The Alon School. Did you have a rough and high school? Did you have to deal with bullies?

Get beat up, get made fun of, called names. Have to deal with clicky cool kid crowds.

It made you feel alone like a loser. Did a particular teacher have it out for you?

Even if you had it real, real bad, you probably did not have it anywhere near as bad

as all of the kids who went to Alon School. How they had it. I don't think I'd be alive today if

I hadn't been sent there, but I have nightmares to this day about it. Said Sarah Levesque,

who was sent to Alon by her parents in 1996 at the age of 14 for two years. I wake up crying at least

once a week, she says, Alon saved my life, but I feel haunted by it. The Alon School may have saved

lives, but at what cost? It certainly destroyed some lives, and even took some, both directly and

indirectly. Founded in 1974 by a man named Joe Richie, the Alon School was supposed to be

someplace where you can send your troubled teen so they could become rehabilitated and get put

on the right track. But in reality, it was a cruel and chaotic nightmare where students were

constantly being pressured to confess to things they'd done wrong, called guilt. Which often weren't

things that were wrong. Having a crush on someone was a guilt, smiling too much, or not enough,

or guilt. At Alon, you'd be pressured to share your deepest, darkest secrets, then those secrets

would be used against you. The administration pitted students against students in insane psychological

mind games, even pitted them against each other physically. And all this was perfectly legal.

All considered healthy rehab. And the Alon School wouldn't close until 2011. And none of the

administrators involved have ever been brought to any kind of justice. This is such a strange story.

There's so much to it. Four-minute lunches, menial labor, having feces dumped on your head,

having to wear literal dung's cap, something called the ring. What kind of person found a place

so horrible? What kind of person works there? Why would parents ever send their kids to a place

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