Speaker 1: Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
Speaker 1: I'm admitting it. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you don't
Speaker 1: keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you truly. If you can shine as you're going
Speaker 1: to death, you can shine as you're going through Middle Lange, Right, Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: why not start now? I'm going to enjoy my life.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, I'm just a little
Speaker 1: particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just aspect or aspects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm
Speaker 1: Ali Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I
Speaker 1: can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers
Speaker 1: and getting dirty. Okay, this episode is a little bit dark. Today.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about what is called the troubled teen industry,
Speaker 1: which I have been obsessed with for some time. There
Speaker 1: are hundreds of teen rehab facilities and wilderness camps and
Speaker 1: residential treatment centers all over the country that had been
Speaker 1: riddled with reports of physical, emotional and sexual abuse for decades,
Speaker 1: and they are absolutely not regulated by our government. So
Speaker 1: you might have heard that Paris Hilton, who was abused
Speaker 1: herself in one of these facilities in Utah, went before
Speaker 1: the state Congress in February last year calling for legislation
Speaker 1: to reform the troubled teen industry. Utah's Bill sp one
Speaker 1: passed in April last year. In October, she and other survivors,
Speaker 1: including our guest, went to Washington to begin the work
Speaker 1: for legislation at the federal level. And I'm honored to
Speaker 1: have my guest, Caroline call here today to talk about
Speaker 1: her personal experience in one of these places when she
Speaker 1: was a teenager, as well as her current advocacy work
Speaker 1: to bring major changes to the way the industry is conducted.
Speaker 1: Caroline Cole is an entrepreneur, activist, and trauma focused women's
Speaker 1: transformation coach. She's the director of government relations for a nonprofit,
Speaker 1: Breaking Code Silence. Breaking Code Silence is a network of
Speaker 1: institutional abuse survivors who are or were incarcerated in the
Speaker 1: US troubled team industry. Caroline is a co host of
Speaker 1: the new podcast executive produced by Paris Hilton, called Trapped
Speaker 1: and Treatment. Please be aware that there is some discussion
Speaker 1: of assault and abuse which might be triggering for some people.
Speaker 1: Caroline Cole, I'm so happy to have you on this
Speaker 1: podcast today. I have a lot of questions. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me, and I hope to answer
Speaker 1: some of those today. Well, I won't let you off
Speaker 1: until you have so it might be a five hour podcast.
Speaker 1: So let me start by saying that I have a
Speaker 1: few friends who have teenagers that were and are exhibiting
Speaker 1: acute anxiety. Um. I have friends whose children have had
Speaker 1: addiction issues, and everybody circles around this idea of sending
Speaker 1: their team to they call it boarding school. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: people I know whose kids went there, it was not
Speaker 1: a successful situation. And I've read, of course about what
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton dealt with, and I've read so many other reports,
Speaker 1: even in the Salt Lake City Tribune, about how these
Speaker 1: camps i'll call them, are not monitored, are for profit,
Speaker 1: and are riddled with reports of abuse. So before we
Speaker 1: get into all that, and just so my listeners know,
Speaker 1: Caroline is nodding knowingly, do you mind telling me about
Speaker 1: your own experience? Can we start from your personal journey? Absolutely? Um,
Speaker 1: So I also went to a facility like the ones
Speaker 1: that we're hearing about today, and uh, the one that
Speaker 1: I went to was actually in Upstate New York and
Speaker 1: it was called the Academy at Ivy Ridge and it
Speaker 1: was owned by a parent company that was based out
Speaker 1: of Utah called WASP and that stood for the Worldwide
Speaker 1: Association of Specialty Programs. And so, you know, at the
Speaker 1: time I was fourteen, I was going through a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that fourteen year olds go through. You're
Speaker 1: figuring out your place in the world, your hormonal you've
Speaker 1: got you know, friend drama, and you're approaching this time
Speaker 1: in your life where you're expected to be independent and
Speaker 1: have your life figured out, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, anxiety, and so you know, at that time,
Speaker 1: I admittedly had been struggling with some depression, anxiety, um
Speaker 1: not getting along with my family, and also trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with school and it just felt like a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure. So at the time, my mom, like
Speaker 1: a lot of parents now, got onto Google and she
Speaker 1: started searching helped for my daughter struggling teen teen resources
Speaker 1: and was looking for anything that she could find. And
Speaker 1: so she had found this website called teen help dot
Speaker 1: com mom, and it looked like outwardly, it looked like
Speaker 1: a like a referral service almost right, like they were
Speaker 1: just like a resource center that could help you find,
Speaker 1: you know, adequate services for for your children. So she
Speaker 1: got on the phone with them, and you know, they
Speaker 1: and as they do, sold her this story that, Wow, no,
Speaker 1: your daughter is headed down the wrong path. If you
Speaker 1: do not take immediate action, she is going to die.
Speaker 1: She is going to end up in jail. So were you,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't sound like you were exhibiting anything
Speaker 1: that wasn't sort of normal teenage stuff. Why would your
Speaker 1: mother even google this to begin with? Why would she
Speaker 1: think to send you away? Were you shoplifting? Were you?
Speaker 1: I mean, were you acting out in such a big
Speaker 1: way that she felt she needed to look for help
Speaker 1: that way. So at that point I had developed a
Speaker 1: lot of resentment towards my mom, and you know, she
Speaker 1: was carrying on her own relationships and dating someone. And
Speaker 1: you know, at that time too, I was very much,
Speaker 1: like I said, kind of trying to find my place
Speaker 1: in the world. And so I was super into music.
Speaker 1: I was into punk rock. I wanted a mohawk more
Speaker 1: than anybody, and I was obsessed with like late seventies,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought I was going to be a
Speaker 1: music journalist, and so I was like wearing fish nets
Speaker 1: and my mom was like, no, you're fourteen, you can't
Speaker 1: wear fish nets, Like what are you doing? And I
Speaker 1: was putting on thick, dark eyeliner and a lot of
Speaker 1: that scared her, right, And so that was a good
Speaker 1: majority of it. I did not use drugs. I didn't
Speaker 1: sneak out. I wasn't running away, you know, things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And not to justify I do want to mention, though
Speaker 1: not to not to justify that even those things would
Speaker 1: be okay to send your child away. I think really
Speaker 1: what we need to focus on is community based resources
Speaker 1: and and finding assistance within the home setting. So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make that clear. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: she looked at these people as knowing what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and they sold her this idea and she'll tell you this, Um.
Speaker 1: They sold her this idea of family reunification, right, and
Speaker 1: that's saying true to her. She was like, yeah, my
Speaker 1: family is fractured. This is not my daughter. We don't
Speaker 1: have the relationship that we used to have. I want
Speaker 1: a unified family. And that was the package that they
Speaker 1: sold her. Yeah, any parent that here's family reunification is
Speaker 1: going to go sign me up of course exactly, So
Speaker 1: how did you agree to go? So I actually didn't
Speaker 1: know that I was going, and you'll hear this a
Speaker 1: lot through other survivors who tell their stories. Um, at
Speaker 1: the time, I actually thought that I was going to
Speaker 1: summer camp, and I was really excited. I had like
Speaker 1: my Douffel bag packed. I had my little canteen in
Speaker 1: there with my initials on it, and I'm thinking, I'm
Speaker 1: going to summer camp and this is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: And it was the summer right before I started high school,
Speaker 1: so I had all of that on my mind too,
Speaker 1: about you know, starting high school and being with my friends.
Speaker 1: So did your mother tell you you were going to
Speaker 1: summer camp? She did? She did. And oftentimes I will
Speaker 1: say that's usually encouraged by the program off and tell
Speaker 1: parents and say, oh, see that you guys are going
Speaker 1: on a family trip or you guys are you know,
Speaker 1: doing something else. And so I think it was around
Speaker 1: four or five o'clock mid afternoon, and my door flew open.
Speaker 1: I see this man and a woman standing there, and
Speaker 1: they're dressed all in black. Never seen these people in
Speaker 1: my life. Jesus cursed. They come in, gun's blazing, They're like,
Speaker 1: you're under our custody now, don't make any sudden movements.
Speaker 1: And I had never been through anything like that before,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know what to do or and I
Speaker 1: didn't plan on fighting or doing anything. Um, But I
Speaker 1: cooperated with them and they ended up staying in a
Speaker 1: hotel with me that night in downtown San Diego, and
Speaker 1: then the next day we flew all the way to
Speaker 1: New York, where they then handed me off to two
Speaker 1: other transporters who then drove me, I believe, about six
Speaker 1: and a half hours to upstate New York. And what
Speaker 1: are you thinking the whole time? You knew you weren't
Speaker 1: going to play archery and make ceramics? Did It's right
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, it's actually kind of horrible
Speaker 1: because I was that naive. I thought, I really thought,
Speaker 1: because they told me once we were in the car
Speaker 1: that I was going to boarding school. So I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, hell, yeah, get me out of here.
Speaker 1: This might be awesome and this is going to feel
Speaker 1: like college, is what I was thinking. Um, But it
Speaker 1: was very apparent that it was an institution. All of
Speaker 1: the doors were magnetized, they were long, white cinder block hallways.
Speaker 1: I mean this was not a glamorous place. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was This sounds more girl interrupted than like woo who
Speaker 1: summer camp. It got very real, very fast. Okay, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: uh were you abused? Like did that happen? Were you?
Speaker 1: Were you starving? Like these are some of the things
Speaker 1: I've read. So at this facility, we were not allowed
Speaker 1: to talk ever. Ever, I was not allowed to look
Speaker 1: at you and make eye contact. I could not move
Speaker 1: without permission. So and by move I mean literally turned
Speaker 1: my head, I mean to stand up, to move at all.
Speaker 1: They would consider that to be like an attempt at
Speaker 1: running away or you know, look even looking out windows.
Speaker 1: We weren't allowed to look out windows. Um. That was
Speaker 1: considered you know, making plans to run away. And so
Speaker 1: if you were to receive a like demerit um or
Speaker 1: what they called a correction, If you received a correction
Speaker 1: like that, you would lose all of your points and
Speaker 1: all of your levels, which essentially meant that you would
Speaker 1: have to start over. That would add many months to
Speaker 1: your program. There for very very very minor things. Did
Speaker 1: you have a roommate. We had what they called bunk buddies,
Speaker 1: and so you would be in a room there would
Speaker 1: be four people to a room. What was allowed in
Speaker 1: the room was very very little. You were allowed to blanket,
Speaker 1: you were allowed a couple of uniforms. No shoes were allowed,
Speaker 1: and so you wouldn't try to run away. Um. All
Speaker 1: of the windows had bars on them with motions and
Speaker 1: there's on the outside. And we were never allowed to
Speaker 1: turn off our lights or shut the door. So this
Speaker 1: is prison. I mean this sounds like a state prison
Speaker 1: to me. Absolutely. So it was always, um a lurking
Speaker 1: threat that if you were to be obstinate in any way,
Speaker 1: and by obstinate, I mean telling the dorm parents I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that, or stepping out of line, or making
Speaker 1: it obvious that you were being defiant, UM, you would
Speaker 1: be physically restrained. What is physically restrained? Me, I'm happy
Speaker 1: that you're asking that, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people just assume what it means. UM, So what would
Speaker 1: happen is, let's say I stepped out of line. We
Speaker 1: were all expected to stand in a line in line
Speaker 1: structure military style. So if I were to step out
Speaker 1: of line and talk back to a dorm parents say
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this anymore, I'm done with this, she
Speaker 1: would have a walkie talkie and she would say backup,
Speaker 1: staff and um, about four or five male staff members
Speaker 1: would come running from wherever they were and essentially they
Speaker 1: would tackle you and they would shove your face into
Speaker 1: the ground, they would twist your arms behind your back,
Speaker 1: they would sit on your legs, and they would pile
Speaker 1: on top of you until you surrendered. And even if
Speaker 1: you're not having that happened to you, it's a very
Speaker 1: traumatic to witness to hear, because these are your friends,
Speaker 1: these are people you care about, of course, and and
Speaker 1: that was the game. That's how they got us to comply.
Speaker 1: If you still didn't want to comply, after that, they
Speaker 1: would send you to intervention, which, in so many words,
Speaker 1: it's essentially solitary confinement. You're stuck in a tiny room,
Speaker 1: no windows, center block walls, by yourself, and you're there
Speaker 1: until you say, okay, I'll get with the program, will
Speaker 1: do what you want me to do. Did you try
Speaker 1: to reach your mother and to get me the hell
Speaker 1: out of here? So it was explained to us upon
Speaker 1: entering this facility that if we tried to communicate that
Speaker 1: to our parents, that that was manipulation and that we
Speaker 1: were lying, and our parents were already primed and told that, like, look,
Speaker 1: your your child's going to say that they hate it here.
Speaker 1: They're going to say that all this bad stuff is
Speaker 1: happening to them, they're manipulating you. Don't fall for it.
Speaker 1: This is the same behavior that they've had it home, right,
Speaker 1: So then you have a parent we're like, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe their kids were lying to them, maybe they were
Speaker 1: sneaking out. And so they hear this and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, that's what they did at home. I can't
Speaker 1: fall into that. I have to be strong and give
Speaker 1: them this tough love. So there was that, and then
Speaker 1: I want to explain just one other part of this program.
Speaker 1: So you had to earn a phone call home. So
Speaker 1: I actually didn't have a phone call with my mom
Speaker 1: for about a year, so twelve months a year, which
Speaker 1: is a very long time when you're fourteen. It was
Speaker 1: your was your mother freaking out? I mean, didn't she
Speaker 1: want to hear from you? Was? Oh, of course, didn't
Speaker 1: she think that was concerning And she did good. But
Speaker 1: at the time, again you're being told by these people
Speaker 1: who are supposedly professionals that this is part of the program.
Speaker 1: I know it's hard right now, but stay strong. Mom
Speaker 1: and dad stay strong. Um, this is gonna be for
Speaker 1: their own best interest, right, They've got to break away
Speaker 1: from you, and they've got to find themselves, and it's
Speaker 1: all a part of this treatment plan. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, even if we tried to write some of
Speaker 1: these things home, I mean many times this happened to me,
Speaker 1: they would actually redact the letters with black sharpie, or
Speaker 1: they would not send them at all, and you would
Speaker 1: be brought in for a meeting asking why you're manipulating.
Speaker 1: And so you have no access to telephones, to internet,
Speaker 1: to even TV. We had no idea what was going
Speaker 1: on in the world during that time, no news, no
Speaker 1: like you're cut off. So in that same no, I
Speaker 1: will explain just one more thing is that if you,
Speaker 1: let's say, tried to run away, because you're thinking, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go find a phone and as soon as
Speaker 1: I get a phone, I'm going to tell my family
Speaker 1: what's happening. You know, we were told on the daily
Speaker 1: that if someone tried to run, we were to chase
Speaker 1: them down and we were to break their legs and
Speaker 1: stop them by any means possible. So you knew that
Speaker 1: if you try to run, it's not only staff members
Speaker 1: chasing you, it's your friends, it's everybody. You've got forty
Speaker 1: people hunting you, doing anything to stop you. It's terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's terrifying. Even listening to this, I can't imagine. So,
Speaker 1: how long were you in the facility? I was there
Speaker 1: for two and a half years, Caroline. That's a long time.
Speaker 1: It's a very long time. Two and a half years.
Speaker 1: What did you do for two and a half years?
Speaker 1: Did you just become a shell of yourself? I mean,
Speaker 1: did they break you down? So when I first got there,
Speaker 1: the first thing that I noticed, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: giving me goose bumps right now even remembering this. But
Speaker 1: first night that I got there, I slept out in
Speaker 1: the hallway and when I woke up, there were girls
Speaker 1: all around me and they were lining up and they
Speaker 1: had their uniform and their toilet trees in their hands,
Speaker 1: and they were lying end up, standing by the bathroom
Speaker 1: ready to go in and get ready for the day.
Speaker 1: And uh, I remember looking at how strangely hollow they were,
Speaker 1: and you could see it in their eyes, in their face,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we're social creatures. And going for
Speaker 1: two years of not talking, not being able to reach
Speaker 1: out in hug someone or say I love you, or
Speaker 1: you just excuse me or thank you. We're having that connection,
Speaker 1: you turn inside yourself. It's the only way to keep
Speaker 1: your mind connected um to reality, to what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And of course you're somewhere where you don't want to be,
Speaker 1: and so the whole time you're playing movies in your mind,
Speaker 1: trying to keep yourself hopeful, trying to keep yourself thinking
Speaker 1: about when you get out. Um, okay, so what was
Speaker 1: the worst thing that happened of all the atrocities for
Speaker 1: you personally, That probably ways over and over in your mind.
Speaker 1: For me, it was a lot of what I witnessed.
Speaker 1: So I never while I was there, had experienced physical restraint,
Speaker 1: mostly because I complied to a fault. I was quiet,
Speaker 1: I kept to myself. I minded whatever anyone told me
Speaker 1: to do, which is a weird also kind of trauma,
Speaker 1: because you start to um, you feel broken in the
Speaker 1: sense that you complied so much to the people that
Speaker 1: were abusing you, and so that isn't just a trauma
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Being in that environment alone is traumatizing.
Speaker 1: Seeing it happen to your friend and knowing that it
Speaker 1: could be you next, you know, you stand there with
Speaker 1: your eyes forward, head down, heart pounding, knees shaking in panic.
Speaker 1: And so for me, there's a memory. Um, so there
Speaker 1: was one student there and she had decided that it
Speaker 1: was enough and she needed to do anything possible to
Speaker 1: make it to a hospital to be able to reach
Speaker 1: her parents, and so she actually threw herself over the
Speaker 1: second story floor of a stair rail. And UM, those
Speaker 1: sounds will for every day in my mind. You could
Speaker 1: hear gasps and people go, and then you hear a noise,
Speaker 1: and then something hit the ground and you hear people saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, she jumped, and and again we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to talk, so you were just hearing staff members
Speaker 1: reacting to this. And um, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: instances like that. I mean, that's one. That's one I
Speaker 1: have to tell you. Listening to this, so it sounds
Speaker 1: like you're pitching me a plot for a horror film. Seriously,
Speaker 1: let's take a short break, all right, let's get back
Speaker 1: to it. And how did you eventually get out? Why
Speaker 1: were you released after two and a half years on
Speaker 1: good behavior. So it was a very long time. By
Speaker 1: the time I left, I had been there out of
Speaker 1: the entire facility. I had been there for the second longest,
Speaker 1: and so the only other person who had been there
Speaker 1: longer was my dear friend to this day, Monica, and
Speaker 1: she had gotten there two weeks before me, and so
Speaker 1: we left at the same time. And we actually got
Speaker 1: to leave because we had completed the program, which means
Speaker 1: that we had climbed up through all of the levels
Speaker 1: and all of the ranks that we were required. There
Speaker 1: were six levels in total, but yeah, we completed the program,
Speaker 1: and at that point, you know, it was a huge
Speaker 1: honor to have graduated. We attended our brainwashy final seminar
Speaker 1: with our parents and then after that we were allowed
Speaker 1: to go home, and you know, it seemed unreal at
Speaker 1: that time. Did you tell your parents everything that happened
Speaker 1: at the time, I didn't, hm. And really why that
Speaker 1: was is because it had been thrilled into us that
Speaker 1: if we complained about the program, that we were not
Speaker 1: working the program, and that meant that we were what
Speaker 1: they would call playing the victim. And so if we
Speaker 1: were playing the victim, that means that we were not
Speaker 1: ready to go home, right, So it's this whole psychological
Speaker 1: thing of if you complain that means you're not ready.
Speaker 1: So you learn to just be quiet because you want
Speaker 1: to be ready to go home and you don't want
Speaker 1: to be sent back. So that was also the fear
Speaker 1: that if I look like I'm not going with the program,
Speaker 1: then I might get sent back. So tell me about
Speaker 1: these seminars. Even though they're going to make me want
Speaker 1: to pull my hair up. They're very atrocious. Um there,
Speaker 1: they sound like they're probably really CULTI right, they're incredibly culty.
Speaker 1: So if you think of this, like what's come out
Speaker 1: about Nexium. Are you familiar with the story. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: very very very similar self help style. Um, brainwashing and UM.
Speaker 1: This kind of ideology came from a cult that started
Speaker 1: in the late fifties called sinnol On and they participated
Speaker 1: in something called attack therapy, And it was this idea
Speaker 1: that if you be rated and belittled someone and like
Speaker 1: got inside their mind and their trauma and broke them down,
Speaker 1: that you could somehow build them back up. And so
Speaker 1: in our facility and in these WASP programs and a
Speaker 1: lot of programs like it, they really preach this idea
Speaker 1: of accountability, which on on surface level, sounds good, right,
Speaker 1: and the worst thing in the world was to be
Speaker 1: a victim. Right, You do not want to be a victim.
Speaker 1: If you are a victim, you're not working the program,
Speaker 1: you're not ready to go home. As I explained, So
Speaker 1: essentially what seminars would look like is you would share
Speaker 1: your deepest, darkest traumas and then you would be torn
Speaker 1: apart in front of a room of about a hundred people.
Speaker 1: And some people would share stories of sexual assault or
Speaker 1: abuse at the hands of a family member, and then
Speaker 1: we would be made to tell that person that they
Speaker 1: were a victim, that they were a slot, that they
Speaker 1: asked for it, that they needed to be accountable for
Speaker 1: the trauma that had happened to them, and it was
Speaker 1: applauded if you could make that person break down. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's a lot of trauma for
Speaker 1: us too about the things that we've done to other people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Um, you know, we were put in positions
Speaker 1: where we were forced to be the abuser in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, and that's really heavy to deal with.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I'm sure. So did you know anybody that
Speaker 1: was sexually abused? Because I know that that's something that
Speaker 1: is rampant and threw a lot of these institutions I did,
Speaker 1: and with several people. Actually, So there was a woman
Speaker 1: at our facility who was the girl's side supervisor, and
Speaker 1: she is particularly bitter, gruff, mean woman, and she can
Speaker 1: make your life. Help um. So again back to points
Speaker 1: and levels. You know, the more points you have, the
Speaker 1: higher levels you have, the closer you are to going home.
Speaker 1: And she had no problem just snapping her fingers and
Speaker 1: ripping that away from you. And so people were very
Speaker 1: motivated to comply with whatever she would say or do.
Speaker 1: And everybody knew that this person had favorites. She actually
Speaker 1: then carried on relationships with these women and I was
Speaker 1: witnessed to some of that. I do know that, uh,
Speaker 1: the people that she did this too are actively dealing
Speaker 1: with this trauma and it's incredibly hard for them. I'm
Speaker 1: sure she was a predator and they just sort of
Speaker 1: did what they had to do to survive this place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did your mother ever apologize to you? She has, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has very recently. In the situation of where there's
Speaker 1: private placement, where a parent is placing a child in
Speaker 1: a facility like this, parents are being victimized, They're being conned.
Speaker 1: If you look at these websites. Oh, they're the most
Speaker 1: gorgeous websites. You log on. You see kids singing Kumbaya
Speaker 1: around a campfire. They're smiling, they look like squeaky clean,
Speaker 1: like I love you mom and dad. Uh. They look
Speaker 1: like everything that a parent with a struggling teenager would want.
Speaker 1: And these programs tout things like leadership development and character
Speaker 1: building and like even college prep style quality. And it's
Speaker 1: just not it is a sham, but it's just a
Speaker 1: perfect recipe because you have parents that are just over
Speaker 1: their head, and as a parent, I can understand falling
Speaker 1: into that trap. So then they get you. They victimize
Speaker 1: you in a way so that you can't retaliate, and
Speaker 1: you're left with years of trauma and they've just made
Speaker 1: a shipload of money. And by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't say this is every facility like this. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not all schools. But I have read that
Speaker 1: in Utah itself, the industry pulled in three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight million dollars in revenue in twenty alone, just
Speaker 1: in that year and accounted for sixty hundred jobs. And
Speaker 1: I also read, and you can attest to this, that
Speaker 1: a lot of these therapists aren't even licensed. So this
Speaker 1: is a racket that seems to be incredibly profitable and
Speaker 1: nobody's really doing the checks and balances with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for a number of years, whenever I would tell
Speaker 1: my story to people, their very first reaction would all
Speaker 1: I mean, it was so predictable. Their first reaction would be, oh,
Speaker 1: so you were a bad kid. Hawk you were? You
Speaker 1: were a troublemaker, weren't you? You went to one of
Speaker 1: those facilities. And so that was our ideology as a culture,
Speaker 1: is that these are bad kids and they can't function
Speaker 1: in school and there's no other choice, and we have
Speaker 1: to send them away because that's the only option. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we've kind of embraced this idea
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, you get what you deserve, you make
Speaker 1: bad choices, this is what happens. And you know, it
Speaker 1: shows such a callousness that we have towards young people
Speaker 1: and mental health. These are mental health issues. I've not
Speaker 1: met one person who has not experienced trauma before they
Speaker 1: were sent to a facility like this. So it's the
Speaker 1: issue actually bad kids, or is it the fact that
Speaker 1: we don't want to recognize that young people have mental
Speaker 1: health needs that we are not fulfilling, and we're not
Speaker 1: fulfilling in the right way. I mean, even when I
Speaker 1: hear you talk about this, I think about like alcoholics
Speaker 1: and how alcoholics anonymous. The reason that it works is
Speaker 1: because there's a sense of community and it's nurturing, and
Speaker 1: that's the opposite of what these are doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are just horror houses. Really, it's it's the opposite
Speaker 1: of everything that you need, especially as a teenager. I mean,
Speaker 1: how much was this a year? Uh So, I believe
Speaker 1: my mom paid, and I will tell you this was
Speaker 1: about seventeen years ago. My mom was paying about five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month. Now that price has gone up substantially,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes caregivers, parents and even states now because they're
Speaker 1: now taking children from child welfare, children from juvenile justice
Speaker 1: special education, they're paying like sixteen thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're expensive. This is a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So if we want to dig in just for a second,
Speaker 1: because I know you were asking about, like, how is
Speaker 1: this industry possible? I'll explain some of the logistics because
Speaker 1: I think it's actually rather fascinating to understand how we
Speaker 1: got to this place, and um, it was a journey
Speaker 1: I went on when I started facing this trauma and
Speaker 1: then trying to understand, like how is this legal? How
Speaker 1: is that legal? For some? So here's the real kicker
Speaker 1: is that the facility I went to was not licensed,
Speaker 1: It was not accredited, and so I couldn't transfer any
Speaker 1: of my academic credits, which meant that I ultimately left
Speaker 1: school with a tenth grade education and that created years
Speaker 1: of repercussions for me that I'm still dealing with to
Speaker 1: this day. It was essentially a guy from Utah who
Speaker 1: bought a building in New York, made a website he said,
Speaker 1: some mer kids. I think he was like an electrician
Speaker 1: before he had no absolutely no knowledge of child development
Speaker 1: psychology like anything. We didn't have any nurses there. There
Speaker 1: were no psychiatrists, like it was just some some guy.
Speaker 1: How is that possible? I know, it's a really good question.
Speaker 1: So when these facilities first came about in the like
Speaker 1: late fifties, sixties and seventies, is really when this industry
Speaker 1: took off. They would spring up in little towns, you know,
Speaker 1: mid America, UM specifically Utah, and at the time people
Speaker 1: had issues with it, like it's actually incredible that we
Speaker 1: started this conversation way back then and little to no
Speaker 1: progress has been made. But people would question. Let's use
Speaker 1: pro Volcanian School for an example, which is the topic
Speaker 1: of our podcast, Trapping Treatment. So when pro Volcanian School
Speaker 1: popped up, the community immediately said, wait a second, they're
Speaker 1: keeping kids in shackles. How is this a school. This
Speaker 1: is not a school. And so then they said, but
Speaker 1: it's also not really a detention center, and it's also
Speaker 1: not a mental health facility. And so these facilities have
Speaker 1: always existed in this void of no one really knowing
Speaker 1: what they are or how they identify. So when we
Speaker 1: look at regulation of an industry, a lot of that
Speaker 1: depends on the license of the business or school or
Speaker 1: detention center, right, and so once we know what category
Speaker 1: it falls in, then we know what regulations apply to it.
Speaker 1: But because these facilities always said nope, no, nope, we're
Speaker 1: not a school, we're not a detention facility, we're not
Speaker 1: a mental health provider like, it's been virtually untouchable from
Speaker 1: any kind of regulatory body. So government has been very
Speaker 1: hesitant to want to intervene because for a lot of
Speaker 1: years these facilities were all private pay private dollars, so
Speaker 1: they saw it as private industry, we can't really regulate,
Speaker 1: we can't interfere, And so that's actually really changed in
Speaker 1: the past twenty years. And now we're seeing a large
Speaker 1: number over a hundred thousand young people every year through
Speaker 1: public placements, child welfare, juvenile justice, special education, who are
Speaker 1: entering these facilities, So that dynamic has changed a little bit,
Speaker 1: but still the oversight is horrendously lacking. And and does
Speaker 1: insurance now play a parton this? Does Medicaid cover any
Speaker 1: of this when they send their kids to these places?
Speaker 1: So private insurance largely will not pay. Medicaid does pay
Speaker 1: for some facility. So here's kind of the real kicker
Speaker 1: is that from state to state licensure and licensure requirements
Speaker 1: varies drastically. But let me ask you this. If I
Speaker 1: started one of these places, Okay, I'm going to buy
Speaker 1: a building and I'm I'm going to just say, oh,
Speaker 1: I've started a treatment center for teens, and let's say
Speaker 1: that you know it doesn't comply in any way that
Speaker 1: you know kids have gotten hurt. They could shut me down,
Speaker 1: but I could reopen another place down the street if
Speaker 1: I wanted not even down the street. You could do
Speaker 1: it in the same building. You could call yourself a
Speaker 1: different name, have same residents there, same roster of staff,
Speaker 1: and then call yourself a different name, And this happens
Speaker 1: a lot. Is the government starting to intervene more now? Yes?
Speaker 1: And no? Okay, So fundamentally there's some issues with the
Speaker 1: government intervening. Because let's use Massachusetts for an example. Of
Speaker 1: Massachusetts does not require therapeutic boarding schools to be licensed
Speaker 1: in the state, so they're not even required to be
Speaker 1: licensed at all, which then means that they're not required
Speaker 1: to report anything. The state doesn't know how many people
Speaker 1: are in there. They also don't know if there's been
Speaker 1: any deaths, if there's been any physical restraints taking place.
Speaker 1: They have no idea, so their access to that information
Speaker 1: is really lacking. I'll give you another example in Utah.
Speaker 1: Previous to the bill that we just passed, we were
Speaker 1: able to pass in a bill on which changed some
Speaker 1: of these requirements. But previous to that, facilities were only
Speaker 1: required to report incidents that required more than first aid
Speaker 1: once a month. Okay, So that kind of leaves a
Speaker 1: lot to the imagination. More than first aid. What does
Speaker 1: that mean is this hospitalization. Is this a death once
Speaker 1: a month? So that can leave you to question that
Speaker 1: even when the state got those reports, they're not going
Speaker 1: to that facility to investigate something that happened a month ago. Um,
Speaker 1: they kept those reports. I'm, you know, making some broad
Speaker 1: assumptions here, but they kept those reports stacked on a
Speaker 1: desk somewhere, and and there was not actual advocacy or
Speaker 1: investigations taking place, which is again part of this issue
Speaker 1: of even if there is oversight, what are the actual
Speaker 1: practices of the oversight? Are they meaningful? Jesus? I also
Speaker 1: read that at Provocani in school, they wouldn't even give
Speaker 1: you a name. They wouldn't call you Caroline, They'd call
Speaker 1: you three oh nine. You know, they just give you
Speaker 1: a number. I mean, that's how dehumanizing it was. And
Speaker 1: that was the point um interesting story. So the man
Speaker 1: who owned the facility that I went to a family,
Speaker 1: A member of his reached out to us last year,
Speaker 1: and this family member said, look, I am deeply embarrassed
Speaker 1: about what my family has done to you and to
Speaker 1: the entire survivor community. I want to help. So I
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to meet with him in person, and
Speaker 1: like like finally, like I'm sure you can imagine, Like
Speaker 1: I had so many questions and so um. The one
Speaker 1: thing that I asked, out of many things, but the
Speaker 1: one thing that I asked was was it ever about
Speaker 1: helping children? Was it ever about helping? Because I I
Speaker 1: felt like inside myself, I really wanted to believe that
Speaker 1: somewhere along the way things just got out of control.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to at least believe that the intention
Speaker 1: was to help. And what he said to me was
Speaker 1: he kind of laughed, and he said, it was never
Speaker 1: They knew what they were doing was it was never
Speaker 1: about helping you guys. They looked at you as a commodity,
Speaker 1: as a number, as a dollar sign profit profit mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's amazing to me that most of
Speaker 1: these facilities didn't have a licensed nurse or any real
Speaker 1: health care because they were giving these kids injections of sedatives.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's crazy, it's illegal. So interestingly enough, I
Speaker 1: suffered from migraines, and you know, at one point in time,
Speaker 1: I was having a migraine so horrific that I went
Speaker 1: to the hospital and they ended up giving me like
Speaker 1: a cocktail of bena drill and like another antihistamine. And
Speaker 1: so those sedatives that they use on these kids is
Speaker 1: usually Bena drill mixed with Howdall, which is like a
Speaker 1: very heavy ani psychotic. Jesus, and so I just got
Speaker 1: the bena drill half of it right, not even the antipsychotic. Really,
Speaker 1: I was like, give me anything. And when I tell
Speaker 1: you that, for hours after that, I could not even
Speaker 1: willingly open my eyes. I was out. I was incapacitated,
Speaker 1: not in control of my body. And so what we're
Speaker 1: seeing coming out of these facilities is that they're using
Speaker 1: these sedatives so often that it's leaving children debilitated and
Speaker 1: unable to advocate for themselves. If it takes you two
Speaker 1: days to recover and then a couple of days later
Speaker 1: you get another one, I mean you're always in this
Speaker 1: state of not being able to function well. And imagine
Speaker 1: the sexual abuse that happens there. I mean you're practically
Speaker 1: being roofied in this facility. Yes, and there's actually a
Speaker 1: really horrific documented case of this, as there are several,
Speaker 1: but again going back to not everything is required to
Speaker 1: be reported, and some things just aren't found out until
Speaker 1: you know much later. But there was a Devereaux facility
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia eight year old little girl Jesus who had disability,
Speaker 1: and they had inoculate at her with that seditive and
Speaker 1: unfortunately she was horrifically assaulted. How why was an eight
Speaker 1: year old in a facility like this? So some of
Speaker 1: these facilities take children as young as six who could
Speaker 1: just be autistic, right absolutely, who could just have some
Speaker 1: other issue that they're not saying, Yes, God, Caroline, it's
Speaker 1: so awful, it is really awful. And um there is
Speaker 1: currently a facility in Massachusetts and and the population that
Speaker 1: they served there is largely autistic individuals. And so they
Speaker 1: use a device called g E D and it is
Speaker 1: an electro shock device. And I'll admit I was a
Speaker 1: little bit naive. I didn't really know. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about this style of intervention, and so I like wanted
Speaker 1: to believe, Like my rational mind was like, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it just feels like a little pinch, Maybe it's
Speaker 1: not that bad. And um, So Neuroclastic an organization called
Speaker 1: neuro Plastic. Please look them up. If you are a
Speaker 1: parent that has a child with disability or who is neurodiverse,
Speaker 1: please look up Neuroclastic they're incredible. But they issued a
Speaker 1: report on this issue, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: this report cited is that that electro shock is actually
Speaker 1: ten times more powerful than a stun gun, ten times
Speaker 1: more powerful. And you know, it's claimed that this device
Speaker 1: is being used to intervene on self harming behavior. So
Speaker 1: if someone is smashing their head against a wall or
Speaker 1: doing something that could cause incredible damage. Um, But that's
Speaker 1: actually not what's being reported from the facility. It's for
Speaker 1: things as simple as standing up without permission. Um. Very
Speaker 1: similar to the allowances of the facility that I went to.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Caroline, and we'll be right back, and
Speaker 1: we're back. So a lot of these survivors there's got
Speaker 1: to be residual mental health issues with them. I have
Speaker 1: read a lot about PTSD with some of the people
Speaker 1: that happened later on. So tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Well, there's a really high rate of suicide,
Speaker 1: and there's also a really high rate of addiction and
Speaker 1: also abusive relationships afterwards. So even myself, I'm a domestic
Speaker 1: violence survivor and I went into a relationship which you know,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, it's wild. I was almost seventeen when I
Speaker 1: left the facility, and then I was in this relationship
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen, and so you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at just the dynamic of like how much I
Speaker 1: had to silence my own feelings in the facility of
Speaker 1: like this is abuse, this is wrong run you know.
Speaker 1: So then when I'm out and actually having relationships with people, UM,
Speaker 1: I had already silenced that part of me that would said,
Speaker 1: don't tolerate this, get safe. And we see that, I mean,
Speaker 1: our survivors have just like an outstanding amount of chronic
Speaker 1: PTSD chronic illnesses. We also see a lot of that
Speaker 1: too in our population. And so we're actually in the
Speaker 1: middle of developing an academic study where we'll be able
Speaker 1: to look at kind of the life of the survivors.
Speaker 1: So we're going to be asking them questions about what
Speaker 1: happened before, what happened while you were there, and then
Speaker 1: what was your life like afterwards, So we can start
Speaker 1: to establish um, these unique experiences as being a population
Speaker 1: in and of itself, so hopefully we can then start
Speaker 1: to develop treatment for it. So tell us where the
Speaker 1: fight is now, what's going on today? So I'm the
Speaker 1: co CEO of an organization called unsilenced, and we are
Speaker 1: a group of survivors with lived experience of this industry.
Speaker 1: People who have gone to ranches, boot camps, wilderness programs,
Speaker 1: behavior modification facilities, psychiatric units, all of the above, people
Speaker 1: who have experienced institutional abuse. And we're doing several things.
Speaker 1: The biggest and probably most noteworthy right now is the
Speaker 1: Accountability for Congregate Care Act, which we have actually been
Speaker 1: able to partner with Paris Hilton to get exposure on
Speaker 1: this issue. The Accountability for Congregate Care Act does several things,
Speaker 1: and I will say this is the first step of many.
Speaker 1: There's no miracle piece of legislation out there that's going
Speaker 1: to shut this industry down. It's just impossible. By now,
Speaker 1: this industry has actually infiltrated so much of the mental
Speaker 1: health system in psychiatric facilities that we have to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of some untangling, right what is true
Speaker 1: mental health treatment and what is this, you know, behavior modification,
Speaker 1: and where are the lines? What is therapeutic and what's not?
Speaker 1: And so what this bill will do is it will
Speaker 1: create a very comprehensive bill of rights for young people
Speaker 1: in these facilities. So it's everything from the right to
Speaker 1: be free from physical restraint, the right to access education,
Speaker 1: the right to deny gynecological exams. UM. Forced pap smears
Speaker 1: are a thing that happens in these programs, not all
Speaker 1: of them, but some. And so we we outline, you know,
Speaker 1: all all of the hallmarks of what we're seeing. And
Speaker 1: then what we do in this bill is we are
Speaker 1: asking states to come up with minimum licensure requirements that
Speaker 1: would support and uphold this bill of rights. So this
Speaker 1: needs to trickle down to the state level where we're
Speaker 1: making sure that these things are not happening. UM. On
Speaker 1: top of that, one of the rights that we have
Speaker 1: listed in this bill is the right to recourse, the
Speaker 1: right to be able to contact a protection and advocacy agency,
Speaker 1: and the right to report the abuses that are happening. Right,
Speaker 1: so that has always been a big wall and being
Speaker 1: able to have these young people advocate for themsel else
Speaker 1: is even access to a telephone, access to say what's happening?
Speaker 1: Is happening. The other thing that this bill will do
Speaker 1: is it will create funding for protection and advocacy agencies.
Speaker 1: So every single state has something called a Protection and
Speaker 1: Advocacy Agency or pen A, and p and a s
Speaker 1: are allowed to go in any facility or anywhere where
Speaker 1: disabled people exist. So they're largely known as like disability
Speaker 1: rights centers or disability law centers. Across the US, every
Speaker 1: single state has one, and they can enter any facility
Speaker 1: at any time. They can investigate, they can talk to
Speaker 1: the young people there in private, they can talk to
Speaker 1: staff in private, they can write reports, they can make
Speaker 1: recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services and
Speaker 1: also to the Department of Justice, and they can also litigate.
Speaker 1: So they have a lot of power, and we feel
Speaker 1: that it's necessary at this point to have a third
Speaker 1: party be able to, you know, intervene and inspect and
Speaker 1: take action on behalf of these young people. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like the foster care system. You
Speaker 1: have an outside person that comes in on behalf of
Speaker 1: the children and interviews them and make sure that the
Speaker 1: place that they're dwelling in is safe. Similar. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: and and that's actually a really interesting point. So we
Speaker 1: have child abuse response systems in our nation, like like
Speaker 1: you said, cps UM, but what's really strange is that
Speaker 1: they will only respond to child abuse that's happening in
Speaker 1: the home. If it's happening in a facility that's out
Speaker 1: of their jurisdiction, and so oftentimes when abuse is reported
Speaker 1: it falls onto law enforcement. Well, law enforcement is already stressed, overstrained,
Speaker 1: and usually they just looked for like was a law broken,
Speaker 1: yes or no? Was someone injured? And even then it
Speaker 1: usually doesn't result in any kind of meaningful action. There
Speaker 1: was a guy who worked at Red Rock and he
Speaker 1: reported he said, look, these kids are not being fed properly,
Speaker 1: they're being threatened. And he got fired for it and saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's abuse happening. So it I can't
Speaker 1: believe that this doesn't already exist, that these people aren't
Speaker 1: watched all the time. These programs are especially litigious, and
Speaker 1: you know, when they've got a bank roll of millions
Speaker 1: upon millions of dollars every year, it's very easy for
Speaker 1: them to take people to court. And that's historically has
Speaker 1: just always been what's happened to whistleblowers. And I'm actually
Speaker 1: expecting to find something in my mail any day now
Speaker 1: saying that they're wanting to take me to quarter you know,
Speaker 1: cease and desist or something like that. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna if you're gonna make noise that's gonna probably upset
Speaker 1: them exactly. So you know, we'll see what happens over
Speaker 1: the course of this next year as we continue to
Speaker 1: push forward with the Accountability for Congregate Care Act. I
Speaker 1: am aware that these providers already know what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and they are preparing their counter argument, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting next year. But I do hope that
Speaker 1: this bill gets past and and urge your lawmakers or
Speaker 1: urge your congress people to get involved with this issue.
Speaker 1: It is a bipartisan issue as well. I just want
Speaker 1: to emphasize that very important. It's affecting every community in
Speaker 1: every state, and is this the best way to support you?
Speaker 1: That the best thing we can do. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways that you can get involved. I would say, immediately,
Speaker 1: go to our website Unsilenced dot org. You can email
Speaker 1: me directly. I will give you all of my contact information.
Speaker 1: Go to our website. We have something right now called
Speaker 1: a street team, uh and we're a remote organization, so
Speaker 1: everything that we do is in the online space. This
Speaker 1: is our battleground. And so we might say to the
Speaker 1: street team, okay, everyone head over to Twitter. We need
Speaker 1: you to tag X, Y, z politician on this post.
Speaker 1: Let's get attention to make this go viral, and so
Speaker 1: we've been able to really apply a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: and making movement that way. Uh So, like, get involved.
Speaker 1: If you have someone in your life who's been affected
Speaker 1: by this industry, please give them our information. Like I said,
Speaker 1: our website is on silenced dot org. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram, TikTok. We're also on Facebook and
Speaker 1: our handle is unsilenced underscore. Now is there any merit
Speaker 1: into creating a website for parents that basically tells you
Speaker 1: about these particular schools. Interestingly enough, we have a massive database.
Speaker 1: If you go to our website and you click on
Speaker 1: I think it's Investigations, and you'll see something there that
Speaker 1: says facility archive and click on that and it's going
Speaker 1: to show you a map and you can hover over
Speaker 1: each state and it will highlight that state and you
Speaker 1: can click into it and then it will list all
Speaker 1: of the facilities in that state. If you click into
Speaker 1: a facility, it's going to show you a long list
Speaker 1: of everything from DHS records, police records, um news articles,
Speaker 1: survivor stories, anything that we can document and get our
Speaker 1: hands on. We put into this database. Um our website
Speaker 1: also has a list of different red flags to watch
Speaker 1: out for. So if you are trying to find help
Speaker 1: for the young people in your life, you can find
Speaker 1: some recommendations there and we'd be more than happy to
Speaker 1: find those resources for you as well. So if you're
Speaker 1: not finding it on our site, reach out to us. Yes,
Speaker 1: the irony that treatment leaves a community of survivors. So
Speaker 1: tell me about your podcast that that Paris Hilton produces. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: Trapped in Treatment is our podcast which exposes the troubled
Speaker 1: team industry. And so we actually document the history of
Speaker 1: pro Vocanian School, which is the facility that Paris went to,
Speaker 1: and we take you inside the journey of showing up
Speaker 1: at the facility, living there for however long you're there, um,
Speaker 1: experiencing that type of discipline, and then we go into um,
Speaker 1: you know, what life is like after, you know. Ultimately
Speaker 1: we talked about the movement and and everything that we're doing. Now.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I can't wait to listen. You know, you
Speaker 1: need a season at least to go through everything that
Speaker 1: you guys have gone through. I'm so sorry that you
Speaker 1: went through this, I really am. My heartbreaks for you
Speaker 1: and every survivor that had to deal with this, especially
Speaker 1: because their children, children, they their frontal lobe hasn't developed yet,
Speaker 1: and to be put through all of this should be illegal.
Speaker 1: So thank you for sharing your story. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you, you know, sharing the platform, and
Speaker 1: it's been an honor. Thank you. Usually at the end
Speaker 1: of Go Ask Alli, I have my guest asked me
Speaker 1: a question, but I've been so fascinated by what Caroline
Speaker 1: has been talking about that I sort of blew through
Speaker 1: it because I wanted every last minute with her to
Speaker 1: talk about this, because it's it's unimaginable, I mean really
Speaker 1: unfathomable that these institutions still exist and are not regulated.
Speaker 1: And I have to say I have great empathy, and
Speaker 1: I feel so honored to be able to talk to
Speaker 1: Caroline and and my hats off to the survivors that
Speaker 1: are going into Congress now and fighting to help people
Speaker 1: not only who are incarcerated now, but in the future.
Speaker 1: And my feeling is, if legislation is not passed correctly,
Speaker 1: we got to close these places down. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to Go Ask Ali. Check out our show notes
Speaker 1: for a lot more information. Be sure to subscribe rate
Speaker 1: and review the podcast, and follow me on social media
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ali Wentworth and on Instagram at the
Speaker 1: Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like to ask me
Speaker 1: a question or suggest a guest or a topic to
Speaker 1: dig into, I would love to hear from you, and
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can
Speaker 1: call or text me at three to three four six
Speaker 1: three five six, or you can email a voice memo
Speaker 1: right now from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. If you leave a question, I
Speaker 1: just might hear it and go ask ally. Go Ask
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