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(WWNY) – The biggest US show streaming on Netflix is based on a story from St. Lawrence County.
On Tuesday, the documentary called “The Program: Contras, Sects and Kidnappings” premiered. It documents alleged physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the now-defunct Ivy Ridge Academy near Ogdensburg.
The academy was marketed as a boarding school for troubled teenagers. From the moment Katherine Kubler was sent to Ivy Ridge Academy in 2004, she knew she wanted to make a documentary.
“When I first got there, I thought, I guess someone forgot to tell me these things exist. But when I came out, I thought: no one knows these places exist. That’s crazy,” she said. “Our brains are forever shaped by the abuse we experienced at Ivy Ridge.”
As director of the documentary, Kubler and her team visited the former Ivy Ridge campus four times beginning in 2020. Kubler says they found evidence of abuse in the form of documents and surveillance tapes they discovered abandoned at the abandoned school. While there, they kept a low profile.
“We don’t feel welcome in that city. Every time we’re there, we feel like we can’t talk openly about it because we’re their dirty little secret,” Kubler said.
St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua has not seen the documentary, but says abuse allegations can have statutes of limitations of five to 10 years.
Still, he says he will accept any complaints from those who went to the school.
“If those people are out there and they want to share those experiences and have us investigate them, or have the authorities investigate them, to see if we can prosecute someone for that, we’ll be happy to do that,” he said.
7 News visited the academy several times in the early 2000s. We have video from 2005 showing attendees meeting their parents amid allegations of abuse and issuing unauthorized high school diplomas. At the time, then-director Jason Finlinson denied the allegations.
“Absolutely not true. One, this is, we take very good care of the children. We try to do the best we can and these stories are made up,” he said in 2005.
Now, Kubler says it’s time for staff to stand up and take responsibility.
“We shouldn’t have to do anything after this. I hope we’ve taken the brunt of it for all of these survivors, so they can rest and recover and not have to continue defending themselves and hoping people believe them. It’s time for the staff and adults in this situation to do something about it,” he said.
Kubler also wants to shut down the “troubled teen industry.”
“There are currently hundreds of thousands of children held in a behavior modification program at this very moment. How can you continue in life knowing that there are currently children being held in the same situation of captivity and abuse as us?,” she said.
Ivy Ridge closed in 2009 after the state Attorney General’s Office fined the academy $250,000 for issuing unauthorized high school diplomas.
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