Two children have died at Trails Carolina—so far.  Their parents had sent them to a wilderness therapy program to find healing.  Instead, they never returned home.

An unnamed 12-year-old boy died in February 2024 on his first night at Trails Carolina.¹

Earlier, 17-year-old Alec Lansing ran away from Trails Carolina.²  His body was found 12 days later.  An autopsy determined he had broken his hip and died of hypothermia.³

Neither death was determined to have been of natural causes.⁴

Child survivors of Trails Carolina also recount sexual assaults,⁵ strip searches, denials of bathroom breaks, violations of mail privacy⁶ and being restrained in tarps at night.⁷  Sadly, such abuses are common in the “troubled-teen industry,”⁸ as detailed in the testimony, below, of the United States Government Accountability Office’s Managing Director of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations:⁹

Most have never heard of the industry, but it has been the subject of Netflix,¹⁰ P.B.S.¹¹ and H.B.O.¹² exposés, Congressional hearings,¹³ Government Accountability Office reports¹⁴ and celebrity activism.¹⁵  The United States government has concluded that this industry tortures children.¹⁶

At the same time, the industry maintains high profit margins from cheap, unproven so-called therapies,¹⁷ apparently designed to warehouse and silence children instead of help them get well.  Trails Carolina, for instance, charged an average of $66,000 for its eight-week program, or about $795 a day.¹⁸

North Carolina has moved to revoke Trails Carolina’s license after finding it “in violation” of state-law protections “for individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities, or substance abuse issues.”¹⁹  The state further determined that the facility’s operations “endanger the health, safety, and welfare" of the children in its care.²⁰  Survivors note that Trails Carolina's parent company, Family Help and Wellness, uses false advertising and pays "reputation management companies for fake [G]oogle reviews from persons potentially in other countries, like Pakistan," who are posing as parents.²¹

Trails Carolina has vowed to appeal and stay open.²²

I survived a similar, abusive wilderness program, where I personally witnessed and was subjected to the same types of human-rights violations and unethical "therapeutic" practices.

For the victims of these abuses there are no second chances of the type Trails Carolina now demands for itself.  Nothing will bring back those kids.  They deserve justice.  In this case, justice means holding to account those responsible for their deaths.  They should be charged criminally, not allowed simply to reopen their program and endanger more lives.

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Footnotes are available at this link here.

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