Associated Press100%
AP investigation: Adopted kids confined in for-profit institutions 86%
4/28/2026, 11:05:00 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Appeal to Authority, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 48.3% saturation with 405 hits. Analysis detected 2,588 faulty-reasoning hits from 838 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 79.1% and a BS Rank of 86% (2,436 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 85.50% of the video peer group.
[music] I think in a way they wanted to hear that somebody could fix me.
>> When I saw someone be restrained for the first time, I was like, [music] "This doesn't seem right." Like even when I was at the mental hospital, kids are being restrained for nothing.
>> They definitely [music] educated the parents on the adopted child.
>> Residential treatment centers offer hope for parents and children who are struggling at home or school. Unlike juvenile detention centers, they operate with little government oversight.
Several of these facilities have come under fire or closed in recent [music] years.
>> A famous reality TV stars calling for reforms in the way young people >> I know firsthand the horrors that happened behind the closed doors of youth residential treatment facilities.
Despite some reforms, the so-called troubled teen industry continues to thrive with thousands [music] of kids in residential programs, including adopes who are vastly over represented.
They account for 2% of American children.
Yet, researchers [music] estimate adopted kids make up 25 to 40% of those in residential treatment.
Questions about my birthother. What was my name going to be? How many siblings do I have?
I'm 22 years old and I spent ages 12 to 15 and then 16 to 18 in program.
So, I was adopted at birth. I really struggled mentally from a young age,
like with depression, anxiety, ADHD, they said. Um, it probably started to escalate when I was about eight or nine years old.
Um, and then by the time I was 11, my mom was looking for places.
>> An Associated Press investigation looked at why so many adoptes end up in these treatment centers.
Some described the industry as a shadow orphanage system.
The AP found that many adopty residents have been diagnosed or suspected of having something called reactive attachment disorder.
Reactive attachment disorder or RAD [music] is a psychiatric condition where a child under moments of stress, sadness, fear, they do not seek proximity to or comfort from a caregiver.
Because of the history of the field and the last 50 years of how this has evolved, we wind up having all these children diagnosed with RAD who don't actually meet they're not anywhere close to the diagnostic criteria for that condition.
Usually, it has to be diagnosed in the first 5 years of age.
>> I had a therapist tell me that she um thought I had reactive attachment disorder.
>> Kate ended up in four different programs.
She says she was sexually assaulted at the first one.
The AP generally does not identify people who say they've been sexually assaulted, but agreed to use Kate's [music] first name at her request.
She says she was physically restrained at another program, Uinta Academy in Utah.
>> I was 13 freshly.
The staff come running down and instantly put me like throw me face first into a hold and are yelling that I'm OIC.
OIC, which is out of instructional control.
I was telling them like I couldn't breathe cuz they were pushing on my chest like they were holding me down.
U did not respond to requests for comment, but its parent company said its programs are independently operated.
It added that program practices continue to develop over time, informed by evolving clinical guidance, regulatory expectations, and ongoing input from families and participants.
This is not all residential treatment facilities, and there are very good ones out there, but the ones that do these types of rad treatments.
When they get into those power assertive prison-like conditions that some of them like to do, those are things that not only are not scientifically valid, they're ethically questionable, if not outright ethically indefensible.
>> My goodness, this is a mess. Oh, what's this one?
This was >> so I was born in China and I was adopted at 22 months.
I struggled a lot with like anxiety and depression. Um and then that led to me self harming starting at like 12 years old I think and it just kind of spiraled from there.
I had gone through like a lot of uh therapy and I did partial hospitalization and I did some inatient but I think it was a few weeks before I was 17 something just kind of snapped and my parents decided that they needed to send me um to residential.
with my research, I felt like this would be the best, most nurturing, most helpful next step for us.
And I really thought, you know, that it was it, that this is what was going to help finally.
>> The AP found more than 80 private facilities that specifically advertised that they treat adoption related issues.
Often what sweeps in is this overpromise, a very seductive promise from residential treatment centers and the people recommending them.
People like educational consultants saying, "Well, let's contain you can separate the adoptee and keep them safe and
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