You know those horror stories about kids being tricked or kidnapped and put in some twisted social experiment? That actually happened. Normally I’d say fuck the rich but in this case it would be in more than just bad taste; in the southern states there was a “school” where rich families were “sending” their kids to. Why? Some were spoiled brats that were making their family name look bad to their rich parents’ rich friends, others were “too soft” and the bastard and bitch who raised them wanted to “toughen them up”.

The place was straight out of something like those edgy novels that teenagers read but, well, real. There was emotional and social manipulation up to and including gas lighting, they drugged the kids to keep them from escaping, and yes, there was rape. If the place had been discovered recently rather than being shut down years ago, I would be demanding some level of legal autonomy for children because it’s gotten to the point where kids can’t trust anyone to protect them from forced confinement and cruelty.

I would know, I was illegally taken from my family at age 10 by government officials and it took my parents two years of fighting in court to get me back. There’s a difference between grounding a kid or preventing them from going to a cherished event because they screwed up, and being cruel because you can get away with it or being homophobic towards someone who depends on you for survival.