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So severe are the charges that after the documentary aired, complaints began pouring in to St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua’s office, according to WWNYTV. The DA said he would investigate but urged people not to trespass on the property of the former facility.

Pasqua also said that despite the abuse accusations in the documentary series, no reports of abuse exist in any of the files he has examined with the District Attorney’s Office; the only files found had to do with a 2005 riot on the boys’ side, according to a report by North Country Now.

No charges have ever been filed against the owners of the facility, officials said. But Pasqua urged victims to come forward.

While the docuseries has made headlines this week, for some, the memories have always been all too real, just a pounding heartbeat in a dark, terrifying night away.

Locally on Long Island, one former student, Tina Moore of Riverhead, shared her painful story with Patch.

Although the experience took place 21 years ago, the memories are vivid. Moore was 17 when she was dropped off at Ivy Ridge after a long drive that spanned more than seven hours, during which she was texting her friends frantically, unsure of where she was going and unsure of what lay ahead.

What ensured was worse than anything Moore said she ever could have imagined. Until the day she turned 18 and left in January of 2004, after almost 11 endless months, Moore said she endured a painful experience that has colored every corner of her life since.

And yet, despite the pain of revisiting Ivy Ridge, of opening the door to the flood of dark memories, Moore said she’s eager to share her story, to help slam the doors on other such disciplinary institutions that still exist worldwide. “I’m so happy about this documentary, to speak about this,” she said. “Because these schools still exist.”

Her story echoes, she said, in all the stories of survivors: children as young as 12 who spent their teen years in the facility, unable to play outside, walk or talk freely, or even so much as look out a window for fear of losing all progress in the point-based system that was, by all accounts, the only means toward eventual freedom and release. Demerits, those in the documentary and Moore said, sent you back to the beginning, back to endure all the torment, all over again.

Some students, Moore said, were even released, only to be sent back to Ivy Ridge, all over again, even “more traumatizing,” she said.

Riverhead born and raised, Moore said she’d always done well in school, beginning at Riley Avenue Elementary School and then attending Riverhead High School, where she was on the 9th grade honor roll.

As she began 10th grade, Moore said she began making “poor choices in boyfriends . . . smoking weed. Typical teenage things.” Looking to protect her and afraid her grades would keep her from graduating and realizing her full potential, Moore said her parents grounded her. “Now that I’m a mom with three kids, I understand,” Moore said. “I don’t blame them for that.”

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But, she said: “I started rebelling against my parents, never seeing eye to eye. Things just evolved over time.” In an age-old proverbial tug of war, the more Moore started wanting to go out with friends, the more protective her parents became.

“I started running away to stay at friends’ houses. I’d disappear after school, bouncing from friend to friend,” she said.

Next, Moore was sent for counseling and it was suggested she try anti-depressants, something she declined. “I wasn’t depressed, I was just a teenager.”

Her parents, concerned about Moore’s future, found the Academy at Ivy Ridge and chose it, she said, because, in the shiny brochures depicted in the docuseries — brochures dotted with photos of the kids enjoying the outdoors near the Saint Lawrence River — the school was advertised as promoting “academic modification,” Moore said. Their goal was a focus on individualized learning, on computers and academic success. “My parents just wanted me to graduate, get my diploma, be successful,” she said. “They didn’t know what else to do, and I don’t blame them for that.”

Also, Moore said, at the time, the internet was not widely used as it is now, there was no information at fingertips or ways to ask questions about the facility under the deceptive brochures, she said.

Being dropped off at the facility was traumatizing, Moore said. All the way up to school, Moore said she had a cell phone that she’d bought with money from her after-school job, hidden under her sweatshirt; she was furiously texting friends, who, in turn, were begging for someone to help her.

And, once the doors were slammed shut behind the students and locked, Moore said: “There was no communication. The families didn’t know what was going on. They had zero idea. Staff members lied to them and to us.”

Despite the trauma of being driven to the school, Moore said it was far worse for others who were reportedly taken from their homes by armed guards in the middle of the night. “I can’t imagine being ripped out of my bed and handcuffed,” Moore said.

Once at the school, Moore and the other students were taken to a small room, strip searched, phones and any other means of communication seized. They were not allowed to speak to their families on a regular basis and anything negative about their time at Ivy Ridge, written in weekly letters, meant demerits and punishment, Moore said.

Students were not allowed to talk to anyone, or to talk at all, Moore said, except for during “daily group meetings,” and with “family reps,” who she did not believe were licensed therapists.

Moore added: “I had no idea what I was walking into. As soon as we walked through those doors, we were issued school uniforms and students were walking down the halls in line and pivoting, naming what ‘number’ they were. I was like, ‘What the hell is this?'” she said. Her parents tried to hug her, Moore said, but she was hystirical. “I told them, ‘I hate you. I’ll never forgive you for this.'”

Explaining how “the program” worked, Moore said it was a point system, with different levels — and demerits that could send you spiraling back to zero.

“If you forgot you water bottle in the classroom, that was a consequence, neglect, unsatisfactory effort,” she said. “You had to write down everything you’d done wrong and what you would do to correct it.”

As students reached various levels, by following the strict rules and attending “seminars” where techniques were used to “brainwash and manipulate,” such as telling students to decide who, including their parents would live or die on a sinking ship.

Other students in the documentary recalled being falsely accused of drug use, of blatant lies on their negative drug test results — lies that left families divided and lives irrevocabally damaged, the students said. Students would lie themselves, do what they were told, do anything to rise up the levels — and be set free, Moore said. “I didn’t care to work the program,” she said. “I made no effort; I saw the bull—-.” But, she said: “I didn’t go out of my way to be bad and go against the rules. I didn’t want them to restain me. I didn’t try to stand out. I just wanted to survive.”

Other students were restrained, pushed to the ground by staff, many of them much larger, who would sit on the girls, some less than 100 pounds — adults who would hit them, choke them, Moore said.

“I didn’t want the restraints,” she said. “I thought if someone sat on me that way, I might not live. I just wanted to do what I had to until I turned 18 and I could leave.”

She added: “We were stripped of our dignity.”

When students first entered the school, hair had to be kept back in a braid; at Level 3, girls could wear pony tails, and as they advanced up the levels, they’d be promoted to junior staff and could talk, and move more freely.

But the days were laced with terror, restraints, the oppressive silence, crying in the night, Moore recalled. “It was absolutely awful,” Moore said. For those who did not comply, the threat hung heavy of being sent to an even more punitive facility.

“We weren’t allowed to look in the mirror, look out the window, look at boys,” Moore said. The punishment for those offenses was dropping to Level 1. And, if someone did manage to escape the building, the 237-acre property was vast, surrounded by the river and thick Canadian woods — unnavigable.

Escape was simply impossible.

And, despite how bad the “girls’ side” was, the boys’ side was “100 times worse,” Moore said. “We would hear rumors about literal children being choked,” she said.

For girls so young, the repercussions were lifelong, Moore said. “Some of these girls were 12, 13 years old. Some probably didn’t have their periods yet. It was terrifying. I cried every single night. I don’t remember ever getting out of that depression.”

And yet. Despite the grueling conditions, deep bonds were formed. A sisterhood who found one another despite strict orders not to communicated.

“We memorized each other’s phone numbers and addresses, even though we weren’t supposed to have contact,” Moore said. “When we got out, we found each other. We’re all family.”

Even describing her days at Ivy Ridge, Moore refers to other students as members of her family, despite the school’s insistence in calling the girls “units.”

The documentary, Moore said, portrays how Kubler and the other former students who were creating the series went back to the school — where they found all the files, all the videos, all the evidence of abuse, signed confessions, still there.

It was a years’ long journey to shining light on truth, Moore said. Knowing that the documentary held its place at #1 on Netflix within two days of its release, she said, “gives me chills. I’m so happy. I know it’s awful to watch. But the goal is not only some kind of justice —it’s to hold these individuals responsible. And there are still schools like this out there, where kids are sent by their families, or by the courts. We have to get aall these schools shut down.”

Watching the episodes, Moore recognizes friends and acquaintances, fellow students. “If we feel crazy, we understand each other’s crazy,” she said. “No matter what, we bonded through trauma. They’re famiy forever. Even as awful of a place as that was, the people were what was home.”

She also recognizes the adults who she and others have accused in engaging in the abuse against scores of students.

During the seminars, Moore said, the students had to engage in demoralizing exercises. They had to take towels wrapped in plastic and then, listen to staff “berating you and debasing you” and then, take out their hatred by screaming and pounding the bats — or else, they couldn’t leave the room. Moore remembers telling herself. “I thought, ‘These people are nuts. This is a cult.’ There was nothing ‘therapeutic’ about it. It was the most cult-like behavior you’ll ever seen.”

One memory that’s most vivid is during a group session, a girl of about 13, who’d been raped, was forced to stand up and say it was her fault, Moore said. “They had rape victims blaming themselves,” she said. “That is something I will never, ever forget.”

Recalling another chilling incident, Moore said: “One of my worst experiences was in the middle of the night, there was this blaring alarm, like something you’d hear in a concentration camp.”

The alarms typically went off in the frigid winter, she said.

“You’d have seconds to run outside,” she said. “Once — we were so exhausted — I slept though an my bunk buddy, the person who I had to walk to the bathroom with, had to rip me out of bed.”

On that one night, Moore said she didn’t know if she was sick or just purely exhausted, but she felt herself getting dizzy and then, she fainted, her head “bouncing off” the cement floor. She lost her bladder, she said. Her friends told her later that she was making a snoring sound.

“I had a full seizure,” she said. “Everyone in my Ivy Ridge family witnessed this.”

But even when she told staff about the seizure she believed she’d had, the nurse “screamed in my face and said I needed to stop lying,” Moore said. “She told me I needed to stop manipulating my parents — and to admit I didn’t have a seizure. She wrote in the report, ‘She’s fine. She just wants to go home.'”

Faced with demerits and further punishment, Moore said: “And so, I lied. What else could I do?”

The school she said, lied to parents. “It was a money grab,” she said.

The documentary supports that belief, with those interviewed stating that parents paid high tuition with the hopes of saving their children; they were told that without the help of “the program”, their children might die, the series said.

Even when students were doing well and progressing through “the program,” Moore said she and others believed staff “made something up” so parents wouldn’t pull their children and their funds, from the school.

When, finally, the day came for her “exit plan,” a document that had to be written by her parents, Moore said she was sent to Florida to stay with her grandparents, go to college, get a job. Although the goal was not to be in touch with former friends from “before” Ivy Ridge, Moore said in time, she returned home and soon “started tumbling down again. It was a downward spiral. By the end of the summer, I was 18 and pregnant. The program didn’t fix the non-broken, broken me.”

Today, Moore is happily married with three children, a loving husband, and enjoys her work. But the questions haunt — had she been able to experience teenage rebellion and grow out of it, “get it out of her system” normally, without the horror of Ivy Ridge, would she be more successful, like many of her friends? Would she have finished college, own her own home? “That what bothers me the most,” she said.

However, Moore was quick to say that she knows her parents, like so many, many Ivy Ridge parents, only wanted what was best — she is grateful for their help they’ve given her in her life today — and thought the school would help shape her future. Instead, they, like so many other parents, saw their money gone, their dreams faded. Some saw their childen take their own lives or overdose, she said.

It is her burning mission and that of her fellow students, she said, to bring exposure to Ivy Ridge and the young lives they say were destroyed behind those locked doors.

“I want to put an end to these kinds of places,” she said. “Nobody should ever have to go through this.”

Even today, the impacts of Ivy Ridge lurk, Moore said. She panics in large crowds, finds social situtions draining and terrifying. She believes she has lingering, complex PTSD. She always takes her own car — her own personal exit plan, so that she will never again be trapped in any place with no escape possible.

As a mother herself, Moore said she has tried to imbue her children with her own experiences, to steer them toward positive choices. “But never, ever would I send my kid anywhere with perfect strangers,” she said.

After the documentary, Moore said: “This is only the beginning.”

Now that she and her fellow students have been afforded a vehicle for their voices to be heard, they have sounded a rallying cry for change. They would like to see justice against those who harmed them.

“I think we should all be allowed to have turns screaming in their faces, the way they did ours,” Moore said.

She would also like to address them in “program” speak, telling them, as they told the students, to “take accountability for their actions. Work their programs.”

However, she said, she understands that not all staff members were bad; some were young and may not have known the full extent of what was unfolding. A very small few, she said, “showed us grace and love.”

Moore is fiercely close to her Ivy Ridge sisterhood, who have found inner strength, together. “They thought they were breaking us down — but they have no idea of the force they were creating.”

Some students, she said, travel the world rallying for human rights, in the name of all that was lost in the deceptively bucolic countryside.

One day, when the frenzy has stilled, Moore would like to travel back to Ogdensburg. “I don’t feel I will close that chapter without walking those grounds,” she said. “I feel like a part of my 17-year-old self is still there.”

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