That comic made me sob both the first time I read it, and when I came back to the finished product.

And yeah elan school has been sufficiently investigated to leave little chance that Joe wasn't being as truthful as someone can be about an incredibly traumatizing teenage experience.

Thanks for sharing this. I've still got quite a few chapters to go, but I wanted to comment this thought before I forget it: it's so incredibly striking how powerful the small acts of kindness are. I've cried more at the little gestures of kindness than at all the cruelty.

I don't like comics usually but I swallowed that. Such a good read and so traumatizing! I think everybody should read that, it feels so real and I cried and was shocked so many times. Hardly anything before made me feel all the pain with them and I wish the best to everyone who has had to go through that.

Fucking Netflix, right? Ughh

Beautiful justice.

As satisfying as fantasizing about arson is, I imagine these facilities are usually insured. It’s also easy to spin into a sob story - these places often take advantage of the fact that they work with underprivileged/foster youth to get community donations. “Oh no, we can’t help children anymore! Gib us money!”

I got my facility taken off DonorsChoose - absolutely enraging that they were able to use that site as a for profit institution.

It’s a problem that needs to be attacked at the root ultimately. Children should have their rights protected. Remember how the US refused to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? We also need more parenting classes - I’ve never been given the opportunity to be a parent, but I’ve talked with lots of parents about things like Love and Logic. Or just even accepting the fact that kids can just be weird or different sometimes - I should not have been punished for being uncomfortable with eye contact.

In the short term, educating people about these individual facilities. Making sure that the children who die in these places have their names remembered. I make signs with the name of the child my abusers killed, and just blanket surrounding neighborhoods with it.

I’ve only been able to make it to page 10. People often mock the idea of being “triggered” but fuck, it makes me need my trazadone. I want to print this in full color and leave it everywhere I can.

I made it to chapter 60 over the last 90 minutes.

I can’t even describe how angry I feel about that. Expletives don’t fit. I’m not big on death penalty, but I think these people deserve it - more than some who are sentenced to death.

I also am feeling incredibly grateful that my parents didn’t get caught up in the scam.

The energy tied up in all of that is so familiar. Just the entire vibe of senseless unmitigated cruelty and mindless nonsensical screaming hits so hard and reminds me so much of some of the shittiest people I've encountered in my life. What Joe describes feels like a horrible distillation of something that's a lot more pervasive than any one 'school' or cult or particular group of organized assholes systematically ruining people's lives. It hit hard. Thanks for sharing it.

Thank you for sharing this. Probably one of the hardest reads of my life, it's incredibly powerful and well written so it conveys the horrors of the experience in an almost visceral way.

It also really helped me understand at a much more personal level how these addiction/reeducation camps and cults break people mentally and emotionally.

Sure, you read about these kinds of things happening in the news, but it never hit home for me what that experience is like until reading this.

Thank you.

Allegand Jones was killed after refusing to undress for a staff member. Youth Villages at Bartlett is still operating.

It’s these southern states. “Parental rights” is always a code for “children are property to be disposed as we wish.”

the things they can justify with religion should give anyone pause.

Well considering that North Korea and Russia exist it’s not soooo far fetched. The real surprise is how it has been considered until recently as THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. We were so blind…

I just found out that my facility claimed another life, within the months I’ve been trying to get the state to investigate it. Not reported anywhere, just personally have been loud enough to have former employees reach out to me.

Fuck anyone involved who doesn’t become a whistleblower.

Even before Zuckerberg, these groups often have a religious coating. US law enforcement lets religious groups do whatever they want until the problem becomes undeniable. Even then, they drag their feet, and Republican politicians look sad while talking about how religious liberty is being destroyed.

The funniest thing about my story is that it was kind of the reverse of the regular one. My mom was the wild one who did drugs, and was trying to keep me from noticing.

I wasn’t really “troubled.” I didn’t do drugs, I was a shy weird kid with good grades, never acted up in school - I didn’t learn the word “blowjob” until we watched Why Did I Get Married as part of “group therapy.” My mom just was a munchausen psycho. The actual psychiatric hospitals she sent me to would pick up on that quickly, but these fucking places don’t care, they just want the cash.