Is Netflix’s ‘The Program’ real?

Netflix’s true crime documentaries often showcase the darker sides of humanity, but even some seem too harrowing to be true. This is the case with the series entitled The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping.

The title itself effectively communicates exactly what the viewer is in for, and yet it still doesn’t fully prepare you for what’s in store. The Program was made by Katherine Kubler, a survivor of the Ivy Ridge “school,” for lack of a better term. This facility was far from a school.

Ivy Ridge was one of many facilities associated with the troubled teen industry. Parents of children who are acting out or simply struggling enlist facilities such as Ivy Ridge to discipline their children, but there’s a fine line between discipline and abuse. You may wonder how something like this could go on for so long without any intervention. That is also what Kubler wanted to know and how the true crime documentary came to be in the first place.

Is Netflix’s The Program based on facts?

Unfortunately for many survivors, the troubled teen industry is quite real. True crime podcasts such as Last Podcast On the Left have explored this phenomenon, which is more common than many of us would like to believe. Parents who consider their children too difficult to handle will hire these facilities to kidnap their children from their homes and take them to a so-called educational program. But places such as Ivy Ridge aren’t created out of any sense of altruism. It’s an industry in the truest sense because the directors of these prisons are only interested in making money.

Ivy Ridge was in operation from 2001 to 2009, where Kubler and many others were subjected to psychological abuse and inhumane treatment. The filmmaker’s story is similar to many who have endured this experience. As a teenager, she was warm and creative but had the misfortune of clashing with her stepmother. She acted out, as many teens do, by sneaking out and drinking. After being expelled from a private school, her father and stepmother enlisted Ivy Ridge to take her from her old school without warning.

As soon as she entered the doors, she knew something was wrong. She was no longer allowed to leave and was quickly strip-searched. Friendship between the students in the Program was not allowed, and they had to follow a convoluted list of rules that were impossible to follow. They weren’t even allowed to look out the window. Kubler was just one of many subjected to abuse, as she told Time Magazine.

“I made this series because there really was nothing out there to help explain what had happened to me to my friends and family to warn them about these places. So now, that resource exists.”

In the documentary, Kubler and some former classmates return to Ivy Ridge. The building remained abandoned since the facility was shuttered, with files left cluttering the hallways. The former students were aghast to find evidence of their abuse for anyone to find. To this day, Ivy Ridge was only one of many that still exist. These alleged behavioral schools make a profit off of hurting minors while selling a story to their parents that this is a real school. The Program sheds light on a harmful industry that continues to make revenue.