A Utah facility meant to treat teenagers with behavioral issues instead often left them abused and alone, according to a new report.
Former students who attended Elevations Residential Treatment Center in Syracuse said they were restrained by staff, strip searched and even isolated for days on end, NBC News reported.
“I genuinely left worse than when I came in,” Stella Downey, 20, told NBC News. She added she often saw other students ― including her roommate ― engaging in self-harm.
“I would see her covered in blood,” Downey said. “It definitely has scarred me.”
Elevations is just one for-profit center that makes up a larger network of facilities in the “troubled teen industry,” a billion-dollar business that operates with little oversight and has been rife with allegations of abuse, including some reported fatalities.
In 2016, HuffPost first reported on Elevations, which had recently changed its name from Island View. A HuffPost investigation found students were being overly medicated, physically restrained and forced into solitary confinement.
“All youth often feel ‘belittled’ by the staff thinking they are right and the youth are wrong and threaten them with the time-out room,” a state inspector wrote in a 2014 report obtained by HuffPost. “Staff are shaking their car keys implying ‘I get to go home and you don’t.’”
More than a decade later, allegations of abuse at the facility continue. Calls from Elevations to police rose from 15 calls in 2019 to 56 calls in 2023, according to NBC News. And state records show that from May 2023 to May 2024, the facility reported at least 105 incidents of self-harm and 138 uses of physical restraints on residents.
Miranda Goodwill, 20, told NBC News she was restrained face-down by a staffer for throwing books at a wall in 2019.
“I got up, and there was a bunch of blood coming down my ear,” Goodwill said. “They made me tell the people at the hospital that I just fell instead of telling them what actually happened.”
Read the full report at NBC News.
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for mental health support. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention.