One of the most disturbing new documentaries has landed on Netflix – and users are being warned only to watch if you’re emotionally stable.
The new factual piece is called The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping. It focuses on teenagers sent to New York boarding school Ivy Ridge, which was a behavioural correction facility for misbehaving kids. But taken away from their parents, the ‘students’ were subject to horrific physical and psychological abuse.
Narrated by former pupil Katherine Kubler, who spent 15 months at the facility, the documentary shows how teens were involved in fake kidnappings from their beds in the middle of the night before being brought to the school, which has since closed down.
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Students were not allowed to speak, look out of the window, or smile while at Ivy Ridge. More claimed they were watched by staff members while using the toilet and were restrained on more than one occasion. Others had to sleep on mattresses in the hallway with their arms out at their sides.
(Image: Netflix)
The school ran on a points system, meaning kids were told they weren’t ‘good enough’ to be allowed home. They’d have to rack up enough points to prove to their families that they’d been reformed.
Speaking about making the documentary, Katherine told People magazine that she discovered CCTV, student files and logs from the school’s heyday. She and a film crew headed there to film, with Kubler explaining: “Finding the building and all of our files just re-traumatised the whole group.
(Image: Netflix)
“It had been years, so to have this come flooding back into our lives in such an extreme way was wild. But there was this renewed energy — because we finally had the validation and proof — so we’re like, ‘Let’s do something about it.’ No one thought to clean up the evidence.”
Fans who have already watched the programme have been left feeling shaken, and turned to social media to share their thoughts. One penned on X: “Shocking, disturbing and one feels with the victims so much… Only watch if you are emotionally stable.”
(Image: Netflix)
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Another added: “Started watching The Program on Netflix and omg those poor kids. So dreadful to think this kind of sh** is still happening.” While a third said: “The Program is finally out on Netflix and I’m only 10 minutes in and my blood is BOILING. How can these parents think that having their kids forcefully abducted and taken to a ‘school intended to correct bad behaviour’? IT’S ABUSE.”
Somebody else labelled the show “twisted AF”, as another fan said: “I gotta say it is so incredibly f***ed what a country so obsessed with ‘protecting the sanctity of life’ will allow to happen to actual living children.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
