Oakdale man recounts his experience at boarding school featured in Netflix documentary

“My dad walked in first. He said these guys are gonna take you to school and then he stepped aside and two big burly men came into my room with handcuffs just like that…my first instinct obviously was to run.”

Up until that point, “school” for then-15-year-old Colin Buckley meant Modesto’s Johansen High. But on that night in 2005, Buckley would begin a traumatic journey on his way to the Academy at Ivy Ridge, described as a boarding school for troubled teens in Ogdensburg, New York.

The school is the subject of a new Netflix documentary series titled “The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping.” Directed by former Ivy Ridge student Katherine Kubler, the three-part series documents her and other students’ experiences at the academy and chronicles their efforts to expose the abuses there and ultimately find justice.

Though not featured in the series, Buckley, now 35 years old, attended Ivy Ridge in 2005 at the same time as some of those featured in the series and has connected with several of them through a Facebook group. Through this group, he connected with another former student, Katie, who is featured in the film. And through Katie, Buckley received his student files, documenting his time at the academy.

As the documentary shows, Ivy Ridge was abandoned after it shut down in 2009 and most materials, files and surveillance footage were left behind. By reclaiming his files, Buckley is now on a journey of healing and accountability.

Adopted at birth, Buckley said he had a relatively normal childhood until his mother died of ovarian cancer when he was 5 years old. Shortly after, his father remarried, and it was then he felt things change.

“My dad remarried and then there was a clear division of whose kids were whose and I started acting out. Obviously, my mom just died and then within a year, I have a new mom and three different siblings,” Buckley said.

According to Buckley, as his behavior changed, he started acting out and rebelling against his father’s rules. He started doing poorly in school.

“I’m hard-headed and we just went back and forth, back and forth. His answer was he thought there was something wrong with me. So he sent me to the school.”

Operated from 2001 to 2009, the Academy at Ivy Ridge was a private, for-profit boarding school. It billed itself as a behavior modification school for troubled and difficult teens.

According to the documentary and Buckley’s experience, the school was more of a prison than an academic institution. Students were expected to follow strict rules, which included walking in formation and avoiding eye contact with other students and administrators. Even looking out the window was forbidden.

Buckley describes having to eat with both feet planted on the floor while staring straight ahead and being closely watched for any minor deviation.

The school used a point system, and in his first week, Buckley was in the negative, making it seem impossible to ever move up to levels that offered more privileges. “I never made it past level 2,” he said.

There were six levels at the school, and students could earn points by attending sessions in the program and reporting their fellow students for violations. Buckley said he refused to attend the sessions as much as he could and was punished for it with “interventions,” which were similar to solitary confinement.

“I’d be in there alone. And that would be actually OK because I was just on my own and I was super quiet. That was my response to the program — I was a ghost. I just shut up because I noticed everybody who’s loud, they got pinpointed and they had a harder time in the program. So I tried to remain quiet and reclusive,” Buckley recalled.

Periods of silence during those confinements were punctuated by self-help tapes on a loop. At times, he lost track of how long he had been in there. Some days 8 hours, some days he estimated 16 hours.

He also describes many fights and rough treatment by staff. In the documentary, surveillance footage shows staff “taking students to the ground” for seemingly minor violations. “At nighttime, it got a little rowdy, Buckley said. “... I felt extremely vulnerable and I was scared.”

Because he was only at level 2, he was not allowed to speak to his family on the phone. Students at this level could only send and receive letters weekly. If students complained about their negative experiences or abusive treatment, the school would cut off communication and the student would be further punished, according to Buckley.

After four and a half months, Buckley had only twice set foot outside, he felt hopeless that he would ever leave. But it was this fact that allowed him to devise a plan to get sent home.

“I remember thinking that Dad wouldn’t like this. I hadn’t been outside and then that’s when it clicked. I can’t damn the school in my letters home, but I can at least say we haven’t been outside because the school will openly tell you that outside time is an upper-level privilege. So I wrote, ‘Dad, can you talk to the school about going outside more?’”

It worked; his father contacted the school and requested he be allowed to go outside regularly. The school refused and his father decided to take him out of the school.

Unfortunately for Buckley, his plan only half worked. He was able to leave the school, only to be transferred to another behavior modification school called Bethel Boys Academy in Lucedale, Mississippi. In his files, Ivy Ridge listed him as expelled.

Buckley started a new chapter at Bethel Boys Academy, which later was called Eagle Point Christian Academy and then Pine View Academy. This school differed from Ivy Ridge in that it was a military-style school that was physically demanding and mentally draining.

After 6 months, he finally went home. With no real school credits, it was hard to find normalcy and stability at home and school. His problems with his father persisted and he left home again and was able to reconnect with his birth mother who was living in Reno, Nevada.

At the age of 18, Buckley enlisted in the Army. He was stationed at Fort Hood and lived through another traumatic event when U.S. Army Ranger Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people and wounded 30 others in the deadliest mass shooting on a military base in history. Buckley ended up deploying to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan in 2011.

“That’s kind of when I realized that I had been living with probably complex post-traumatic stress disorder, like, forever and I just didn’t know it,” he recalled.

After he left the military, Buckley struggled with jobs and interpersonal relationships while managing being a new father. It was during this time he began to reconnect with other students who attended Ivy Ridge and Bethel academies on Facebook. As students shared their experiences he felt finally seen and able to work through his traumas.

Buckley began to write and realized how it provided a space to heal. “I found writing about my story was extremely cathartic. I could write about a memory, and not have to dwell on it as much.”

The fallout from the documentary has been swift. Some former employees of Ivy Ridge, many of whom still live and work in the area around Ogdensburg, have been fired or put on leave from their jobs.

In early March, the St. Lawrence County District Attorney’s Office opened an investigation into abuse allegations at the school and New York state Assemblyman Scott Gray has called for the Attorney General’s Office to step in and open an official state probe.

On Facebook, there has been talk by former Ivy Ridge students about filing class-action lawsuits. Buckley said he is hopeful, but he laments that previous attempts at accountability have not been successful. “It was 20 years ago, it just depends on what falls under the statute of limitations and what doesn’t. But we have a mountain of evidence.”

Today, Buckley is married, a father of four and writing a memoir. He skateboards some mornings to clear his head. Perhaps in part due to the attention drawn by the documentary, Buckley said he has a few publishers interested in his book.

For Buckley it’s all about moving forward, writing his own story and defining his own future.