Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, True Crime, Documentaries
Jess Hardiman
Netflix viewers are saying a ‘jaw-dropping’ new documentary is ‘one of the most horrifying’ things they’ve ever seen, as the story it tells is ‘twisted AF’.
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, Netflix goes and drops another docu-series about one of the wildest controversies yet.
Watch the trailer below:
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The streamer’s latest offering follows the ‘corruption and abuse’ behind the US’ troubled teen industry, which sees youngsters placed into residential programmes – ranging from treatment centres and boarding schools to boot camps - in a bid to rehabilitate their behaviour.
Over time, many facilities have come under fire for scandals, including child abuse and even deaths among vulnerable teenagers in their care.
One such place is the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a disciplinary boarding school in upstate New York that opened back in 2001.
The horrors that many young people faced at the institution are now being uncovered in The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping, which has been made by Ivy Ridge survivor Katherine Kubler, still ‘haunted’ by the abuse she and many others went through.
“I made this series because there really was nothing out there to help explain what had happened to me to my friends and family to warn them about these places," she says.
"So now, that resource exists.”
After the docu-series landed on Netflix, many people have been left horrified about what people like Kubler went through.
One tweeted: "I’m in the first episode of The Program on Netflix and this is one of the most horrifying docs I’ve ever seen. I’m going to finish it up after work, but definitely not going to be sober doing it. I’d recommend watching it, but know going in that it is a lot."
Someone else wrote: "I finished watching The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping on Netflix and wow, what a watch. It's a painful, but important watch. I'm so proud of the survivors sharing their experiences and I hope parents stop sending their kids to these abusive and in some cases fatal places."
A third said: "I decided to watch this new show on Netflix The Program: Cons, Cult and Kidnapping and 3 minutes in and I have to pause it because WHAT THE FU…"
Others said it was 'crazy as hell' and 'jaw-dropping', while also being 'very disturbing to watch'.
"The Program is finally out on Netflix & I'm only 10 minutes in and my blood is BOILING," another fumed.
"How can these parents think that having their kids forcefully abducted and taken to a 'school intended to correct bad behavior'? IT'S ABUSE."
Watch The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping on Netflix now.