Shawn Ryan Show: w/ Meg Appelgate on Troubled Teen Industry (Transcript)

Meg Appelgate, founder and CEO of Unsilenced, a nonprofit launched in January 2022 to serve past, present, and future victims of institutional child abuse. A survivor of the troubled teen industry, abducted from your bed at age 15 and held in abusive facilities for 3 and a half years. Author of the 2024 memoir Becoming Unsilenced: Surviving and Fighting the Troubled Teen Industry. A leading advocate who testified as an expert in the Montana State Senate in 2023, helping pass HB 218 to increase oversight and regulations over TTI programs. What are TTI programs?

MEG APPELGATE: Troubled Teen Industry.

SHAWN RYAN: Troubled Teen Industry. You accompanied Paris Hilton and her team to Washington, D.C. in 2022 to push lawmakers for federal regulation of these unregulated facilities. Wife to Ben and mother of 4 children. And like I said, Elizabeth Phillips made the introduction here. So thank you, Elizabeth. She’s—

MEG APPELGATE: Yes, she’s amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: Another amazing human being. Yes, she is crushing these people. And she’s getting all the same letters I’m getting for that.

MEG APPELGATE: Is she really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. So it’s good.

MEG APPELGATE: She’s probably used to it after the—

SHAWN RYAN: I know.

MEG APPELGATE: She’s— letter from them.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s good to battle with them.

Gifts and Introductions

SHAWN RYAN: Well, before we get into the heavy stuff, everybody gets a gift here. So, ooh, Vigilance League gummy bears!

MEG APPELGATE: Oh, yum!

SHAWN RYAN: You’re going to love them. What—

MEG APPELGATE: Are these from here? What are they?

SHAWN RYAN: They’re from Michigan. They’re made in the USA.

MEG APPELGATE: No way!

SHAWN RYAN: Just candy. All the bad shit, sugar, red dye, but they f*ing taste amazing.

MEG APPELGATE: So that’s what you’re saying?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I’m saying.

MEG APPELGATE: My kids will fight over these.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you so much.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll give you 3 more bags so they’re not fighting.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you so much. All right. I am going to— I’ve got a 3-parter. First of all, my book. Oh, right on. And it’s signed, obviously.

SHAWN RYAN: Perfect. Thank you.

MEG APPELGATE: Of course. And then I wanted to bring a little bit of where I am and then where I’ve come from. So I’m in Orange County, California. California is known for See’s Candy. And so I had to bring some See’s Candy. Yeah, no, it is so good.

SHAWN RYAN: Should I open this?

MEG APPELGATE: If you want to, if you would like some deliciousness, you can go ahead. It’s amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: Let’s do it on the break.

MEG APPELGATE: Right, oh yeah, yeah. And then this is— I was doing some research and I noticed you were born and I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. I was adopted, so I only lived there for 10 days, but we have a family farm that’s been in our family for like 2 generations. My grandpa and my grandma basically had my mom and two uncles on the farm all the time. And one of their favorite things to do was to go look for arrowheads. They would go on the farm and go through the freshly tilled dirt and find thousands and thousands, right?

And so one of the things about the TTI, or the troubled teen industry, that most people don’t know is they started back in the 1800s as Native American boarding schools where they would steal kids from their families, try to assimilate them into American culture, and strip them of their culture completely. And that’s really where the behavior modification, taking kids from their families, putting them in a different place in an institution, started from. So it’s kind of an enmeshment of where I come from and kind of giving honor to the troubled teen industry as well.

So this is one of the arrowheads that was found. It could be 1,000, 2,000 years old, and it was probably found in the late 1940s, early 1950s. And it’s a legit, legit arrowhead.

SHAWN RYAN: Very cool.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And this is from Missouri.

MEG APPELGATE: This is from Stover, Missouri, which is only about an hour and a half away from where you grew up.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on, man. Thank you. What else do you know about me?

MEG APPELGATE: That’s pretty much it. Only what Wikipedia was able to give me.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, God. Wikipedia.

MEG APPELGATE: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

MEG APPELGATE: Of course.

SHAWN RYAN: Awesome.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you so much for having me.

Patreon Question: The Most Important Change

SHAWN RYAN: My pleasure. So one more thing to crank out here. I have a Patreon account. It’s a subscription account, and they’re the reason that I get to sit here with you today. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. And this is from actually a previous guest. Dr. Dan Schneider: “What is the single most important change, legal or cultural, that would actually prevent teenagers from experiencing what you went through in the troubled teen industry?”

MEG APPELGATE: Hmm. A re-understanding of adolescence and a moving away from pathologizing adolescent behaviors from being bad and into a place of understanding and figuring out how parents can get the support they need to be able to help that child, versus looking at teenage behaviors as something we need to fix.

I think that a lot of the things that end these kids up in facilities in the first place is not understanding that if a kid is drinking, doing drugs, skipping school, getting expelled, those kinds of things, it’s not just the behavior. What is the behavior covering up? Did they have some kind of childhood trauma? And trying to figure out where it’s coming from, but also re-understanding that those kinds of things are so normal. That is a very normal thing to do in adolescence.

And the research shows that actually doing nothing and letting that phase out— most kids stop smoking pot by the time they get into the workforce because it just makes sense. If you want to make money, you got to have a job. And if you want to have a job, you got to stop doing that stuff. So really re-understanding which adolescent behaviors are truly problematic, which ones truly need an inpatient stay, and which can be treated in community-based settings, and how parents can get help behind the scenes to learn how to parent in a different way for that child that may have a different set of needs.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. I think this question is going to be answered throughout the entire interview too, so I will expand on that. But thank you. So yeah, you know, you were adopted?

MEG APPELGATE: I was.

Personal Reflections: Adoption, Identity, and Family

SHAWN RYAN: That is something I’ve been— my wife, I’ve been covering all this, like I just said, I’ve been covering all this kids stuff, this horrible s that’s happening to kids. And my wife told me the other day, she’s like, “If you really want to get into the nasty s, go into the adoption industry and the foster care plan for sure.”

We have a neighbor that’s a substitute teacher, and she talks about some of the kids that get bussed into this public school here. They’re in that system. No showers, no clean clothes, ripped up clothes. They smell. I mean, you can just tell they’re not being taken care of. It’s f*ing sad.

MEG APPELGATE: And are they in group homes or foster care?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I don’t know yet. But I’m almost scared to do it because I think that’s going to be the worst one.

MEG APPELGATE: But get used to more letters.

SHAWN RYAN: I have to do it. Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure one of these days I’m going to frame all the letters. Yeah. Return to sender. But yeah, man. So if anybody listening knows someone to talk to about that, I’d love to hear about it.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I know quite a few people in the adoption world. It’s kind of a parallel industry as well. It’s definitely for-profit, just like the troubled teen industry. Too few regulations as well.

And then there’s a whole subset of people that believe that we’re just giving a child and we’re giving it to a different family. Well, what about the future child’s feelings about that? Open, closed adoptions. Like, in Missouri, I don’t know if you know this, it’s extremely strict. So in Missouri, there is no such thing, as far as my understanding, of an open adoption.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s an open adoption?

MEG APPELGATE: Open adoption is when you decide to adopt a baby, but you’re keeping the relationship open. And what that looks like can be different. So it could be like yearly visits, or “I will send you pictures of the child as they grow once a year.” You’ll get like a yearly picture.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, to the biological—

MEG APPELGATE: To the biological child, to the family, right? So the child can have some contact. Sometimes open adoptions are like, you know, you have a full relationship with your biological parent, right?

In Missouri, it’s not allowed. And I grew up deciding, “Oh, when I’m 18, because you’re an adult, I’m going to go meet my family.” Lo and behold, in Missouri, you have to be 21. You have to be 21 to find your family. And you can’t just go and find it. Everything is completely locked up.

So I had to petition— hire an attorney, petition the courts to open the documents. And then before they open any documents to give me names, they have to contact my birth family and ask them, “Do you want me to open up and tell her anything?” They had to say yes, and then we couldn’t even have information. We had to talk through the courts for 3 months, and then once they unsealed it, then we could have contact directly. It’s very strict.

SHAWN RYAN: So you did it?

MEG APPELGATE: I did it.

SHAWN RYAN: How was that?

MEG APPELGATE: It was crazy, you know, because I grew up in a family where they’re amazing, but I don’t look like them. No one’s ever looked like me, and you grow up wondering what it’s like. Like, do I have personality traits of anyone?

The crazy thing is I found out I had a full sister. So they literally gave me up for adoption and then 18 months later had my sister. Same mom, same dad. They were not married, they just had another baby. So I have a full-blooded sister, and I only found out about her when I was 21.

SHAWN RYAN: Have you met her yet?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Where is she?

MEG APPELGATE: In Blue Springs, Missouri. My whole family is in Missouri.

SHAWN RYAN: With your biological parents?

MEG APPELGATE: Yep.

Growing Up Adopted

SHAWN RYAN: What’s that like? I mean, 21. When did you find out you were adopted?

MEG APPELGATE: Oh, I remember being 2 and knowing I was adopted. My parents were very open about it. So I don’t even remember a talk. I just knew I was always adopted. But I always knew I wanted to find them and know them. And I just had to prepare myself. Like, I didn’t know anything about them at all— names, nothing. So they could have been drug addicts, they could have been dead. So I had to really prepare myself before I got the information. Am I ready for what I’m going to find out?

SHAWN RYAN: How curious are you as a child?

MEG APPELGATE: Very.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think about it all the time?

MEG APPELGATE: Mostly when I was mad at my parents. Like, I get punished for something, or I’m grounded, I’m like, “Well, my real mom wouldn’t do that.” Or, “I’m going to go live with my real mom one day.” It was more of like an escape, I wonder, and stuff. I wouldn’t say I thought about it a lot.

I never felt like I fit into my family. And that’s not their fault, it was more me projecting it onto myself. I just didn’t feel like I fit in. They’re very high achieving, and my brother never had any issues as a teen, and I was the one that struggled with everything socially, school. Everything else was easy for my brother and for my family.

SHAWN RYAN: Is he biological?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. So he’s biological to my parents. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How is the relationship with a sibling who’s biological and you once adopted?

MEG APPELGATE: It was like a normal one, I believe. Like, I feel like there was no resentment or anything of him being not adopted or whatnot. He was 6 years older though, so the only thing was the age gap, kind of. He was in college and I was like 10 or whatever, so it’s like 11. So I felt like an only child for some part of it. But we’re close. He was just more annoyed because I was such a big difference in years. I was this annoying young sister, you know.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on.

MEG APPELGATE: But it had nothing to do with like being biological or not. I was just really annoying.

Meeting the Biological Family

SHAWN RYAN: So what was it like meeting your parents after 21 years?

MEG APPELGATE: You learn in psychology nature versus nurture, right? And it’s like the perfect experiment for that. That’s what it felt like. I knew nothing about my family at all. I just knew names at that point and email addresses. And I’m sitting there and I’ve gone to college, I lived in Europe, and I had these crazy cool experiences that I was fortunate enough to have. And they lived much differently.

And it was interesting to sit there. Despite all of our different experiences and how we grew up, my sister had an itchy nose. She went to itch her nose and she went like this to itch her nose. And I do the exact same thing. So it’s just like crazy weird stuff like that, that was obviously in our genes somehow— how we itch our nose like this. And it’s like, who does that? And I looked at her, I was like, “That’s so weird, it’s so weird.”

And even like little looks, she’ll be looking and telling a story, and I’ll be like, “Oh, I look like that sometimes, I’ve seen that on a picture.” And it was a cool sense of like belonging, but then also it gave me a sense of what I would have been like and what I would have expected my life would have been very similar to my sister’s. So it gave me a look of what would have been if I hadn’t been adopted, and to kind of compare that. And it was just really, really interesting, man.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll bet. Was it emotional?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. I mean, second to like getting married, it’s up there on the experiences of like nerves walking in. Oh my gosh.

SHAWN RYAN: What were you expecting? Honestly, what did you paint?

MEG APPELGATE: I don’t think I had any. I think that’s what was scary— I had taught myself to not have any expectations because I could have been really disappointed. I had fears, but really no expectations.

SHAWN RYAN: What were the fears?

MEG APPELGATE: I had fears that maybe they would latch on to me and maybe try to— like, I’m trying to think, if I lost a child and then finally got to meet them, I would be globbed onto them because they’re my child. But to them, you’re not their parent, you know?

So I was worried about them not being respectful of the relationship being in my court, and I needed it to be in my court, and I decide what this relationship looks like because I’m the one having to deal with two sets of parents. And thankfully they were so great about that. Like, it has never been an issue. They’ve never stepped on any boundaries. They know my mom and dad are my mom and dad. So thank God that that didn’t happen.

But I think that was one of my fears, man. Or like getting taken advantage of— are they going to want money? Those kinds of things I think I worried about. Thankfully it hasn’t been an issue.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you still keep in touch?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Did the relationship develop fast?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I’d say it developed fast and then it kind of evened out. Like you’re trying to make up for lost time and then it kind of evened out.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. Right on. Did you ask them why they put you up for adoption?

Meg’s Early Life and Adoption

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. So my birth father actually didn’t fully recognize that I was his at the time. And so when the courts were like deciding if we should talk or not, he was like, oh, I want a paternity test. And then we did the picture exchange, and so he saw a picture of me, he’s like, oh no, she’s mine. He wasn’t worried because I look so much like my sister, and he knew the sister was his.

But my mom would have been taking care of me, and I had an older half-sister who was already living with my grandma because things were really tight. And so she was just not in a position to have another kid. And she just knew that she wanted something better for me. So it was one of those true, “I’m doing this for my kids.”

SHAWN RYAN: Love.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, it’s out of love. Yeah. And I think it was probably one of the hardest decisions she’s ever made. And she’s talked about that. Yeah, man, I can’t imagine.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, me neither. I have a friend. I don’t want to mention her name, but she’s been through hell and back. She’s a veteran. And she put her daughter up for adoption, and she sent me like— she stalks her on Facebook. It’s so f*ing sad. Oh, it’s so— just rips her heart out every time.

MEG APPELGATE: But such a selfless thing, man.

SHAWN RYAN: I couldn’t imagine. I could not imagine. So you got adopted how early?

MEG APPELGATE: So it was set before birth. So my parents helped with the prenatal care and all of that stuff. She gave birth and I had to stay in the hospital for like 10 days. And it was over like Labor Day weekend too. So it was a little longer. So I stayed alone in the hospital for like 10 days before my parents could come and take me back. And they lived in Wisconsin at the time, so they picked me up in Kansas City, 10 days old, went to live in Wisconsin.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. So what was childhood like?

Childhood and Teenage Years

MEG APPELGATE: Just really a standard for that generation, honestly. Playing outside, lots of love, just really happy. I had a really happy childhood. I was a very opinionated little girl. Nothing’s changed. I’ve always been a fighter. But yeah, I think that I was a very active kid, really into sports, before it was cool for girls to be into sports. I was very much a tomboy.

My mom loves to tell the story of, I was really into soccer, and we were living in Phoenix, Arizona at the time, and girls don’t play soccer back in ’92. So I had short hair, like a boy cut, and no one knew I was a girl until they were like, “Okay, let’s play some shirts and skins.” And I was like, “No, I’m not taking off my shirt.” And they’re like, “Why?” And they’re like, “She’s a girl.” So yeah, I liked sports a lot, but I was definitely a tomboy for a good time.

But really just normal childhood. Definitely had that experience of playing outside till the street lights come on, come home, have dinner. Lots of outside time.

SHAWN RYAN: So were you a hellion?

MEG APPELGATE: What the hell?

SHAWN RYAN: You get in a lot of trouble?

MEG APPELGATE: No, not as a little kid. Not as a little kid.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. As a teenager.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a different story.

SHAWN RYAN: What were you getting into as a teenager?

MEG APPELGATE: Well, I say trouble. Honestly, I’m just going back to what I was saying. It’s just normal teenage behavior. Right when I hit puberty, probably starting around 13, I started getting interested. This is right around the time of AOL, remember, with American Online.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man. We’re about the same age.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Probably. And once you get AOL in the chat rooms and AIM, like, stop.

SHAWN RYAN: ICQ, you remember that one?

MEG APPELGATE: No, I don’t remember ICQ.

SHAWN RYAN: That was the shit back in the day.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. And LimeWire and downloading out. Yep. Right after Napster. So, honestly, I struggled socially, right? And at that point I was— I’m autistic and I wasn’t— I was not diagnosed back then. All I knew—

SHAWN RYAN: You’re autistic? I am.

Autism, Social Struggles, and Finding Community

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, so back then girls weren’t autistic, you know. Autistic was really— it was a stereotype of what you’d see in a level 3 autism kid right today. But back then, girls are already way higher masking, and so it just got missed. And so I struggled socially with making— I would make friends, but then I’d want to keep being their friend in a very intense way, and they’d back up, and I wouldn’t know why. Like, “Why are you backing up? I don’t—” So the social situations, I would get super attached. Yeah, like, “You’re my best friend. Why are you playing with someone else? Why?” It didn’t make sense, right?

And so I had friends, but it was just easier to meet people online. I think that was the start of when my parents were like, “Uh-oh.” And granted, they didn’t know anything about online back then, and it was a scary new place. I definitely met people from AOL and I probably shouldn’t have.

SHAWN RYAN: So you were meeting strangers on AOL?

MEG APPELGATE: Yes, I was.

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of strangers?

MEG APPELGATE: Thankfully, they were all my age and actually ended up being my age, but it could have been a potential really bad situation. Yeah. And so they had a right to be worried about that stuff. And that’s kind of how it started, just trying to find my place, right? I didn’t feel like I fit in in my family because I struggle and no one else does. And then socially at school, I can’t make friends as easy. And why is that? I found a place online and I was able to feel like I had a social life.

So that’s how it started. And then I had issues with school because I had ADHD as well. And so we kind of moved school, school, school, school, school, private school, private school, private school. So there was that issue. And then I went to high school and I decided we’re going to go to a public high school, which I had been in private for a long time. And I went to Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California.

And within the first couple months, I was starting to smoke pot, and I found myself in like the counterculture, the kids that would skip out on second period and go smoke pot in the alleys and stuff like that. But I felt like I fit in. I felt like I had friends finally and they weren’t judgmental. And I was really, really bullied for a lot of years. So there was a lot of trauma with that too. So I found people that weren’t bullying me and they just so happened to make different decisions than my parents were okay with.

SHAWN RYAN: And do you think you craved being accepted because of adoption?

The Abandonment Wound

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had so little internal validation for myself. I just kind of sought it everywhere, right? And I just wanted to feel like I belonged no matter what. And that abandonment wound, I mean, I can’t underestimate how severely prevalent that is as an adopted kid.

SHAWN RYAN: I can’t imagine.

MEG APPELGATE: Even if you’re not aware of it, it’s there.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I was— I’m just curious. Have you adopted kids?

MEG APPELGATE: No, I had all mine. And that’s another thing. That’s probably the reason why I had 4 kids. And I didn’t have anyone that looks like me. Well, I got 4 that look a lot like me. So. Right on.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. I mean, what I’m asking is, do you think it would have been better if you did not know you were adopted growing up?

MEG APPELGATE: No, I think that would have affected my relationship with my parents. I am an extremely honest person, and I’m big into transparency. And if I would have found out that they were withholding that information, I don’t know if I ever would have forgiven them. Because all that work that I would have done as a kid and having to— yeah, it was painful to go through abandonment and stuff like that, but imagine thinking that wasn’t an issue and in your 20s you have to go through it.

Like, I would much rather get that out of the way when I’m forming my identity and my character and who I want to be in the world and my profession. I’m glad that was out of the way. I think that would have wreaked havoc on my emotional stability.

SHAWN RYAN: That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So how did the troubled teen— troubled teen institute—

The Path to the Troubled Teen Industry

MEG APPELGATE: Troubled teen industry, or TTI as we call it for short. Yeah, so we’ve got the behavior of sneaking out. I think I drank a couple times and I smoked pot. I started having sex. And that was something my parents were obviously not okay with. They would lock the modem in a cabinet because I’d be on AOL at like 11 o’clock at night. But I have these skinny little wrists. And so they had chain bolts on the cabinet and I just reach around.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

MEG APPELGATE: Plug in the wire in the back and then reach it out and then lock it back up. And so I was doing all this stuff. I had snuck out of the house a couple of times, never overnight, never running away, but just like go smoke pot on the golf course.

And there was one incident in particular that really, I feel like, led to me getting sent away. They could have already known I was going to be sent away at this point, I’m not sure. But I was at Newport Harbor High School. I had a really good friend, and we decided to skip out on the rest of the day at school, and we decided to walk around Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, and we had this guy that was sitting outside of a 7-Eleven buy us some beer in exchange for bagels. I think he might have been like homeless.

SHAWN RYAN: What a great trade.

The Night Everything Changed

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yes, I know, right? His name was Len, and I say that because I’m calling him out. His name was Len. He ended up kind of following us around and he— so we only bought a six-pack. And granted, yeah, we’re like 115-pound little girls, but having 3 beers shouldn’t have equaled the amount of inebriation that I got.

We were in an alley before I completely blacked out, and I remember him showing me a knife. And it wasn’t like a, “I’m going to hurt you with this.” It’s more like an underhanded threat, kind of like, “Look what I have. I want you to know that I have this.” Kind of showing it off. And it stuck in my head as I now know he has a knife and I’m scared, right? But then I completely blacked out.

And when I came to, I was laying on the floor or the grass at a nearby park, and my pants were around my ankles. And I came to and I saw my really good friend Stacy kind of slumped over his lap. He’s sitting down and she’s kind of like this, completely passed out. And I started saying her name, “Get up, get up, get up.”

And then all of a sudden a policeman starts walking. He had to have seen something completely inappropriate. But I pulled up my pants. Stacy was able to come to. And the policeman— Len ran off, and the policeman decided to go to us and figure out why we’re not in school versus running after the 33-year-old man who was just in a park in the middle of the day with two young girls.

So then he talked to us about where we lived, why we’re not in school. I thought it was so smart when he asked for my address. I just gave the wrong zip code thinking that he wasn’t going to be able to get a hold of my mom. He did.

The Pact and Its Consequences

MEG APPELGATE: On our walk home to school, Stacy and I talked about what happened, and we were really scared of getting in trouble. We decided— because we wanted to tell someone what had happened physically, but we were scared because we had drank. And so at that point we made a pact. We’re like, “Okay, we’re not going to say anything about anything, but if we get in trouble, let’s just tell them that he made us drink.”

Let’s just say that he took us, like, he made us at the payphone. He showed us the knife. We know he has a knife. Let’s just say that he made us with the knife drink so we don’t get in trouble for drinking. Because that was the big thing in our head — we’re going to get in so much trouble for this. We felt we were going to get in trouble for everything, even being sexually assaulted. Like, I thought I was going to get in trouble for that.

And lo and behold, I get picked up by my mom that day and she said, “Where were you?” And I just started crying and I told her the truth. I told her what happened in the park.

Next day the FBI is at the school and they’re taking our statements. A couple days later, I’m giving them my clothes to do forensics. And a couple days after that, we’re in like one of those places you see on TV, like SVU almost, where it’s like the two-way mirror and you’re with a psychologist. And she’s asking me with the bear, “Show me what he did with the two bears.” And I have to act out this whole thing in this trauma-informed center for interviewing kids.

I wasn’t allowed to talk to Stacy at all because they didn’t want to cross the stories and stuff. And one day I went to school and the principal called me on the speakers and told me to come into the office. And on the way into the office, I saw Stacy crossing and she mouthed to me, “I’m sorry.” And I was like, oh no.

The System Fails

MEG APPELGATE: She had told the truth about Len not making us leave, right? And then they didn’t believe us. The FBI didn’t believe us anymore, even though there was forensic evidence. Yeah, they had forensic evidence on my clothes and his. Hers, I don’t know how far it went. For me, it was just molestation, but there was forensic proof of it.

But back then — this is 2000, right? — back then, it’s almost like it was the kid’s fault because I was wearing a short shirt. It was like I somehow did this to myself and it wasn’t a true predator, which he is a predator. So there is that feeling of, well, I lied about how I got off campus, so now I’m a liar.

And they went so far as to tell my parents I wasn’t abused and that I made it up. And my parents didn’t know I was abused until about a year and a half ago when I decided to talk about it. And they said, “Wait, that actually happened?” I’m like, “Yeah, it happened.”

They dropped all charges. They searched for Len. They found him living in a hotel a couple blocks away from where he met us. He was not arrested. He was not charged.

And because of the zero tolerance policy that California had in the schools, Stacy and I were expelled because we drank alcohol during school hours. We were not on school campus, but because we consumed alcohol during school hours, we were expelled. And so then I didn’t have anywhere to go to school. And that is when I think things shifted for my parents.

Taken in the Night

MEG APPELGATE: Granted, at that point they thought I had lied about being abused too, right? They didn’t know the truth. And about, I think it was probably 3 weeks later, I was woken up in the middle of the night by 2 strangers about 1 or 2 AM in the morning, and they said, “You’re coming with me.” And I said, “No, I’m not.” And they said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. And the hard way involves handcuffs.” And that’s kind of the beginning of the end for me.

SHAWN RYAN: So you had— your parents didn’t tell you anything?

MEG APPELGATE: No, they were advised not to by the program that I was going to be sent to. They advised that I know nothing because I had a propensity to run away. They advised doing it in the middle of the night. It was two off-duty police officers, male and a female, and they advised to just do it in the middle of the night and with force.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. So 2 AM, I said, “Well, can I go to the bathroom?” And they said, “Well, we have to watch you.” And I was like, okay, can I—

SHAWN RYAN: How do you know you’re not being kid— Hold on, wait, they watched you?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, they watched me go to the bathroom. And I said, “Well, can I get dressed?” And they’re like, “We have to watch you too.” So I changed in front of them.

At this point, I didn’t know what was going on. When they first woke me up, I thought I was being arrested because I smoked pot the night before, so I’m like, “Oh no, going to be arrested.” But when I saw my parents at the door watching it and crying, I knew that I wasn’t being arrested and I wasn’t being kidnapped because why would they watch me being kidnapped? But I was being kidnapped. It was just that they condoned it.

And then the last thing I remember is I said, “Can I at least pack a bag?” And I forget if it was the guy or the girl, they said, “Your parents already did.” And I snapped as soon as they said “your parents already did” — that they had not only known about this, but they had my bag packed already to leave. And I just started screaming at them.

And I remember my mom crying, saying, “We’re not abandoning you, we’re not abandoning you.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you are. You actually are, and I hate you, and I’m never f*ing talking to you ever again.”

The Flight to Boise

MEG APPELGATE: And they took me by the arms, took me out to a black SUV, threw me in the back, drove me to LAX. I wasn’t allowed to know where I was going. This is back before you had like actual tickets that you had to have in the airport. I wasn’t allowed to see the ticket. They faced me away from the gate so that I couldn’t know what gate I was going to, and I remember vividly not knowing where I was going until I was on the plane and the captain came on and said, “You’re on a flight to Boise, Idaho.”

And that’s when they gave me two letters, one from my mom, one from my dad. And I remember just dissociating so hardcore. I don’t even remember what the letters said. And I don’t remember the flight, probably the layover. I don’t even know. I just remember arriving at Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho. And my life was changed forever.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit. So when do you figure out—

MEG APPELGATE: Wow. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you figure out what this is all about?

Arriving at Intermountain Hospital

MEG APPELGATE: It was kind of a slow process because I didn’t understand. The only thing I’d seen on TV is really like kids being kidnapped. So I thought I was being kidnapped, but here I’m like, this looks like a hospital. And I just remember walking in to these big magnetic lock, very heavy doors — with the noise of opening and then tchew. And it opened and it closed behind me. And I just remember thinking, things are never going to be the same.

It’s truly like when my childhood ended — when I was 15, when those doors closed at Intermountain Hospital, I knew the second I walked in there, without knowing, that I wouldn’t be leaving. Like, I’m not free to leave. This place was locked down.

And they immediately took my shoes, took all my clothes, and had to search through everything to make sure I don’t have any contraband or, God forbid, pencils, right? I wasn’t allowed to have pencils because you can self-harm with pencils. And no conditioner or shampoo because it has small amounts of alcohol. So they have to search literally everything you own.

It was in the middle of winter. And they took my shoes because they had to check the shoes. But it was over Super Bowl weekend, so I didn’t have shoes in the middle of winter for like 4 days. And it was just a complete tornado. Like, it just felt like everything you know for 15 years is just completely different.

All of a sudden, the people that usually protect you are not. And you’re with strangers. You’re not allowed to contact your parents. You have no use of a phone. You can’t even have pencils. And I remember having to write a letter home and I couldn’t because I didn’t have pencils. So I wrote it in crayon because that’s the only thing I was allowed. And I remember writing, “I’m so sorry for being a bad daughter. Please take me home. Please. This is not the place for me.”

And all the other kids in this program were just very troubled, like dealing with very big issues.

Understanding the Troubled Teen Industry

SHAWN RYAN: So what are these? What are these things? I wanted to find one. What am I looking at?

MEG APPELGATE: Residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness therapy programs, boot camps, group homes.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s all for kids that are getting in trouble.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, either kids that get in trouble. Group homes are more for foster care, child welfare kids — being able to have a place for them, right? Like group homes. But they’re using behavior modification and they’re a residential setting and oversight is nonexistent. And so these kinds of practices are happening in these facilities at large, at a very large scale.

SHAWN RYAN: Military boarding schools. Would that fall under this?

MEG APPELGATE: So that’s a little bit of a gray area. Military boarding schools, if there is a therapeutic component — which I don’t know of any military boarding schools that have a therapist and it’s a part of a treatment plan — that’s really the difference. So we wouldn’t even consider those to be— it’s an institution that can potentially harm and abuse kids still. But is it a troubled teen industry program? We would probably say no, because there is no aspect of therapy involved in the program. There’s definitely behavior modification, though, and that is going to have long-term effects in that kind of way. So yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How long do kids usually go to these for?

Life Inside the Facility

MEG APPELGATE: Depends on the type of program. So wilderness programs are shorter term, but they’re a very big pipeline into the longer term, like therapeutic boarding schools and stuff like that. So wilderness therapy can be anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks out in the wilderness. But like I said, it’s very, very rare for me to hear of a survivor going to a wilderness program and then going home. Like it’s almost always going to be recommended after that time that they need secondary care and that they get sent to — and then a list of referrals that they probably get kickbacks on, on these therapeutic boarding schools. So it’s definitely a pipeline into it, even though it’s not long-term.

SHAWN RYAN: So nobody really gets out?

MEG APPELGATE: No. I mean, if you go into the troubled teen industry at 15, it’s — there’s a chance you’ll be there until 18. And just the way that these things work, I was going in at 15. I stayed till 18 and a half. They got me to stay half a year.

SHAWN RYAN: They talked you into staying?

MEG APPELGATE: They talked me into staying. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You had no idea? Nobody had — nobody told — no, you had no idea that it was going to be 3 and a half years?

MEG APPELGATE: No. In Boise, Idaho, I was only there for 6 months. And I thought until probably a month before I left I was going to be going home, and I didn’t find out I was going to be going to my next place until, like I said, about a month. And I was so upset. And that was a therapeutic boarding school. And I knew that was — I knew at that point I’m probably going to be there till 18.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t. So what happens when you get — what’s daily life like?

Stripping Away Autonomy

MEG APPELGATE: Kind of depends what the program is. But for me, I’m not even sure Intermountain, like, what their licensing status is, if it’s psychiatric or if it’s residential treatment center, I’m not sure. But really, I think about it in terms of their job was to strip away all my autonomy. They thought that Meg has an issue with control. Let’s make sure Meg knows that she doesn’t control anything in her life. Let’s take away all of her ability to make decisions and make it up to chance.

So one thing, a couple of things they did with me to make that happen is something called random draw. And desk space. Random draw meant that any of the activities you do as a group, like going outside for PE or going to the cafeteria or going to therapy or OT or any of the things you program during the day, I had a bag that had 10 pieces of paper in it and there were 9 nos and 1 yes. Anytime I was able to be with my peers in any way, shape, or form, I had to pick from that bag. And if it said no, I couldn’t go. But if I got the one yes, I got to be with my peers and go to therapy and do all the stuff with them. If I got a no, I was stuck at my desk and that was desk space.

So for all day I had to be writing essays on all the thinking errors that I have in my life and all these other crazy things. So it was about making sure I had no choices and no say over what happens to me. That’s what they wanted to teach me. At Intermountain Hospital. And it worked.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Do they tell you what they’re working on? It’s just —

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s more like, “Oh, here’s your treatment plan,” and you’re like, “What’s this?”

SHAWN RYAN: So it’s prison?

The Quiet Room

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, yeah. Oh, straight up. There’s a — we call it the QR. It’s the quiet room. It’s a padded f\\\*ing room with a door that locks from the outside and a bulletproof glass that’s this big. And then there’s a bed in the middle with straps. You misbehave, they take you down in a restraint, they pull down your pants, they stick a needle in your ass and shoot you up and make you completely pass out, carry you into the room, strap you down until you wake up. Like they did this. I saw this daily.

SHAWN RYAN: Strip you down naked.

MEG APPELGATE: Strap you down like to the bed.

SHAWN RYAN: Strap you down.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. To make sure that you’re not going to go anywhere. It’s a padded room.

SHAWN RYAN: What the f\\\*?

MEG APPELGATE: Oh yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: What were you doing when you got the injection?

MEG APPELGATE: I tried to get injected once. I thought, this sounds like fun. I’m going to try to do this because it was so boring every day. So I actually tried once and I was like, “I’m so angry,” and I grabbed something and threw it across the room and they’re like, “Knock it off.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” Because I wasn’t one of the aggressive ones, but there were kids that had anger issues and would create a safety issue on the unit.

And then you would hear a code be called over the speakers. And then you would — I always remember this — the chains of people running and their keys, the noise of them running with their keys. And most of the guys from the other units would come to assist with the restraints and they would put the kid face down on the floor. One of the big guys had a knee in the middle of the kids’ shoulder blades, then a staff on each arm, a staff on each leg. And if they didn’t calm down, the nurse would just come over, pull their pants down and give them what we called booty juice.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn.

MEG APPELGATE: And I never had it done, but I saw it a lot. And even just seeing — I mean, I can’t imagine the trauma of having it done, but even just seeing it, knowing that that’s happening to kids in the world, like I’m just watching it. It’s a normal everyday occurrence. Was just super f\\\*ed up.

Living Conditions

SHAWN RYAN: What are you living in?

MEG APPELGATE: It’s like a unit. It’s like a one hallway, and then there’s another hallway over here, and that’s like — there’s two different main units. And then there’s lots of magnetic lock doors, and it’s usually two people to a room. You have a roommate, and then there’s a sensor in the middle of the room so that in the middle of the night, if that sensor goes off, they’ll come running in to make sure that no one hurts each other in the middle of the night. Like, alarm goes off if you cross to go to the bathroom. It’s wild. You’re not allowed to have any toiletries, any makeup in your room. It was super, super traumatic.

And oh, on top of that, they just diagnose everyone with bipolar disorder. And it took like 2 days and they’re like, “Oh yeah, here’s some antipsychotics.”

SHAWN RYAN: And you got diagnosed in 2 days?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Bipolar and medicated.

MEG APPELGATE: Like heavily medicated.

SHAWN RYAN: With what?

MEG APPELGATE: Seroquel, Trileptal. I was on like 1600 milligrams of Trileptal and like a —

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t.

MEG APPELGATE: I was on a lot of drugs. I came in there at, 125-pound 15-year-old. I gained 60 pounds in 6 months from the drugs. From the drugs.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t.

Heavily Medicated

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. I remember it was like a race against time — you got to get your meds from the med station, right? You got to check the cheeks and everything. It was always a race against time at the end of the night when they gave me the meds, or in the middle of the day because they gave me stuff that made me really sleepy then too. But I had to take the meds and get to my room before I passed out.

And so I remember every night, my hand dragging on a very textured wall as I tried to make it to my room, and I’d start kind of getting loopy and not be able to make it because of how strong these medications are. It was really bad. Even my journal entries — I’ve got journal entries of me being like, it’s the middle of the day and I’ll say, “Uh-oh, the meds are kicking in,” and you’ll see my handwriting change and then just goes off the page. And it’s just so sad. They’re just medicating all of us because it’s easier to maintain a bunch of kids that are wild if you just dope them up.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh\*t. How many kids are in there?

MEG APPELGATE: Oh, there was quite a few. Probably on like one unit there would be like maybe 30 or 40. And so there’s a couple of units. So I’m guessing around then a couple hundred, maybe, maybe like 60 total out of the two different adolescent units. That’s my guess.

SHAWN RYAN: Jeez. And this is an outdoor —

MEG APPELGATE: Indoor only. You only go outdoors for about 30 minutes a day. So there’s like a huge fence around this place. Like, you’re not getting out.

SHAWN RYAN: So it’s legitimately a prison.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, it is. I mean, if you look at juvenile justice facilities, you have more rights there than you did at this facility. Like, you have a right to phone calls at a juvenile facility. You can go and make phone calls. Can’t there.

Contact With Parents

SHAWN RYAN: When do you talk to your parents for the first time?

MEG APPELGATE: I was so traumatized and so doped up there. I think it might have been like a week or two, but I never, ever, ever, ever spoke to them in the 6 months without a therapist on the phone listening, like the entire time. So I don’t even remember any family therapy, to be honest. I don’t remember therapy, period. I knew I had a therapist because I remember what they looked like, but I don’t remember actual therapy or working on anything, or family therapy at all. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I just — I was so disassociated that entire time.

SHAWN RYAN: Just — what do you remember?

MEG APPELGATE: I remember learned helplessness, just feeling like whatever I did wasn’t going to change anything. And that’s what they wanted. I mean, that’s the whole reason why I was on desk space and random draw, right, is to teach me that I’m not in control of my life and I need to just give in and let people make the decisions for me. And so it’s this feeling of nothing I do is going to get me out of this. And so I just have to kind of ride the wave. But when you’re riding the wave, it’s not even a rideable wave. Everything you do equals a consequence. They set you up to fail.

And so they have a level system. Almost all these places have like level systems or phases. And it’s a very important part of behavior modification.

SHAWN RYAN: And what do you mean a level system?

The Level System and Tracking Sheets

MEG APPELGATE: So if you’re on level 0, you don’t get these privileges. And then if you get to level 1, then you get to go and watch a movie on Friday night. So they basically incentivize kids to want to work the program by giving consequences for bad behaviors, and privileges for good to incentivize you to be better and work, right?

But what that does is— okay, to give you an example, we had a tracking sheet and this tracking sheet was our lifeline. It was our entire day and our behavior for every 15 minutes during the day. So every 15 minutes during the day, we had to have a staff member do an initial and it was a 0 to 10. Anything at 6 or above was fantastic and they’d put their initials on 6. Anything under that would add up to even within one day losing a level.

So if I forget for a total of, I think it’s like, 45 minutes giving my tracking sheet to that staff to sign off for my behavior, those 45-minute period, because it’s 15, 15, 15, that would equal losing a level. So if you mess up for 45 minutes and just forget to hand in a tracking sheet, you lost a level and now you’re back at square one. So it was so easy to backtrack that you just learned— you just feel like giving up all the time. And it’s just so easy to fail that you just, you just don’t know what to do. So I remembered that there and feeling just really, really lonely, just really, really isolated.

SHAWN RYAN: No relationships? No. Other than therapists?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. And I don’t even remember their name. So obviously they weren’t very memorable. And the kids that I— my roommates and stuff, I just remember being scared a lot.

SHAWN RYAN: How many roommates do you have?

MEG APPELGATE: I had one, two at a time, but I switched a bunch. So I had a bunch of different roommates throughout my time there. One of them, I remember she was like 12 and she used to eat cigarette butts. And so I’m seeing these things happen and, yeah, pica is a legitimate condition and it’s— but I’ve never seen that as a 15-year-old, and you’re seeing it and you’re like, you’re scared, and I— what’s going on?

And I had another one who was 17. She had schizophrenia, and she would— I’d wake up in the middle of the night and she would be like screaming at her dead boyfriend. And it’s just very scary to be in that kind of environment and feel like you have no control. You can’t leave when you want, and your parents sent you there. So it’s like that abandonment obviously coming through, right? So all of that together just made for— I was very— I think I was very depressed, to be honest.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I’ll bet.

MEG APPELGATE: But I didn’t know it because I was so medicated. So I mean, it was bad.

The Gap Between What Parents Were Told and Reality

SHAWN RYAN: Do you remember the first conversation with her parents?

MEG APPELGATE: Nope.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you remember any of them?

MEG APPELGATE: Nope. I was so gone. I don’t think my brain was like connected to my body for that time. I was so medicated. And it’s like, I don’t— I didn’t learn anything in that 6 months at all.

SHAWN RYAN: No school. There’s nothing in there.

MEG APPELGATE: The school was horrible. The school teacher, in my opinion, was so abusive. Like, he was so mean and so aggressive. I barely got any school done. I had to do the catching up at my next program. But even then it was like self-taught and I’m just reading and doing tests. There’s no teaching, right? So it was— but yeah, basically no school. So that 6 months I had to make up later.

SHAWN RYAN: And so what’s the pipeline? I mean, so you’re there for 6 months, you’re not learning anything. What’s the next place? Why did you even move on? Right. There’s no— if there’s no curriculum and there’s no program. Well, then it wasn’t about space. It was all numbers out of a bag.

MEG APPELGATE: And you got to remember also that, yeah, I’m going through what I’m going through. My parents are being told, “Oh, Meg’s doing so well. She’s really progressing into a way I think she’s going to really be ready for this next program. And here are some programs you should look into. I think she needs a secondary place.”

The secondary place that I went to required— it’s a unique place because they require you have pre-placement somewhere else. So whether it’s at Wilderness Program, RTC, a residential treatment center, somewhere like that, you— it was very rare that a girl would just go to the program first without being somewhere else first to kind of learn the program rules. Like, they’re not going to get the wild ones, they’re going to get the tamed ones, that have already been through a little bit of it.

And so my parents are being told that I’m doing great and I’m ready for the next phase of my treatment journey. So there’s just a big gap in what parents are being told, what they are told is happening, and the therapeutic practices that are happening in these facilities, and really what happens in practice in these facilities and what kids are experiencing. And you can’t ever tell the parents because of the monitored communication.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, it’s a total institution.

SHAWN RYAN: So how do you know that they’re telling your parents that you’re doing so great? This all come out afterwards?

MEG APPELGATE: That comes back, in my 30s, when we start talking about this stuff and realizing like, what? That’s what happened? I was told something different. I have a letter from my psychiatrist at the time, and he was really old back then. He was probably a practicing psychiatrist. He was probably 75 back when I was in Intermountain Hospital. And he wrote this crazy letter to my parents saying the type of bipolar that she has and she’s pushing back against treatment and she keeps saying, “I’m not bipolar,” and she’s wrong. And if we don’t do something, she’s going to end up an unmarried, pregnant, single mom.

And like all this weird stuff, like it’s legitimately in a letter from the psychiatrist to my parents warning them if I don’t continue with this, that’s where I’m going to end up. So it’s just like fearmongering, like they’re scaring parents into thinking, “Oh, your kid is going to die, they’re going to end up pregnant, running away, whatever.”

SHAWN RYAN: Do they come see you at all in person?

MEG APPELGATE: They allowed— well, they hold visits over your head. So if you’re doing bad, they’re like, “I’m not going to let you see your parents tomorrow if you don’t do A, B, and C.” But they do allow parents to come and visit and you’re allowed offsite for a bit of time. But like no overnights or anything like that. So my parents would come. I think they came twice, I believe, in the—

SHAWN RYAN: Twice in 3 and a half years.

MEG APPELGATE: No, in the 6 months at the hospital. At the second place, I ended up— once you get good and programmed, you get to go home on a home visit. And I was still going back and doing my thing, acting good, and still not saying anything to my parents. They don’t let you do it until you’re— they can trust that you’re not going to say things.

SHAWN RYAN: How do they know that you’re not going to say things?

Chrysalis: Brainwashing and the “Family” Dynamic

MEG APPELGATE: They have instilled fear enough to the point that they just trust that you want to be perceived well by your peers and by them. Everyone wanted to seem like— everyone wanted to be the favorite of the two owners. And so they just had a way of knowing. This was your family and they made the whole program your family. And would you turn your back on your family?

So it’s like when they become certain that Chrysalis, which is the name of the second program, was important enough to you that you weren’t going to turn your back. And they were pretty certain. That’s the trust phase. That’s level 2. And then you were allowed to go home and do home visits. So I did have home visits throughout the 3 years I was there and my parents came up when they could too. But it would be like probably evened out to like every 6 months.

SHAWN RYAN: So they completely brainwashed you?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, they did for me at least.

SHAWN RYAN: And now did it work? Did it work? Did you want to go home?

MEG APPELGATE: It was a very confusing feeling because they made— so the way that Chrysalis worked for me is, and after speaking to a lot of people, it works like this for a lot of people as well. They kind of break you down to make you hopeless, and then they help build you back up. And when they build you back up, they make you so reliant on them and their approval and your peers’ approval. And then they’ve instilled in you that Chrysalis is a family. They talk about the other girls in Chrysalis. Those are your Chrysalis sisters. We call them that, Chrysalis sisters. And this is my Chrysalis family.

And so when you’ve used that kind of language surrounding where you’re living, it’s like your family. Would you do that to your family? Would you turn your back? Would you lie? Would you run away? Like, and if I do that, I know I’m kicked out of Chrysalis. I know I’m gone. What then? Then my parents won’t even accept me back, and then I lose my whole family. And this is everything right now. So they kind of— it’s like a trapped feeling that you end up getting.

And it’s very odd. So Chrysalis is, at least at that time, a very small program. There’s only like 10 girls and you all live together in the middle of nowhere in rural Montana next to the Canadian border in a log cabin in the middle of the woods. And the two people are married. They’re your therapists. You share a bathroom with them. You live in the same log cabin with them. Yeah. Like, see, that alone makes you go, what? Right?

SHAWN RYAN: A married couple in the middle of the f*ing woods with 10 girls.

MEG APPELGATE: Yep. And they’re your therapists. And we’re a Chrysalis family. Yep. So definitely already red flags with relationship dynamics and separation of patient dynamics and with therapists.

SHAWN RYAN: But I mean, what— what are your parents thinking? A camp in the f*ing woods in a log cabin in Montana in the middle of nowhere with 10 girls and a married couple?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. I’ve asked my parents that, you know, also red flags. Definitely red flags. But it’s like, think about it. If you’re talking about like, “Well, Meg has always wanted family and this is like her second family and we’re going to be there for her. It’s providing a sense of community and family.” And I’m not there because we’re in California. We can’t be there.

But I did talk to my dad, and he said that when he visited, he saw weird stuff, like weird dynamics. And he said he remembers seeing a girl sit on Kenny’s lap and, you know, or Kenny put his arm around a girl and hug her. And he remembers thinking, “That’s a little weird, but maybe I’m off. I’m going to go ahead and look at Kenny’s wife and see what she looks like. How is she responding to this? And that should tell me if I’m wrong.” And he’d look over at Meri and she’d be like, and so he’s like, “Oh, well, maybe this is good. Like, she doesn’t have red flags. Why would I?”

And so it kind of fed into that belief system that this is how these programs work. And according to them, they did work. So he had no other information. And it didn’t take long for me to start categorizing the things that were happening to me that I now think were extremely traumatic and in my opinion abusive, to just be the way it is. And so it’s like it wasn’t abuse back then. Like, it’s hard to explain that it wasn’t categorized as what it was. Took so long.

SHAWN RYAN: So what you’re saying is you didn’t recognize it as abuse because you had never experienced anything like that before. Everybody around you, all the other 9 girls are experiencing the same thing. They’ve already brainwashed you. So you have— this is just everyday life for you. You have no idea that what—

MEG APPELGATE: And I don’t even know what’s going on yet, but yeah, I’d say that’s pretty accurate. I’d say that’s pretty accurate.

SHAWN RYAN: And you don’t realize this is abuse until, like, 33.

MEG APPELGATE: Took a long time.

SHAWN RYAN: What was going on?

The “Circle” – Group Therapy and Psychological Manipulation

MEG APPELGATE: One of their biggest therapeutic practices was something called circle. And the name alone should just tell you what we’re going to be working with here. But circle was group therapy. And we would quite literally sit in a circle with all the girls. Sometimes up to 4 hours long, anywhere from 2 to 4 hours long.

And it consisted of one of the girls being in a hot seat. And you would have to hear from your peers for a very long time, everything you did wrong. Anything that you did that was wrong that week, or maybe you were moody, or maybe you stole a glass of milk and you’re not allowed to have a glass of milk, or extra packet of oatmeal, or just whatever. You would hear from your peers how disappointed they were in you.

And remember, these are your Chrysalis sisters. These are like family. This is everything you have. This is your lifeline and your community. And you’re hearing all the ways in which you fail. And all these negative things about you.

And then Kenny would start talking. And as soon as Kenny started talking, you’d get really nervous because that’s when it’s going to get hit home, right? It’s going to go even deeper. And the kind of things that I would hear in these circles are that I need to change who I am. And if I don’t, no one’s ever going to love me and I’m not going to be accepted in society. And I have a chance because I’m only 16 and I can change my personality still, but I have to work really, really hard. And I’m abrasive and I interrupt people and I’m a bad friend. Just things that when you’re a teenager and everything’s based on social interactions, that just make you super self-conscious. You start doubting your confidence and who you are.

And that was when I really felt learned helplessness, where nothing I did was going to ever stop this. And that’s when I learned I just need to work the program and I’m just going to let them influence me. And as soon as I did, Kenny started being happier with me. And that was the incentivization I needed, because I just wanted to feel loved. I did not feel loved there for so long.

And all of a sudden, when I started working the program, they started paying attention to me, and then they started calling me a leader, and then I started moving up the levels and getting more progress. And there’s nothing like feeling like you’re belonging to, like, brainwash you. I finally felt like I belonged. They knew that that’s what I wanted. That was their in for me.

Sexual Abuse and Inappropriate Boundaries

SHAWN RYAN: Was there any sexual abuse?

MEG APPELGATE: I don’t — not by me. I’ve heard stories definitely between the peers. There was stuff going on that wasn’t stopped, like sexual relationships and things like that, which in a youth facility like that should never be happening. They should be watching that, obviously.

SHAWN RYAN: Is it boys and girls or just girls?

MEG APPELGATE: It was all girls. Except for Kenny, obviously, he’s a man. But I have heard some other whisperings, but nothing that is not during my time. There was a lawsuit that came against them recently for a staff member that had allegedly sexually abused some of the minors. But it really happens. I can’t tell you how often I hear about sexual abuse in programs.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve been —

MEG APPELGATE: and it’s just like —

SHAWN RYAN: imagine —

MEG APPELGATE: It’s so commonly heard by me when I’m talking to survivors that I’m surprised I didn’t see it firsthand. But I will say —

SHAWN RYAN: You blocked it out, right? You were doped up. Were you still doped up?

MEG APPELGATE: They continued the medication. I think that they took me off some of the Seroquel. I believe they might have gone down on some of the medications to help me function, but I begged to go off and they wouldn’t let me.

I will say, though, that while I don’t know how comfortable I am saying I went through sexual abuse at Chrysalis, I do believe that there were very problematic relationship boundaries between the therapists like Kenny and Mary and ourselves. And I think that’s inherent just in living with your therapist. It’s hard to have professional boundaries in that sense as it is.

But to give you an example, Kenny used to have wrestling matches with us. Like we’d have wrestling competitions. Yeah. And I loved it because it meant he was paying attention to me and he was okay with me and not mad at me. And so I liked it. It’s weird.

SHAWN RYAN: Like one-on-one wrestling?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Like in the grass and everyone watching and rooting people on. Very strange. And like I said, I would see girls sitting on his lap, giving hugs. And at the time, you just think, that’s my Chrysalis family, family hugs. That’s how you see it. But when I grow up and I have my own kids and I think about, well, if one of my kids was to go to the therapist and sit on the lap, would I be okay with that? Oh wait, that’s weird. And it took me having my own kids to actually realize that that’s inappropriate.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy sh.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

Three Years at Chrysalis – Running Away Was Not an Option

SHAWN RYAN: How long did you stay at this place?

MEG APPELGATE: 3 years.

SHAWN RYAN: You were there for 3 f*ing years?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Didn’t you run away?

MEG APPELGATE: No. And I never even thought about it. I saw girls run away and I saw what happened. I saw how Kenny responded when girls ran away and they cut off — remember this, your whole family, if you run away, you are dead to them. These are even your best friends. And you think that these girls are your lifeline.

And all of a sudden, I remember a girl would leave and Kenny would come up and say she’s a POS or whatever, an idiot. He would call girls idiot or whatever. I remember him saying once that she wasn’t working the program, and we weren’t allowed to talk about them anymore, but they were our family. Yesterday. And all of a sudden we had to cut them out completely and we weren’t allowed to talk to them. They weren’t on the approved list, so we couldn’t write them, we couldn’t call them.

SHAWN RYAN: So how long would you be in that for if you ran away? You’re gone. Out of it?

MEG APPELGATE: No, you will never come back to Chrysalis. They made that very clear. Kenny would say all the time, “Chrysalis girls are expected to stay in their beds. There aren’t any bolts and chains on these walls.”

SHAWN RYAN: Sh.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. If you ran away from Chrysalis, you were gone no matter what. And it was scary. That’s scary because it’s not just running away, right? You’re also 14 miles from the nearest gas station. And it’s in Montana.

You know, I missed the bus once and I had to ride 14 miles on my bike in the middle of winter to school because when you’re on level 2, you’re allowed to go to the public high school, which is a whole other level of making sure you’re not going to say anything.

Public School, Program Rules, and Total Control

SHAWN RYAN: How do they — yeah, they let you go to a public school, which actually I’ve never —

MEG APPELGATE: There aren’t any TTI facilities that I know of nowadays that do that. But once you’re on level 2, you are allowed to go to the public high school. But when you were there, remember, you’re in Eureka, Montana, population 1,200. So everyone knows Kenny, everyone knows you’re a Chrysalis girl. And everyone knows what you’re allowed to do and not allowed to do. So he’s got lots of people watching and he would have people reporting back, right?

And then he’s got people in the school that are approved and unapproved. So if you’ve ever smoked pot, drank, go to keggers or anything like that, you are not allowed to talk to them. And if you’re seen talking to them, you’re going to be the subject of a circle later on that night and you’re going to be confronted about it, right?

So you were taught away from the program setting to still live by program rules. And you had to live by the program rules at the school, same as when you went on a home visit. You had to live by the program rules. You could not listen to rap at home. Doesn’t matter. You’re not at Chrysalis, but you live by the program rules. So you better not put on that bikini. You wear a one-piece just like at the program.

So they had to be sure that you were going to live by the program rules at home or wherever you were before they could trust you doing that. And the way that they grew that trust was seeing you hold your peers accountable. So it was all about accountability and peer accountability, public accountability, calling out your friends, putting them on the spot.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a cult. They took a page out of the —

MEG APPELGATE: In my opinion, it was.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Wow.

MEG APPELGATE: The effect of it made me experience what cult survivors have experienced. And I’ve had to deprogram, as we call it. These kids are ages 12 to 15 when they’re going into these programs. That’s very, very young. And the kind of treatment and the kind of tools you’re using can have long-lasting effects. And I don’t think that’s truly appreciated by them.

SHAWN RYAN: Sh.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

Turning 18 – Leaving the Program

SHAWN RYAN: And you stayed until 18 and a half. What are they telling people that are turning 18 that are getting ready to leave and go out into the world?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. So sometimes — okay, so there’s different levels. Back when I was there, it was 1, 2, 3, and then graduate, right? Not very many people graduate. And I ended up being a graduate. I got the whole ring. They give you a ceremony and you get a butterfly ring and it’s really weird.

But so when you’re at level 3 and you are going to turn 18 in like 6 months, they could potentially have a plan for you to graduate around the time that you’re graduating high school and turning 18. I was 18 at the start of my senior year. So I’m really old for my grade. So I was wanting to go home to my parents for all of senior year because I would have been 18 two days before school started.

But while it is my choice because I was 18, it was never truly told to me that it was my choice, like that I have that right as being 18. And I wanted to please them so badly and I wanted to please my family so badly. That’s the one conversation I vaguely remember is talking to my mom and dad about wanting to come home. And they said, “I just — it’s a big transition to just do one year, like your senior year. Usually you’ve had some time to make friends. And I worry about that transition. I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.”

That was enough for me to want to please my parents and be like, okay, I can’t. I just have to deal with it. Because that’s what Intermountain told me, right? You just have no control over your life. Don’t advocate for yourself. Stop advocating, Meg. Just sit and take it. Just take it.

In reality, I look back and I categorize it — those two programs — as really grooming us to be the perfect abuse victim in our future.

SHAWN RYAN: Pretty much.

MEG APPELGATE: Don’t talk about it. Shut your mouth. You’re not worth anything more. You can’t do anything to change this. Is there any preparation for people that, for their leaving, like that they’re before going and mourning?

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, when you’re getting ready to check out, when you’re turning 18.

Life After Chrysalis

MEG APPELGATE: I mean, some programs, I’m sure. So one of the things we have is a home plan. That’s something that you usually have to complete. But in my opinion, it’s just a bunch of bullshit. It’s a bunch of making sure your parents are implementing the same rules as the program at home. And then a lot of times in these home plans, the repercussions of not following the rules that are set by your parents equals like you getting kicked out of the house and the same kind of stuff that’s going to be super damaging. If you were in the program and it happened, it’s happening at home and it doesn’t end up doing much good.

But many of these kids end up turning 18 and leaving. Sometimes they give them $10 for a bus ticket, sometimes they don’t. And a lot of times they’re just thrown out into the world. And I’d say that they kind of prepared me to go to college. I went straight from Chrysalis to college, which was interesting. But I mean, they kind of told me, I guess, a little bit what it’s like, but I was not prepared. I mean, they didn’t tell me that circles aren’t a normal thing you do with your friends. So I went out thinking you confront people who you’re friends with, you hold people accountable on a daily basis and let them know exactly what they’re doing and how they need to fix it and that you’re disappointed in them. Make people feel shame. That’s how you get change. And criticize everything. That’s what I was virtually taught, or what I was able to get out of it.

SHAWN RYAN: Why did you leave? Was it for college?

MEG APPELGATE: Yep. So I graduated the program, I graduated high school a couple of days apart. And I went home for the summer. My parents were still in Chicago at that time. And then I went— I was so brainwashed. I went back to Montana for school. So, wow. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you go back?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you go back to see him?

MEG APPELGATE: Oh, yeah. I went many times.

SHAWN RYAN: What was that like?

MEG APPELGATE: It’s this feeling of empowerment. I remember feeling like, I’ve been there. And I almost felt like, I’m a leader now. I almost— I thought about going back to be a staff member there. That is how into it I was until they— so I told you about approved and unapproved, right? That applies also to girls that are ex-Chrysalis girls.

So they heard there was another Chrysalis girl who went to my college, the same college, and we were friends. And somehow it got back to Marian Kenny that I was drinking alcohol. And Mary reached out to me and emailed me and said, “I’ve heard that you are drinking and partying, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to hold yourself accountable.” And think about that — that’s my therapist. My therapist is reaching out past any kind of trust — we’re not in treatment. I’m over 18. She’s reaching out to me to hold myself accountable for drinking alcohol in college.

And I remember feeling so much shame. And my response on that email: “You’re right, I’m so sorry. I knew it was a bad thing to do and I’m going to turn my life around. You’re right.” Because if you did any drugs, like if you had smoked pot once and you went to Chrysalis, you’re in AA every week, NA every week. So I was told for 4 years I was an alcoholic and I was an addict. And so I had to go to meetings, I had to have a sponsor, I had to work the steps.

And it didn’t take long for me to realize I’m not an addict, but I had to play the part. I had to do everything that they said. So I got to college and realized I’m not an addict. And so I think I can partake in this in a responsible way. Well, I had to go back to “I’m an addict.” Okay, I’m an addict. And I believed it again. And I wasn’t even under their full control. Wow.

Struggling to Readjust to the Real World

SHAWN RYAN: Was it hard to make friends?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yes. Really hard. I remember, like I said, I make friends easily and then it starts getting a little rough. I had a hard time reading the social cues. I get along with so many people and it was fun and we’d go do fun things. But then I had a hard time reading, like, when am I supposed to leave? Reading the room. And so I remember there was a time I tried to get a bunch of my friends to do a circle because that’s what I was taught.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re like, “What the f* is this?”

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, they’re like, “What is with this chick? What’s she doing?” So it was a big “why didn’t they prepare me better” kind of moment. Like, there was no point in time in any circle where they’re like, “Okay guys, I know this seems kind of weird. I know it’s going to seem a little off and this isn’t something you’re going to do when you leave. But we’re practicing A, B, and C, and we’re working on working the muscles of being able to advocate for ourselves,” or whatever. There’s none of that.

They were basically telling us that this is what the world is. In order to be successful, you need to be able to confront people, you need to be able to criticize people, you need to be able to be honest and not let people get away with things. And everything they drilled into me just carried over into college.

No Federal Oversight

SHAWN RYAN: Do they have any oversight? Do they have any federal, state, government?

MEG APPELGATE: No, there’s no federal oversight.

SHAWN RYAN: Any type of oversight at all? Nobody’s coming and checking on the facility?

MEG APPELGATE: From a federal standpoint, no. There’s no federal legislation that oversees the regulation of these facilities. So everything is left up to the states. Now, Montana is really interesting, actually. Montana, when I was there, the programs were all — you’re going to get a kick out of this — the programs were all overseen by the Department of Labor. Not the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor. And I believe they were inspected once every 4 years.

SHAWN RYAN: Once every 4 years?

MEG APPELGATE: I believe 3 or 4 years, maybe it was 2. I forget. But it wasn’t until 2019 that Montana passed a law moving the oversight of these programs in Montana to the Department of Health and Human Services. 2019.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

MEG APPELGATE: To give you an example of just how powerful that shift in oversight is, we had about 19 programs in Montana in 2019 when that law was passed. When it was passed, it didn’t take long for it to go down to 9, and the rest of them shut down because they couldn’t pass licensing. And those had been operating for decades.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Meg, let’s take a break. When we come back, we’ll get into when you started to realize everything that you’ve been taught is not how it is.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

Studying Psychology to Understand the Past

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Meg, we’re back from the break. You’re in school getting a psychology degree, correct?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I was.

SHAWN RYAN: I bet you learned a lot getting that degree, with everything that you’ve been through?

MEG APPELGATE: It’s almost as if I wanted to understand what I went through. There was this part of me that felt a lot of stuff in my childhood was undone. And I wanted to not only understand what had happened, but also understand why I am the way I am. And then also understand people because I still had that social aspect that I didn’t understand. And so I think studying psychology was more like — I obviously am not understanding the social dynamics here. I’m going to study it so I can be better at masking and make friends easier.

Layers of Abandonment

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, when you talk about your abandonment issues — abandonment from your biological parents. I’m sure you felt abandoned from your adopted parents. Abandonment at the actual facility.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Abandonment by the 10 girls, the 9 other girls, and Kenny and whatever her name is. Yeah, it’s a lot of abandonment.

MEG APPELGATE: And actually, now that you bring it up, I guess I’ve never — we have all these stages of waking up, and I’m having a little wake-up moment that you’re right. The 3 years in Chrysalis was probably the most amount of abandonment I felt, and it was from Mary and Kenny because I was so desperate for their approval.

And I’ve talked to so many girls during that same period of time, and everyone wanted to be Kenny’s favorite, and he had favorite girls, and the favorite girls got the most attention. Kenny would do this thing when he was happy with you and like his favorites. He would come up behind you and he would grab the back of your neck, right here, and he would squeeze really, really hard, and it hurt, but you’re excited at the same time because it’s like, ow, but oh my God, Kenny’s happy with me. And so you felt pain along with happiness.

And he would do the same thing if you were sitting next to him in the Suburban. He would squeeze that part above your knee that’s ticklish, where you’re really ticklish. And it hurt because he’s squeezing hard, but it also meant he was happy because he would never do that otherwise. He doesn’t touch the girls when he’s unhappy with you. That means I’m doing something right. And so when that wasn’t happening, I was devastated. Or when he’s doing it to other girls and he’s mad at me.

The kind of things that were said to me — I remember being at the table and we were all eating dinner. We all ate dinner at this gigantic wooden table in the dining room. And you had to eat what was offered. And I was the pickiest eater you could ever meet. I had never had salad until I arrived at Chrysalis. So this was a culture shock for me, and they were forcing me to eat salad.

And I’m sitting there, and I would try to put all the salad in my mouth at once and chew it, holding my nostrils, and then I would swallow it like a pill. But this time I gagged, and I ended up throwing up on my plate. And he forced me to eat it because, holy shit, you have to eat what’s on your plate. And he said that I was being dramatic.

SHAWN RYAN: You threw the food up and then he made you—

MEG APPELGATE: …and then he made me eat my throat. Yeah. Or it could be as simple as, I’m putting— this was in my journal and I didn’t remember this, so thank God I have 3 and a half years of journals. I was eating pancakes and I was just going like this with the syrup over it, and it accidentally went over the plate onto the placemat. And Kenny yelled at me and he called me a pig.

So, simple things like that that you hear on a daily basis, and they just kind of chip away at like, oh, he’s mad at me. Oh, such crazy disappointment. I wish Kenny would like me. And I don’t know what it was, but it was about Kenny. Everyone wanted Kenny to like, to be on his good side.

The Shame That Surfaced on the Break

SHAWN RYAN: Can you talk about the shame that you just felt on the break?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. You know, we took a break. I go into the bathroom, I’m touching up my lipstick, and I just was looking in the mirror. And that’s when it hit me, like, right in my solar plexus. I felt this, like, bubbling up of just shame and guilt. And I had just finished talking about Chrysalis and Marian Kenny and the effects that it’s had in my life. And I all of a sudden was like, oh, you know, Marian Kenny are going to probably see this and they’re going to be so disappointed.

SHAWN RYAN: And this is over 20 years ago.

MEG APPELGATE: And I still have that knee-jerk reaction to want to please them. And even through my advocacy work, you know, I do all these great things. I help pass a law or, you know, these things that I’m proud of. And there’s always that part of me that wonders, well, I wonder if they see this on the news. I wonder if they’ll be proud of me. I wonder if they’ll hate me. I can’t stop thinking about them.

SHAWN RYAN: It feels personal.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Like you’re personally attacking them.

MEG APPELGATE: Mm-hmm. And it shouldn’t feel like that because all I’m doing is talking about my experiences from having relationships with them and how it still impacts me. And it shouldn’t impact me like this.

SHAWN RYAN: Isn’t it weird how the human psyche is like that?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You feel guilt like you’re f*ing somebody over that wronged you.

MEG APPELGATE: Yep, exactly. I think we’re more apt to do that almost for the people that have harmed us the most. Like the abusive relationships I’ve been in.

SHAWN RYAN: So you’re the one that put yourself in this situation with me.

MEG APPELGATE: Mm-hmm.

SHAWN RYAN: But why the f* do I feel guilty?

MEG APPELGATE: It’s almost like because the relationship is void of any guilt or remorse. So it’s like you’re trying to fill the place. Maybe this should have remorse in this kind of interaction or in this relationship. So I’m going to make up for it because it’s weird that it doesn’t exist. I don’t know.

Staying Connected with Fellow Survivors

SHAWN RYAN: Do you talk to any of the girls that you were in this place with?

MEG APPELGATE: I’m in contact with quite a few of them.

SHAWN RYAN: What do they think?

MEG APPELGATE: I mean, most of them knew it was bad when it was back then. I’d say out of the girls that I know, I was probably the worst brainwashed. I probably got it the worst. And one of my really good friends, I won’t say her name, but I love her to death. She was friends with me from getting out of the program all the way till now, and she knew it was bad when it was there, but I didn’t.

And I remember 15, 17 years later, starting to wake up. And I remember calling her and I was like, “Hey, so when we had circle and Kenny and Mary would say these things or they’d shame us about all this stuff, was that like not okay?” And she goes, “Yeah, that was abuse.” And I’m like, “Why didn’t you say anything to me?” And she was like, “You weren’t ready. I’ve been waiting for you to be ready.”

Because who is it for her to say whether I should have a feeling about it or not? And I probably, if I was programmed enough, would have been like, “No, you’re wrong.” And it could have affected us. You have to be ready. You have to make your own decision about your experiences. And forcing someone to come to that, oftentimes, whether it’s a cult survivor or just any kind of experience you’re not ready to handle yet, you’re going to run. You’re going to run away from the person that’s trying to force it on you. And so she did the right thing.

But there were also people— Kenny had a favorite. And she was the favorite forever. And she was talked about all the time for many, many years after she left. And unfortunately, what was it, maybe 2 and a half years ago, I saw on Facebook a rant by her in the middle of the night. And it was on her Facebook feed. And there was probably like 80 posts in like 12 hours. And it was definitely a rant. And there was a lot about Montana and about hurting kids. And I said, “Shit, she woke up.”

And there was that part of me that was like, oh no. And I didn’t do anything. And I just kind of was like, oh, wow, okay, I guess maybe she’s waking up. I’m assuming she’s talking about this. It means that. And then a couple of months later, she ended up passing away and I don’t know the full story. I don’t know if it was a drug overdose or suicide. I’m not sure. But those are both very common in the survivor community, substance abuse issues and suicide. So she’s no longer with us. And she marked the fourth, I think the fourth Chrysalis girl that’s been lost.

And so, when you have that many staring you in the face, you really start to realize things. So that was kind of a sign for me since she was the most brainwashed in my mind. Once I woke up, I realized, yeah, she was definitely. And so seeing her wake up right before was eye-opening.

And I know a couple of girls that have come after me and said that everything I’m saying is wrong and Chrysalis saved their life. And it probably did. I mean, I’m not saying people can’t have good experiences at all. I validate that 100%. They both can be true at the same time. Someone can go through an experience and not be traumatized, and another person you’re sharing your space with can. And so I do know there are some girls that are completely thinking nothing was wrong the entire time. Whether they believe that or it’s cognitive dissonance, who knows.

Waking Up: The Role of Parenthood

SHAWN RYAN: How fast in college did you start to realize things maybe weren’t the way they were supposed to be?

MEG APPELGATE: I didn’t. I just changed what I was doing because it wasn’t working and kept masking.

SHAWN RYAN: Even with a psychology degree, you didn’t realize?

MEG APPELGATE: It took me having my own kids and knowing what I would and wouldn’t want my kids to go through and have, and relationship dynamics I wouldn’t want to be there with certain relationships. So it really took me— and this is the way that I explain it— I had no self-confidence at all. I had been— I faked it. I appeared to others to have confidence, but I did not.

And so when you have no self-confidence and you’re thinking about whether something is abusive or not, if you don’t hold yourself in high regard, then not a lot of things are going to be abusive because you deserve it, because you’re not a good person, you’re not lovable, you’re not likable. So it’s not a big deal.

But when you have kids, you take yourself— there is— it’s not about confidence with yourself. You love your kids and you want the best for your kids. And so you have a much higher bar of what’s going to be not tolerated. And so once you’re able to separate yourself, it’s not about you being treated as someone you love. It’s a lot easier to see.

And then once you see it and you realize that you have to think about every single memory and then you have to kind of play it in your head like a movie and recategorize it and you’re like, “Oh, that was abuse. That was abuse. That’s not fun. Untag abuse.” Wow. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, how did this stuff pop in your head when you had kids? Because you’re not sending your kids to these places.

MEG APPELGATE: Hell no. Yeah. Hell no. I think the first thing that I realized was the relationship dynamics between Kenny and Mary and me. And I think it was one of my kids got a therapist for the first time. And we were going to sessions and seeing how they would react. And then, a memory would pop up about Mary and Kenny, about something that happened in that session. And would I want that to happen to that kid that was in the therapy? And I would be like, “Oh my God, wait, what else did they do that I’m not okay with?”

And then you make parenting decisions and thinking about what if I would make the decisions they made for me, for my kids. If I was to say, “Well, you know, Jackson, you had a glass of milk and you know that we don’t have milk unless it’s cookie day. And so now you have a consequence. You need to go outside and you need to put rocks into a wheelbarrow and just move them from one side of the yard to the other. And that’s your consequence.”

So if I started thinking about things that they did to me in Chrysalis or had me do, and thinking about doing it to my kids, that’s when I realized, “Oh, that’s really f*ed up.” Like, would this cause CPS to be called on me? And for a majority of the things, I’d be like, “Yeah, if this was happening to one of my kids or one of my kids’ friends, I would call. I would make this call.” If I knew a therapist is having wrestling matches with one of my kids, yeah, I would call.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, me too. Yeah, well, I’d probably do more than call, right?

MEG APPELGATE: Right. Wow. Wow.

From Epiphanies to Advocacy

SHAWN RYAN: So how did this turn into what it’s turned into?

MEG APPELGATE: As far as what you’re doing?

SHAWN RYAN: The book? Passing laws?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So you had these— you just had like a series of epiphanies.

MEG APPELGATE: I did.

SHAWN RYAN: I did still have them.

MEG APPELGATE: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: I guess so. Because we just have—

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I just had another one. The true waking up really came in periods. First, it was the first suicide that happened, right? Losing the first program friend. And I started recategorizing some of the things and I thought about it as like, “Oh man, you know, Chrysalis was kind of fed up. Some of that stuff was kind of fed up,” in my head and just how I experienced it. But it kind of stayed still in a little pocket of— it wasn’t abuse. That name didn’t come till much later. It was just kind of like, “Oh, that’s f*ed up.”

And then the second part was when Paris Hilton’s documentary came out. And I hear this from many survivors, how much This Is Paris allowed them to really, truly wake up. And the reason why is, again, it took me out of myself and my own experience because of my confidence being so low. So in This Is Paris, it’s really the first time the industry got talked about and the fact that there isn’t just Chrysalis. And at this point, I had no idea. There are a lot of different programs. And not only are there tons of different programs, it’s a $23 billion a year in public fund industry. And wait, oh, there’s private equity backing it. What?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, wow.

Awakening to Purpose and Healing

MEG APPELGATE: There’s a community of survivors. Wait, huh? So once that aspect came into it, it was like, I remember breaking down, crying my eyes out. I was like 8 months pregnant. I remember with Bentley and Ben came in. My husband Ben came into the room and I’m sobbing. And he’s like, “Do you want me to—” I’m like, “Just go away. Just go away.” Oh my God.

And I was just like freaking out because that’s the time I was like, I was abused. I was like, what happened to me is not okay. And it’s happening at a much larger scale. This is not just about me. And I woke up in that way, but it still stayed in that container. It still was like right there.

And I’d start Googling things, being like, I didn’t have a troubled teen industry like name to it yet. But it was more like boarding school hurt, boarding school trauma. I had no idea how to put any of this stuff together.

And it stayed like that until my husband, who was a recovering addict and alcoholic, had to go to an inpatient stay during his recovery. And all of a sudden I got this call from an unknown, like, restricted number, and it was Ben, and he said, his voice was shaking, and he said, “I’m being abused.” And I was like, “What?”

And there was that part of me that was activated, that little kid, that 15-year-old, where I was like, no, like abuse. Like, I gotta do something to help, right? And I told him what his rights were. I said, “They can’t, you know, they can’t do this, they can’t do that. Just stay where you are. I’m on my way.”

And I had Bentley, who was like 6 months old at the time. I had my nanny meet me on the side of the highway to transfer Bentley into a car seat in her car to take him so that I didn’t have to go pick Ben up with him.

And on that drive is when that last part of the major wake-up happened. And it was me realizing that in that moment, I was being the adult that I needed back when I was 15, and I was going to rescue someone from institutional abuse and feeling helpless and the way that I needed to be. And that’s when I realized that that’s what I want to be. That’s what I wanted to do. And that’s my purpose. I want to be what the kids in the facility need and who I needed when I was there. Hope and purpose, knowing there’s a life after the pain that they’re in right now.

And that’s when I made the decision that I wanted to do something about it. And that’s, going to pick Ben up — they had already kicked him out of the facility and he’s like on the street — all because he wanted to move facilities, by the way. That’s it. He just didn’t want to use them anymore and he wanted to be transferred somewhere else. And they had this big issue, wouldn’t give him his records. I mean, it was bad and a perfect example of the institutional abuse that’s going on within the rehab world.

So that made me realize I need to do something about my world. And I think it was probably a couple months later I decided that I was going to start a nonprofit. And then obviously a lot of therapy and a lot of EMDR, maybe doing 4 hours a week for 6 months before I was able to be sure that I could be grounded enough for this work. Because you obviously hear about a lot of stuff.

EMDR and Reprocessing Trauma

SHAWN RYAN: But that’s EMDR work.

MEG APPELGATE: Oh yeah, EMDR was a lifesaver. It honestly was. It allows you to touch on the things that are like the most traumatic for you without talking about it. So you don’t have to use the words that may be triggering, the adjectives, the feelings. All you do is you think about the way that it makes you feel, and then you, using rapid eye movements, are able to kind of retag that again.

So let’s say a certain experience in your past makes you feel, “I am not worthy.” That’s the negative. And so as you’re watching the light go back and forth, the bilateral stimulation, all of a sudden you’ll feel that “I’m not worthy” turn into “I mean something.” And all of a sudden it’s not about the experiences, it’s about the way you feel about the experiences. They’re retagged.

And that was what was so powerful — I don’t have to think about the bad sht. I just feel differently and more empowered about the bad sht without touching it.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, it honestly, for people with CPTSD, PTSD, it’s a godsend for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve heard a lot about it. I’ve never done it.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. And it works fast if you’re quick. Like, I was a very quick processor. And if you’re a quick processor, you can get over things very, very quickly. And it’s all about your feelings around certain circumstances.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

Relationships and Patterns of Abuse

SHAWN RYAN: How did this all affect your relationships with men?

MEG APPELGATE: I think that it made me very — I mentioned earlier, it’s like they’re kind of grooming us to be like perfect abuse victims. I think that I went on to try to find guys that treat me like Kenny, and I think I looked for men that are aggressive and make me feel like I’m not enough so that I have to work for approval. I think that that was a pretty big carry-through.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re looking for your normal.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And attracted to what’s normal.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, exactly. That’s what was modeled for me. And that’s the sad thing, and probably why all the girls wanted — that’s your normal, right? That’s why. But I think that’s why the girls wanted Kenny’s attention so much. They’re girls, and during that time in adolescence, it’s really important to have a male father figure. Because that’s teaching us how we should be treated, what to look for when we grow up. And that male relationship really matters in that time.

SHAWN RYAN: So you sought out abusive relationships?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I think I instinctively did because I was mimicking the way that I felt about myself. It didn’t make sense to be treated well in a relationship if I didn’t feel like I deserved to be treated well. And so I think I instinctively was — and by no way was I like, “Hmm, I’m going to choose that guy over there because he’s going to treat me like sht.” It definitely wasn’t conscious. I would just realize I kept falling hard for the people who treat me like sht, or treat me like an option. That’s it.

SHAWN RYAN: How do you change that?

MEG APPELGATE: By gaining confidence. By realizing I don’t need anyone. And really it took my whole — it’s kind of another phase of the wake-up. My whole world tumbled and my health was failing. I had had 12 surgeries. I’m losing organs like crazy. My body is like shutting down from all of this.

SHAWN RYAN: You mean you’re losing organs like crazy?

MEG APPELGATE: I mean, I was so sick for so long. Like, I had an appendix burst. I lost my tonsils from getting constant strep throat. I lost my gallbladder. I just kept having these things go wrong, constantly sick. And it wasn’t until I really looked at the abuse and everything that I was ignoring that that stopped and that went away. And I still deal with autoimmune conditions from having an activated nervous system for so long as I did. But all the issues really started to resolve once I started to stop pretending that I didn’t go through something really horrible.

And so once I was able to do that, I had — I call it the trauma spiral of 2018. And it really forced me to — I was having really bad anxiety, super bad panic attacks, like we’re talking horrible panic attacks daily. And it got to a point where I was agoraphobic. I was scared to leave the house. I was scared that if I had a panic attack in public, no one would be able to help me and I would die. Like, it was really bad.

And it took having a really traumatic experience in 2018 where everything was like a storm of bad things. Ben broke up with me and then all of a sudden it was like this trauma and I had a panic attack for 2 months straight, nonstop, 2 months straight. I had to take Benadryl around the clock just so I could function because I was so panicked all the time.

And that was really the base. That’s when I started doing things that are healthier for me and making better decisions, working out, weight training, better food choices, and started building up my confidence. And then once I started on Silence and I found my purpose — which is really turning my pain into purpose, that is my purpose — and putting it to good use and trying to change the world for the better, that’s when I started gaining a lot more confidence. And with the confidence came my ability to just feel like I am worth it. And that other part of me in needing someone to treat me like sh*t, it kind of went away. And it was slow, but it went away.

Marriages and Moving Forward

SHAWN RYAN: You’ve been through two years of marriage?

MEG APPELGATE: Yes, that is my third marriage. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How long did the other ones last?

MEG APPELGATE: Well, the first one, he proposed after like two weeks. So obviously I was a mess to say yes to that. But that lasted — it was on and off because a lot of times women go back, right? Because we believe what they told us and we don’t do well when we’re alone in those beginning stages. And so that in total, 2 years, I think. But like I said, I left for a good 6 months, had the baby, had a baby away from him, separated, and then I went back. So there was a lot of time that we weren’t actually in the same house together. But I think like 2 years, 2 and a half total. So not very long.

SHAWN RYAN: How about the next one?

MEG APPELGATE: Around the same, like 2 and a half, around that.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. And so, but it really was after the second one that I really started — I just realized, I gotta start working on myself here. I’m making the same decision over and over again. And I was choosing guys who was choosing me instead of choosing me so that I can become the person that gets to choose who. I just wanted anyone to make me feel special and make me feel like I mean something because of all the damage that all those adolescent years did to make me feel like I’m nothing. I was told so often how little I am and how who I am is not lovable. It’s really hard to counteract that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a miracle that, you know, that you’ve—

MEG APPELGATE: It is—

SHAWN RYAN: moved past it, appear to have moved past it.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. No, I have. And I can sit here and say that I do mean something and everyone means something. And the fact that I believed that for so long, it’s sad. I can’t get that time back. But I can sit here and say to the people that feel like that — you can feel different. And yeah, you just have to believe in yourself and believe in the people that believe in you and stop listening to the people who you think their words have weight, and they really don’t.

Speaking Out and Legal Challenges

SHAWN RYAN: Have you ever been contacted by any of these facilities for speaking out?

MEG APPELGATE: No.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s surprising.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, I know. It is surprising. I also work with a ton of attorneys and, with building our attorney directory, I’ve got a lot of attorneys that I work with and think I’m great. And it’s just like all I do is talk about my experiences and take other people’s experiences and verbatim put them on our socials. So there’s not really much they can do. I’ve gotten subpoenas, I have to deal with those just because that’s the nature of litigation going on in the industry and having an archive with program information on it and stuff. But no, I’ve never — Kenny and Meri have never reached out to me except for in college. And I’m really surprised, like, Diamond Ranch Academy hasn’t come after — you know, after Taylor Goodridge died there, I spoke out a lot. Me and her family, we went crazy about talking about what happened to her. I’ve never been reached out by them.

SHAWN RYAN: What are your parents — when did you tell your parents? I told them, like, come out.

Parents’ Awakening and Advocacy

MEG APPELGATE: I told them, literally not that long before Unsilenced was started. So they didn’t even get that much time to be like, oh shit, this is going on. She’s about to start a nonprofit. But it was probably the end of 2021. And right before I started Unsilenced, I started talking about it.

At first my mom and dad were like— I remember the first time I said “abusive.” I think I used the word abusive when I talked about Chrysalis. I said something like, yeah, Chrysalis was abusive to me. And my mom and dad were like, “Well, wait, Meg, that’s a really powerful word.” And I said, “Yeah, it’s a really powerful word. Do you want to hear why I say that?” And they were like, yeah.

And I started talking about it and you could see the light coming. They’re like, oh my God. Because they had the realization that all the things that they were being told by the staff and Meri and Kenny were not actually happening. And that the things that were bad that were happening, we weren’t allowed to tell them. And they had that realization.

Because all they— we haven’t talked about Chrysalis. So all they knew was what they were told, obviously. So it took me saying I went through this stuff and they’re like, oh shit. And what people don’t understand is that even though they didn’t go to Chrysalis, they had their own wake-up period. Like, they had to wake up too. They were programmed. They were brainwashed too.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you blame them? No.

MEG APPELGATE: My God, no. My dad is the chair of our board. Like, he’s one of my biggest donors and he’s one of my biggest advocates. My mom and dad, they are one of the first people to be like, “Oh, I’ll write a letter to Congress. I’ll write a letter to the lawmakers telling them they need to pass this bill.” Like, they don’t want what happened to me to happen to other kids.

And thankfully, they’re like that, because that’s hard to find — to be able to say, “Oh, I messed up, I listened to the wrong people and my daughter is hurt because of it.” But instead of denying what happened to me, they’re like, okay, let’s fight this. Let’s fight this together.

And it was a very powerful moment right after Unsilenced started. Paris Hilton, her team, and Unsilenced, and a huge group of survivors, we all went to DC to advocate for a federal bill. And my dad was on the lawn next to me with the megaphone talking about how parents are deceived, parents are lied to. And that is a very powerful moment to be sitting there. Him and my mom were the ones who made this decision, but they’re taking responsibility and they’re standing there and they’re advocating for me and for all other survivors and all other parents for change. And so it’s very cool. Yeah.

Paris Hilton and Legislative Collaboration

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Are you and Paris working together?

MEG APPELGATE: Yes. I mean, her team and I.

SHAWN RYAN: So this happened to her too?

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. The interesting thing is, if you watch This Is Paris, she uses— when she’s talking about when she was abducted, because she was abducted as well, you can see that in the documentary.

SHAWN RYAN: So that shit’s totally normal. I mean, it’s not normal.

MEG APPELGATE: No, it’s not normal.

SHAWN RYAN: But in this—

MEG APPELGATE: But get this — the same thing that was said to her was said to me. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” How is that possible? How is it possible that two different companies, probably two different companies, are using the exact same verbatim language? And I guarantee if I talk to someone that was abducted last week, it was along the same lines of what they heard too.

So yeah, Paris went to multiple facilities actually. She has done lots of hard work in legislation. She’s worked a lot in policy work. So when needed, I collaborate with their policy team to help with certain states — whether it’s the language, like I helped on the project of Montana with HB 218 and helping pass that law. But then also helping get the community together.

They’re working on a lot of different states right now and different policy work. And how do you get survivors randomly when you don’t have notice and you need them to call their senator or write a letter, and you need it from that exact state? So having— I kind of work with them with helping with, all right, let’s get survivors together. Let’s find as many people from Michigan. So in that way, yeah.

And she had a recent documentary come out — came out like a month ago — and we put on a showing for that for the survivor community. They care a lot about making sure that what Paris is doing is reaching the survivors. I help amplify that and make sure that— because we’re all in this together.

The Scale of the Problem: 150,000 to 200,000 Kids Per Year

MEG APPELGATE: How many girls are in this right now, how many facilities? That’s one of the hardest things to be able to determine. And it’s part of the reason why the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act was passed — because there’s no data. Like, there’s literally no data.

The only way to get an understanding of how many kids are in facilities at this point — because we’ve got private placement, right? So parents can drive their kids to a facility, or child welfare, or juvenile justice, or through the educational system and school districts. School district dollars are going to fund kids to these programs. So there are so many different pipelines.

And so the only way to really know is to do FOIA or GRAMA requests for ICPC data, which is Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children. It’s the piece of paper that basically, for any adoption, any kid crossing state lines, any kid going to a facility, there has to be a document that states this kid is crossing state lines. It basically protects it from being trafficking, right? Because you’ve got to say this kid is passing for their safety to this facility. This is where they’re going. This is the permission to have that all good.

So you’d have to FOIA or GRAMA request that for every single state. And a lot of them are kind of segmented in weird ways in the agencies in the state. So sometimes it’s like per county. So you might have to do it per county. And then for every state, it’s a different agency. You’d have to do that in the entire country. And the timeline of getting those back could be sometimes 6 months, 9 months — the year’s almost over. So now the data, you know, so it’s just so difficult.

But we have gained an understanding of the industry, like what we can expect. And I’d say about 150,000 to 200,000 kids find themselves in a facility in a given year.

SHAWN RYAN: 200,000 kids?

MEG APPELGATE: Up to 200,000. Yeah, 120,000 to 200,000 is our estimate.

The Case for Regulation

SHAWN RYAN: What would you like to see happen? Would you like to see these facilities just disappear? Do you want regulation?

MEG APPELGATE: I need kids to be safe. And we can’t be sending kids into these facilities unless we have regulation that can ensure the safety of the kids. It’s like hospitals.

SHAWN RYAN: Are there any facilities that you would recommend?

MEG APPELGATE: No, because there is no regulation federally overseeing these facilities. And I know from my investigations that the states are really responsible for setting the expectations and the licensing and the standards for the facilities. And I see on a state level what’s happening and what’s falling through the loops — what’s happening and the holes that are there. And kids are dying.

And I don’t think we should be placing kids in this industry until we can make sure not only are kids not dying, but that based on outcomes, kids are having very standardized outcomes and they’re positive. There would be no hospital that would ever exist if 85% of the people that went into the hospital and left called themselves survivors of that hospital.

SHAWN RYAN: Is that— is it 85%?

MEG APPELGATE: I mean, I would have no idea because the people with good experiences don’t come to me, right? I do know they do exist. And there are people who have legitimately good experiences, and I validate that 100%. But until we can make sure everyone has that good experience, we can’t be sending kids here. We can’t.

Unsilenced’s Progress and the Fight for Justice

SHAWN RYAN: Damn, man. What kind of traction have you gotten?

MEG APPELGATE: We’ve made some really good traction. All I know is that back when I was doing the Googling — like, what, troubled teen industry, blah blah — there was nothing. There was nothing. Type in Troubled Teen Industry now. Unsilenced is like number 3. We have over 3,500 programs in our program archive and over 100,000 documents on those programs. That’s DHS reports, that’s 911 calls, that’s police camera footage, that is personal records from survivors that redact it and give us what these look like behind the scenes. That’s survivor testimonies and news articles levels.

And this is largely thanks to Paris Hilton too for using her platform to be able to talk about everything she’s been through. We’ve gotten a lot of movement, and we see programs closing. And most importantly — you were asking, what do you want to happen? Man, I want justice. I want justice.

SHAWN RYAN: And what does that look like?

MEG APPELGATE: It’s hard because a lot of these states have really poor statutes of limitations, right? I know so many states where physical abuse, even bad physical abuse, you have one year. And look how long it took me to wake up. Statutes of limitations are really over by the time you’re like, okay, I’m ready. And even if you know it’s abuse, you have to be ready for that. You have to go to therapy. You have to prepare yourself for litigation. So there’s a lot of barriers when it comes to having that.

But what I want to see is regulations over the programs — become safer — and limiting their ability to rebrand under a new LLC when they get bad PR for, let’s say, sexual abuse that’s going on or lawsuits. That’s many times what happens. They just say, “Oh, we’re shutting down.” And then quietly a new LLC forms. They pop up in the same building, same staff, new logo, and say, “Hey, welcome to blank.” And it’s hard to keep track of that for us. There’s nothing that alerts us that this is happening.

I want to see predators not be able to move from facility to facility. You see that a lot. If there’s someone that is at Program A, a lot of times if there’s allegations of sexual abuse, they’ll just be fired quietly.

SHAWN RYAN: And what do they do?

MEG APPELGATE: They go somewhere else in the same state.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you have a solution for that? How would we stop that? I mean, if there’s no record, it seems to me it’s almost impossible. It has to be on the parents, right?

MEG APPELGATE: I think it has to be dual, right? This is an industry. In any industry, look at the healthcare industry. Why can’t we model it after the way that hospitals are run, right? I think that there are boards. And there’s licensing. Like, anyone can start a program. Anyone. I could be like, “Oh, I’m going to start a program right now.”

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve never graduated high school, but I got a log cabin out in the woods.

Red Flags, Resources, and the Road to Reform

MEG APPELGATE: We can make that happen. Let’s just get a log cabin in the middle of Montana. So there’s no regulations on who can start them. There is very little regulation on the amount of experience. Most of the staff at these programs carrying out therapeutic techniques are 18 to 25. No experience with kids, let alone troubled kids and kids that are going through trauma and experiencing mental health crises. So seeing regulations and oversight in that way, we needed that to shift, right?

But also, I’m not enough of a business expert, but we got to look into this private equity stakeholders. And the incentivization of really profit margins over care. Should private equity really be in behavioral health? It really just inherently incentivizes the wrong thing. And so we need to look at that.

But I think that, yeah, parents need to realize that. I know it seems like a really easy answer, like, “I am so worried about my kid, I am so scared they’re going to die,” or fill in the blank. It’s really easy when someone says, “Hey, I can help you with that, and you’re going to be so much less stressed. I got you, I got you.” It’s really hard when you’re that stressed to not believe that and want to believe that these people are on your side. But really thinking twice and going to our website and looking at the red flag list and typing that into Google.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s on the red flag list? Oh, so many. Is it facilities or is it—

MEG APPELGATE: No, it’s things within facilities to keep an eye out. So are they monitoring contact with the outside world? Is there level systems and phase-based systems? Do you have a discharge date at the time that you arrive? Do you know what you need to do exactly and when you’re going to be leaving? Are there any kind of forced labor? Any kind of removal of food and essential items as a form of punishment.

There’s so many different things, all the way to what does school look like? Is it accreditation and licensing? All those things. And we just basically ask, if you’re going to send your kid, if they have any of these red flags, take a pause, because these are the ones that we see in problematic and allegedly abusive programs.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn, man.

The Unsilenced Archive

MEG APPELGATE: And that’s why we have an archive, right? We’ve got over 3,500 programs in this. So if you’re like, “Well, I am thinking about sending my kid to Discovery Ranch,” you go to unsilenced.org, you go to the program search and you type in Discovery Ranch, and you’re going to see the DHHS binder and you’re going to see all of the allegations. You’re going to see lawsuits, you’re going to see survivor testimonies. And we need to reeducate the public here. Parents can’t make informed decisions unless they have all the information. Unsilenced makes sure you have that information.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s that website? Unsilenced.org.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah. Man. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re doing solid work.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome.

MEG APPELGATE: I appreciate you being open to hear it because for many years, I mean, advocacy around this has been going on for decades. I’m for real.

SHAWN RYAN: And this is the first time I’ve heard of it.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, what does that tell you, right? We’ve been operating in a silo. We’ve been screaming from the rooftops and no one’s been listening. And what it means to have someone like you listen, and not only listen but be able to provide and amplify our voices— I’m not sitting here as Meg Appelgate, I’m sitting here as Meg Appelgate and all the survivors. And to be able to hopefully make them all feel very validated is pretty big.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m sure that will.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you for that.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome, Meg. I wish you the best of luck.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you.

Legislative Battles Ahead

SHAWN RYAN: Where’s the next legislation going to be?

MEG APPELGATE: Oh man, there’s some rollbacks that I’ve heard about that are kind of coming. So in the past year or so, we’ve made a lot of progress. Well, not me, I guess I haven’t personally worked on all of it, but Oregon did a lot of great work. Senator Gelser has done incredible work over there. And Utah has had a few bills that have passed that have made it better. And I’ve heard word that there’s been a lot of pushback on pulling back recently. So I think there’s going to be work there that we have to fight against.

And then I did hear some recent stuff from someone on Paris’s team about Michigan. There’s something going on in Michigan. So I think that they’re hard at work. And we’re always needing more survivors to come forward and be like from those states and talk about how that state had a facility where they were hurt. It’s really powerful to have survivors in those states when you’re looking at policy work. So we really want people to follow Unsilenced and keep an eye out, because we’re always looking for survivors to help with facilitating that policy change in the states.

The Attorney Directory

SHAWN RYAN: Tell me about this attorney directory.

MEG APPELGATE: Yeah, so our attorney directory we launched a couple of years ago and it’s been incredible. It’s our way of really getting into the legal advocacy work. So we created this directory to connect survivors of institutional abuse, and through our website are able to see all these attorney partners that we’ve been able to make throughout the entire country, that are able and willing to take on survivor cases on contingency, which is a big deal. And so it allows Unsilenced as kind of the hub of survivor information to have survivors who trust us come to our site and see these attorneys that we trust to take care of them in these institutional abuse cases.

And through our legal advocacy work, it has been amazing. We’ve been able to get whistleblowers and witnesses and other plaintiffs for cases because we have this huge, huge community of survivors just ready to tell their stories. So what we do, we’ll put out an experience survey for fill in the blank, whatever program, and within minutes we’re getting stories submitted. And all of a sudden we’re seeing names be the same, and maybe it’s the same name as someone that has allegations in this lawsuit that we know about. We’re able to connect these people to access for justice, and they wouldn’t have known about it, right?

There’s so much litigation that’s going on within this industry, and our job and what we really want is to make sure that litigation is known, because chances are there’s so many programs that have litigation that you could have an option of being able to participate in it in some way, even just to give information. Maybe there’s a staff member that was problematic. Or you know something— anyone can help. And so being able to facilitate justice has been so incredible to see.

And we did a little survey at the end of last year, and within about 18 months, we have at least 200 lawsuits that we know about that Unsilenced was able to, through our website or personally, me working with attorneys, helping them investigate programs— there’s been 200 lawsuits that we’ve had a hand in, in any way, shape, or form. In the past 18 months.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

MEG APPELGATE: Which is crazy. And it’s really the only way I have seen problematic and allegedly abusive programs actually have any accountability.

SHAWN RYAN: This is all on unsilenced.org.

MEG APPELGATE: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: So you have, what, 3,500 different facilities that people can dig into and see everything that’s going on in there, everything that’s been documented by survivors, DHS, all this other stuff. You have the list of attorneys that can help with survivors. What else is on there?

Support Resources for Survivors

MEG APPELGATE: We’ve got the red flag list. We’ve got survivor support resources. We offer free of cost support groups for survivors across the country, and we’ve got mental health professionals that facilitate those groups. We offer independence packs, which are sent out to kids that age out of these programs, and like you mentioned, are just sent out into the world. We’ve got a laptop that are full of resources like how to write a resume and resume templates. They’ve got gift cards, books, essential items, hygiene items, and we send them to kids that are battling unstable housing across the country, and we offer those free of cost. And the attorney directory, as I mentioned.

SHAWN RYAN: And yeah, how are you funding all this?

MEG APPELGATE: Well, by donors. We really rely on the generosity of our donors. And that’s another thing— all these resources take a lot, and we’re a very small team. So honestly, donating is something that the public can do to help us be able to have a positive impact on survivors and also the kids that are still in facilities, and making sure that we’re fighting for the kids’ safety right now. Because I’m telling you, I’ve been involved in cases where kids die every year since this has happened.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn. Well, we’ll donate right after this.

MEG APPELGATE: Oh, well, thank you. Appreciate that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, let us know if you need any more top cover. Be happy to help.

MEG APPELGATE: Thank you. Appreciate that.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, best of luck. Thank you for what you’re doing. No matter where you’re watching The Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you’re feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.

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