Disturbing Netflix Series Leads to Probe of New York Boarding School

A Netflix docuseries spotlighting abuse allegations at a long-shuttered boarding academy for teens in rural northern New York has prompted dozens of new complaints to the local prosecutor and a fresh investigation, the AP reports. The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping started streaming last month. The three-part series by filmmaker Katherine Kubler, who was sent to the Academy at Ivy Ridge for 15 months, features former students describing an oppressive institution where teens were barred from going outside, looking out the window, or smiling, and where staff violently restrained and sexually and psychologically abused students. Former students say the documentary, which has been viewed more than 11 million times, validates their experiences after years of not being believed.

• St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua said more than 50 complaints have come into his office, including allegations of physical, mental, and sexual abuse at Ivy Ridge. Pasqua, elected in 2017, said none had come in before the documentary began streaming. After the documentary, officials in New York cleared a path for former students to apply for crime victim compensation, and a state agency that runs a local psychiatric center put some employees on leave amid the allegations against former Ivy Ridge staffers.
• Ivy Ridge was established in 2001 and closed in 2009 on the site of a former college near Ogdensburg, New York, one of multiple institutions affiliated with the now-defunct World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or WWASPS. Ivy Ridge was marketed as a boarding school for teens with behavioral issues. A state education official in 2006 called it "principally a behavior modification center."
• In 2005, police were called to the academy when rioting students smashed windows and overturned furniture, with some fleeing the campus. A few months later, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer found Ivy Ridge had grossly misrepresented its academic credentials and issued unauthorized high school diplomas. Under a settlement, 113 graduates received partial tuition refunds totaling more than $1 million. The academy's roughly 400-student enrollment plummeted, and it closed four years later.

More on the school's history, and what comes next, here. (More Netflix stories.)