was there. Also that child who is acting out does so because he or she is standing up for themselves, albeit it is in a damaging fashion, but that is how a person may cope when being forced to stay in a place like Elan."

This excerpt comes from the Elan School Class Action Facebook group. The corner is typically used as a disciplinary punishment, not because a student is involved in physical violence. It can be used as a holding area if there are no staff available or for an extended period of time to "break" a student. Students are subjected to a general meeting before they can leave the corner.

"Every day in Elan School there was unpaid labor, if a student was in trouble, they would be forced to get on their knees and scrub the floor. If a student in Elan School did something physical, major or minor; they are tackled by another student and then restrained."

Tayro Knight (2002-05) testimony, 2009.

Everyone imprisoned at Elan developed physical problems. By the mid-2000s, at least 30% of students developed temporary or permanent Osgood-Schlatter disease, a debilitating knee condition. Students in lower hierarchy positions would spend months at a time (years in total) scrubbing the linoleum floors on their knees with a dirty sponge for 2 to 12 hours per day. Elan's tiny medical staff did not report this epidemic nor enforce changes in Elan's practices. Who knows how many teenagers uncovered diseases, carpal tunnel or arthritis during their time there?

Outside observers find Elan's practices so repulsive that a bill was passed in 2009 by a bipartisan majority of legislators, and given the designation "H.R. 911" to reflect its extraordinary importance. After several years of false starts in the U.S. House of Representatives and over 30 years of the "behavior modification" industry operating in obscurity, the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act passed the House but disappeared in the Senate. It needs public attention to become law in 2011.

Though Elan represents only a small part of the 10,000+ children industry, Elan would be in violation of every requirement included in H.R. 911, such as;

• "Acts of physical or mental abuse designed to humiliate, degrade, or undermine a child's self-respect ... disciplinary techniques or other practices that involve the withholding of essential food, water, clothing, shelter, or medical care ... shall be prohibited."
  • This specifically pertains to the forced ritual screaming and aggressive, arbitrary discipline that constitute the entirety of Elan's "treatment" program.
• "Each child at such a program shall have reasonable access to a telephone, and be informed of their right to such access, for making and receiving phone calls with as much privacy as possible, and shall have access to the appropriate state or local child abuse reporting hotline number."
  • Elan students regularly spent 4-6 months before making the first of their 15-minute weekly calls to parents. Calls and letters are always monitored and severe punishment is given for disparaging statements. No outside contact with anyone besides immediate family is allowed for the 1-4 years students spend at Elan. And why didn't Elan students have access to child abuse hotlines already?
• "Full disclosure of staff qualifications and their roles and responsibilities ... not later than 10 days after such changes ... an individual shall be ineligible to serve in a position with any contact with children at a covered program if any such record check reveals a felony conviction for child abuse or neglect, spousal abuse, a crime against children (including child pornography), or a crime involving violence, including rape, sexual assault ..."
  • Elan was anything but transparent when providing information to families and authorities that request it. Most Elan employees had no training other than a previous stay at Elan or being "reformed" from a prior criminal background.
• "Child abuse and neglect shall be prohibited."
  • How has Elan escaped major criminal penalties for so long? As a private and supposedly quasi-medical institution acting in loco parentis, it was much harder and more expensive to convict the program of breaking child abuse standards that would apply to parents or individuals. With the complete lack of scientific evidence supporting Elan's "therapy," it wouldn't be long after H.R. 911 passed for the program to be shut down--forcibly or by its owners.

You can read H.R. 911 here.