A middle-of-the-night home invasion. Forced from bed into a car by black-clad strangers. For most of us, this is a violent nightmare scenario; for 15-year-old Elizabeth Gilpin, it was an actual experience arranged and paid for by her own parents.
In her gripping memoir “Stolen” (Grand Central, 336 pp., ★★★½ out of four), Gilpin vividly describes the years she spent in a brutal behavior-modification program meant to rehabilitate her as one of many so-called “troubled teens.” Now an actor and producer, Gilpin revisits her terror and trauma in order to shine a light on the extraordinary and dehumanizing practices of the therapeutic boarding school industry. Gripping and detailed, “Stolen” will linger long for readers as both a survival story and powerful testament.
Growing up in small town South Carolina, the soccer standout began to struggle with serious depression and self-harm. She fought often with her parents and siblings, drank and took pills, and skated past severe injury in a dangerous driving accident. The last straw was an eighth of weed Elizabeth bought but didn’t smoke – still, it was enough to start the process of admitting her (without her knowledge or consent) to a program that began with a strip search, drug test and wilderness trip.
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After three months of forced camping in Appalachian woods with 12 other girls, Gilpin is deemed ready for the Carlbrook school in Virginia, whose property was previously a tobacco plantation worked by enslaved people. Gilpin enters a dark world with arcane rules governing everything from her clothing to when she can speak to the “workshops” that Carlbrook administers.
These sessions are part interrogation, part psychological torture. Patients are taunted into making “disclosures” of their worst impulses and actions – and abuses – from the past. Then they are group-shamed – made to wear signs that say “slut” or “junkie,” for example – before being “healed” and deemed ready for the next level of workshop. Friends are expected to inform on each other; attempts to rebel or escape are severely punished. Teenagers like Elizabeth wait desperately until they turn 18, at which point the school can no longer forcibly contain them. “Don’t worry,” a friend whispers to her. “This place isn’t forever.”
But as Gilpin’s memoir proves, Carlbrook’s scars can linger for what seems like forever. The damage from such prolonged cruelty causes significant problems for her later in life, as it does for many of her friends, who suffer overdoses, accidents and suicide. A standout chapter in “Stolen” delves into the history of the therapeutic boarding school industry, tracing its growth from a cult named Synanon to an enterprising business owner named Mel Wasserman, who had no medical or educational qualifications.
At times a reader wishes for more clarity in the later chapters of Elizabeth’s life, especially in terms of how she came to terms with her family, whom she thanks in the book’s acknowledgments. Yet “Stolen” succeeds with its graphic portrayal of Carlbrook’s methods, raising important questions about consent, age, and agency. As Elizabeth Gilpin puts it, reflecting on her teenage years: “I didn’t need love. I just needed a little extra help.”
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