'It Was Torture': 2nd LI Student On School In Netflix's 'The Program'

LONG ISLAND, NY — A second former Long Island student has come forward with explosive accusations of abuse that she said took place behind the locked doors of the Academy at Ivy Ridge, the subject of the shocking new Netflix docuseries "The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping" which shot up to #1 Most Watched nationwide over the weekend.

The series, created by former students, exposes the alleged abuse and terror that went on at Ivy Ridge, a privately owned behavior modification facility in Ogsdensburg, NY, that was open between 2001 and 2009.

"No talking. No smiling. No going outside. The Academy at Ivy Ridge claimed to use therapy and recreational activities to help troubled teens," Netflix said, in its description of its limited docuseries which debuted on March 5.

"Instead, teens suffered mental and physical abuse in a program that operated like a cult. In this gripping investigative docuseries, a filmmaker and other former students recall their horrific experiences attending a disciplinary school and expose the horrors of the troubled teen industry," Netflix said.

The three-episode series features former students speaking on experiences such as having to use the bathroom with the stall door open. Being forced to lie flat on the floor for hours. No talking, no eye contact. No looking out the window, ever.

So severe are the charges that after the documentary aired, complaints began pouring in to St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua's office, according to WWNYTV. DA Gary Pasquqa said he would investigate.

The DA also said that despite the abuse accusations in the documentary series, no reports of abuse exist in any of the files he has examined with the District Attorney's Office; the only files found had to do with a 2005 riot on the boys' side, according to a report by North Country Now.

No charges have ever been filed against the owners of the facility, officials said. But Pasqua urged victims to come forward.

Earlier this week, Tina Moore, a former Riverhead student, shared her painful story with Patch.

Rori H., who asked that her last name not be used, said she was a student on Long Island before her family moved. She was 14 when she was sent to Ivy Ridge in 2003; she did not leave until 2005.

Rori said her home life had been difficult; her family had been faced with economic challenges and the relationship was strained, communication difficult. "I didn't think I was living a normal life," she said. "I saw my entire childhood as an awful event."

When her family moved, Rori became totally isolated, she said. She missed her life back home, her extracurricular activities.

Rori spent the summer being "bounced around," to other family, she said.

When she was eventually sent back home, Rori said her life remained tumultuous, but she never got involved with alcohol or drugs. "I just wasn't a happy child," she said. "I was angry."

She began acting out, staying out after school, arguing with friends — little, typically teenaged things, she said.

Then one day the nightmare dawned.

"They had people come for me at 3 a.m. I woke up to two straangers in my house, a man and a woman. They said, 'We can do this easily or the hard way. If you come with us, we won't handcuff you.' I was like, 'What the hell?'"

She grabbed a hoodie and shoes "and that was it," Rori said. "I walked outside and looked toward my neighbors' houses and thought, 'Are they watching this?'"

Crying and in shock, Rori recalled the long ride to upstate New York, where Ivy Ridge was sited on a large tract of land near the Canadian border, surrounded by thick woods.

"They didn't say much on the ride," she said. "They took me took the bathroom and watched me go — they said they couldn't let me go alone; I might run away."

They told her that she was being taken to a school, Rori said.

"When I walked through the door, all I remember was silence," she said. "They took me into a room and strip searched me. I was completely naked. I had never been naked before, in front of other people, with my developing body. It was weird. Then they put me in some other clothes and sent me to the 'family,'" the name given to a student's group at the school.

To this day, Rori and other students discuss how they still wake up at 3 a.m. every morning, "Even now. We believe it's because that's the time that we were taken from our homes."

Rori was told to sleep on a mattress in the hall, on suicide watch. "You had to have your wrists out at all times. Night staff would wake you up if you tucked them under the covers. Lights were blaring. There wasn't much sleep," she said.

Students were given seven minutes total to shower and brush their teeth. "If you were on your period, you were even more screwed; they didn't care. You just had those seven minutes," Rori said.

She was subject to some of the punishments depicted in the Netflix series, such as having to carry around a heavy box, about 25 lbs. or more, filled with paper and water bottles, for about two months.

She'd been penalized because she'd shared her thoughts in a group session and said how she felt being sent to the school was "unfair," when all she'd hoped for was communication with her family and counseling.

She was told she had to carry "her crap," Rori said, and for the next two months, she had to carry the box eveywhere, even running with it in gym.

Rori also remembers being forced to eat whatever she was served or face "corrections," the repercussion of losing her progress and being sent plummeting back to zero in the points-based system she had to navigate if she were to move up the levels and be allowed to leave. "This caused massive weight gain, 30 to 40 lbs. in three months. I was covered in purple stretch marks. I was hideous and swollen. I felt awful, miserable. I thought, 'I am disgusting.'"

And then there was the horror of watching her fellow students physically abused. "Watching them beat the girls, just dive on them," she said. "Those were my friends. And I would have to stand there and stare straight ahead."

During the seminars, Rori said she came to a realization — that nothing was going to change unless she started "faking it," telling them what they "wanted her to say," that she was a bad kid and all that had happened it was her own fault.

Because, at 14, she was younger than many of the other girls, Rori said she was more immature, childlike, lacking social skills — not popular. "I remember the utter loneliness. Being surrounded by people, but you were a like a prisoner inside yourself. No adult spent time with me. I was starving for positive adult interactions. But I was just invisible."

Invisibility was, in some ways, a positive, Rori said, because it meant she would be under the radar and could avoid drawing attention to herself and any consequences that might entail.

Rori also felt that Ivy Ridge was much like a "popularity contest," with staff playing favorites and no way to move up if not "popular." However, she believes in some ways, being unpopular with the staff protected her, because for some girls "popular with the staff, it symbolized something a lot more sinister."

Once, she accidentally took a pen and was terrified someone would find out. "If someone had found that pen on me, my life would have been destroyed," she said. "We would all have been strip searched. I'd have been sent back down t0 zero, and would have had to go to intervention. So I kicked that pen as far away from me as possible when on the bus at the school."

Sometimes, Rori said, students tried to escape into the woods. "They would go hunt them down. It was absolutely awful."

Another time, her one close friend and she were both at Level 3, "working the program." They would whisper in the night, desperate to find a way out. "We would say, 'How do we do it? We can't run; we're slow.'"

Both the girls were cleaners, having "earned" the privilege of scouring the building ."It was like child labor," Rori said.

One night, her friend decided to drink the cleaning chemicals. "It wasn't a suicide attempt," Rori said. "She just wanted to get the hell out. She just wanted to drink enough to be sent to the hospital. Those were the lengths we were willing to go to, to get out."

That night, she heard someone find her friend. Thankfully, the girl survived and her mother came to bring her home.

That was the last time Rori saw her friend at Ivy Ridge. And the loneliness enveloped. "My best friend was gone," she said.

During her time at Ivy Ridge, Rori said she survived by daydreaing about life after — getting a job. "Disassociating."

Rori remembers the other girls and boys, so many faces, so many, reportedly at least 40, now gone to suicide or overdose.

"When I got out, I kept hearing, 'This person's passed. That person's passed,'" she said.

When she was 16, the money ran dry and Rori left Ivy Ridge.

Although she struggled to adapt to freedom at first, she graduated high school, waitressed, and eventually, graduated college and earned a Master's degree.

By all accounts, Rori's life was a testament to inner fortitude. But, she said, "There was always something different about me. People could see it. I've always been an outsider."

Today she is married with children, with a successful career. "I’m big on a stable household. But even as an adult, you know, there’s something different about me, different than the other moms. It’s hard. I used to try to fit in, but I've realized that groups are not the best thing for me. I can’t belong to the mom cliques. I'm pretending forever to be normal but, you know — you can never be somebody that didn’t go through this."

Rori said she came forward because she wants the owners of the Ivy Ridge facility and all the other schools like it to be brought to justice. She cares little about punishment for staff or low-hanging fruit — it's the owners who, she said, need to be held responsible.

"The public needs to know about them," she said. To the owners, she said, "You're not going to get away with this forever. All of us are like a little army now."

The entire industry needs to be held accountable, she said. "In America, kids are a business," she said. "I don't think our country truly cares about children. How many more deaths are there going to be?"

Rori said the documentary is a call for action. When she watches the abuse onscreen, as a mother, she cries; the boys are the same age as her own son.

The shining light in the darkness at Ivy Ridge was the bonds formed. "We are all family. We have the strenth to do this, to seek justice. We didn't come this far, for nothing. Now is the time."