Lost In Prime Video: Shocking Documentary Exposes Unimaginable Abuse
I have always been a rule follower. I indulged in a bit of teenage rebellion here and there, but nothing worse than a bit of underage drinking or smoking a little weed. I’ve always been terrified of getting in trouble with the law and that has kept me from ever daring to do anything particularly illicit. Because of that, I found Todd Nilssen’s The Last Stop fascinating. The documentary provides insight into the lives of troubled teens and pulls back the curtain on an abusive reform school that did far more harm than good.
The Last Stop sees former residents of the Élan School recount the horrors they endured while enrolled in the program and how they found themselves there in the first place. The institution has since been shut down, but the memories are still vivid for those who served time there. We see program graduates recount the various forms of abuse to which they were subjected on a daily basis.
The Élan School is modeled after a program called Synanon. The idea behind Synanon is that addicts need to be pushed to their breaking point and then rebuilt. Though Synanon did produce results, their aggressive and cult-like practices eventually led to their undoing.
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It probably won’t shock you when I say The Last Stop is a lot to take in. It made me uncomfortable within mere seconds. The opening sequence sees a young man screaming a whirlwind of obscenities at the camera without even pausing to take a breath. There’s no context offered at that point. But that is a mere preview of the horrors the documentary has in store. And it only gets more intense from there.
Program participants were effectively abducted from their homes. Former Élan residents recall being woken up in the middle of the night and removed from their homes by force. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal these people must have felt, knowing that their parents orchestrated their stay at the facility without their knowledge. That must have been so devastating.
Though the apprehension phase is jarring, that’s only the beginning. Through archival footage, we see the Executive Director of Élan, Joseph Ricci, explaining that their facility is different from others; at Élan, there is no escape. He describes it very much like a prison. And that’s fitting.
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Some former residents liken the program to Lord of the Flies and they aren’t wrong. There was a hierarchy that saw the residents highly involved with every aspect of the program, including discipline. Program participants were put in front of crowds where they were heckled by their peers and screamed at. In one shocking instance, group members physically assaulted another resident for having a nervous breakdown.
People under punitive disciplinary action would be assigned to work 18-hour shifts and had to get multiple people to sign off before they were even allowed to use the restroom. But that’s not all. The resident would then have to be escorted to the bathroom and watched by a peer advisor.
Group therapy sessions were conducted by people with zero formal training and saw residents cursing at each other and hurling demeaning insults about physical appearance, intellect level, and so much more. Actual recordings from these sessions were obtained by the filmmakers and played as part of the documentary. Shockingly, these sessions could be called to address something as innocuous as a misplaced bottle of shampoo.
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The idea behind these aggression sessions was to blow minor incidents out of proportion with raised voices and intense emotions to encourage the participants to take a look within. The idea of confronting rage in a safe space has its place in a therapeutic environment. But there was nothing therapeutic (or safe) about any of this. These poor kids were turned loose on one another and the person being confronted had to sit there and take it. This method teaches impressionable children that hurting and belittling others has therapeutic value.
In one case, a resident was put into a pink rabbit suit and leg shackles as punishment for running away. Additional punitive measures included forcing participants to wear signs similar to what we see animals wearing in pet-shaming photos and allowing peers to confront and belittle the sign-wearer. At least one resident was forced to live in a nine-foot square space for nine months. Another heavy-handed punishment required a young woman to wear a ‘prostitute costume’ for flirting with a boy. And possibly even more shockingly, a young woman had to wear a tampon crown for contracting an STI. See the featured trailer image above for reference.
While I absolutely recommend giving The Last Stop a look, you will want to prepare yourself for a brutal viewing experience. You’re in for plenty of disturbing accounts detailing the abuse of power and serious mistreatment of minors. But this is an important story that needs to be told.
If you’re keen to have a look at the documentary, you can find The Last Stop streaming on Prime Video, as of the publication of this post.
Categorized:Editorials
