How were the students treated in Academy at Ivy Ridge? Horrific details from Netflix’s The Program docuseries explored

Horrific details have surfaced regarding the treatment of students at Ivy Ridge Academy, which is focused on in Netflix's upcoming The Program docuseries. Known as a school for disturbed youths, many Ivy Ridge students suffered mental, emotional, and physical torture.

In fact, according to some sources, they were even forced to participate in cult-like activities. Katherine Kubler, an Ivy Ridge survivor, has returned to the now-defunct college with her old students to process their traumatic memories and direct the miniseries.

In her own words, she was trying to create the videos as a form of warning:

“I made this series because there really was nothing out there to help explain what had happened to me to my friends and family to warn them about these places," Kubler says. "So now, that resource exists.”

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The Program docuseries delves into the horrific treatment of children at Ivy Ridge

The Program docuseries transports viewers to the corridors of the institution in rural Ogdensburg, in the city of New York, as Kubler and her students walk through Ivy Ridge. They go to the room where they spend hours on ancient-looking computers, where they are spotted doing online quizzes styled like video games. This was essentially the limit of their academic studies and training.

However, the institution imposed other rules, including minor offenses such as smiling and gazing down in the mirror. In other words, the circumstances the pupils had to deal with were dystopic. Teens were found sleeping on mattresses, right down on the hallway floors. In the documentary, The Program, a woman named Diana remembers being made to lie face-first for hours on the floor during a so-called intervention.

The psychological abuse did not stop there as The Program docuseries is set to explore. The teenagers were not allowed the minimum bit of privacy and were forced to keep their bathroom stalls open while relieving themselves. They were not allowed basic human interactions like talking to or even looking at one another and were penalized for even instinctually doing the basic human stuff like looking out of the window!

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How did The Program docuseries come about?

Kubler, who had been forced to dwell at Ivy Ride for almost a year, from March 2004 to June 2005, uses The Program docuseries to shed light on her experiences. Kubler's mother died when she was two, and as a teenager, she began drinking and behaving out in response to her harsh stepmother. This all changed when a transport crew from the disciplinary school arrived in the middle of the day at her high school principal's office and transported her to this prisonesque academy.

Originally designed to be a correctional home for troubled teens, Ivy Ridge had become a space for parents to send their children to put an end to bad behavior. However, it did the opposite and scarred them for the rest of their lives.

Amidst all that, the school did not provide a diploma that these students could use, because the school was not certified by the New York State Department of Education.

This ensured that their time spent at Ivy Ridge was useless. However, thankfully, the school was shut down in the year 2009, almost 15 years before it was made known to the public through The Program docuseries.

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Since its closing, anyone could walk into the building. That is exactly what Kubler did, and found videos, testimonies of eyewitnesses, and other proof she needed to expose the truth to the world. All these helped her create The Program docuseries, which has three episodes and dropped on Netflix on March 5, 2024.