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March 6, 2024

The Program review: a captivating story of teen resilience

the true crime that's worth your time

students crouched in a room
Survivors of the Academy of Ivy Ridge "school." Courtesy: Netflix

If it weren't for Katherine Kubler, new Netflix docuseries The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping would be unendurable. The three-part show, which dropped on Tuesday, depicts — often brutally — the treatment children received at Ogdensburg, New York "disciplinary boarding school" the Academy at Ivy Ridge, which billed itself as a solution for parents stymied by their unruly teen. In reality, as a former worker tells Kubler, "it was a fucking prison."

Kubler was a student-slash-inmate at the school, after what she describes as some fairly standard adolescent acting-out behaviors and an increasingly toxic relationship with her stepmother. As an adult, she started a decade-long investigation into the operation, which was part of the now-notorious World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools.

...read the rest of our review of The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping at Reality Blurred.

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