Babies were given to couples who paid a $250 “love gift.”

Girls who said they wanted to keep their child were called “whores” and “harlots.” 

Children were beaten with wooden boards if they broke a rule.

For 9 months, I’ve been looking into what happened at a religious youth facility for troubled teens and unwed mothers in the 1970s and 80s. It required court records from four states — some buried in the National Archives — as well as obtaining old Oprah footage, newspaper coverage, Congressional records and memos stored with Jerry Falwell’s papers. Today, the story finally published, along with a mini-documentary:

'My baby was stolen': Women search for children taken from them at abusive religious home

The description of life inside this facility, called Bethesda Home for Girls, which was near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, by more than a dozen former residents is haunting. 

Every aspect of their life inside Bethesda was controlled — from how much toilet paper they were allowed to use (two sheets per day) to their communication with parents (if they said something negative about Bethesda the call immediately ended). 

But there was one trauma that has had perhaps the longest lasting effect: the removal of their babies. 

I spoke with multiple women who said they didn’t want to give their child up for adoption but they were forced to anyway. Court records describe a referral network of pastors who sent pregnant teens to the facility, and who also helped find couples to adopt the babies, so long as the prospective parents were of similar ideological beliefs as Bethesda.

As part of this reporting, I was fortunate to be there when one mother met her long lost daughter in person for the first time. It was an emotional moment I will never forget. You can watch it in the mini-documentary. 

While this home closed in 1987, similar facilities continue to operate around the country with no federal oversight. They may not force girls to give up babies for adoption today, but the ones currently open have been accused of the same system of controlling teens’ lives inside, cutting them off from the outside world, and, in some cases, physical abuse and other maltreatment. 

Activists are now pushing for federal legislation, and I hope this story helps illuminate how long we’ve known about what can happen when there’s a profound lack of oversight. 

Growing up in Des Moines, I heard a lot about “Iowa nice.” On one hand, it referred to a common trope that Midwesterners are supposedly nicer than people in other regions. But on a deeper level, it was a legend Iowans created to pretend they were on the right side of history when it came to civil rights. 

I heard this frequently in college as I reported on a campaign to oust judges who voted to legalize same-sex marriage — Iowa was never a slave state; Iowa did not have Jim Crow; Iowa outlawed “separate but equal” before the US Supreme Court did, so Iowans should be proud of their history. Racism passed over us, phew…  or so we pretended. Only as an adult did I realize the “Iowa nice” mythos was a convenient way to ignore redlining, discrimination in jobs and policing, sundown towns, and the remarks made about people living in Iowa who came from Chicago. 

Over the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with that in some of my reporting. I published a deep dive into the background of several Black Lives Matter activists in Des Moines, looking at why they got involved, what they wanted to see changed, and how the city leaders appeared to be more annoyed than anything at the fact that their policies and meetings were suddenly under a microscope. (After the story was published, Iowa lawmakers passed legislation enhancing penalties for protest-related arrests, and giving drivers civil immunity if they hit a protester in the street with their car.)

But I’m also seeing similar attitudes in other stories I’ve covered. Whether it’s the backlash to a teacher in a small Wisconsin town who taught students why there was an uprising for racial justice, or the wealthy Virginia suburb that’s been torn apart over the school district trying to atone for its racist past (and present). Confronting ways that racism persists, which aren’t as straightforward as segregated drinking fountains, is uncomfortable for many, and this anxiety has fused into an uprising against critical race theory in schools, even though virtually no school district says it’s teaching it.

Today, my colleagues Ben, Brandy, and I published a detailed look at the organizations that have sprouted up to drive this anti-critical race theory movement, the Republicans looking to take advantage of it, and the right-wing media helping to prop it up.

Virtually every school district confronted about this says they don’t teach critical race theory, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Already, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee have already advanced some form of a restriction on teaching it. Iowa’s law, per the Des Moines Register, will ban any form of “race or sex stereotyping” or "race or sex scapegoating,” with "race or sex scapegoating” defined as assigning “fault, blame or bias” to a race or sex, or claiming that members have any inherent racism or sexism, conscious or unconscious. What does that mean in practice? No one knows. But when the bill is proposed after parents became upset with a school district in Ames, Iowa holding a Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, what do you think the message is? 

'Held hostage': How critical race theory moved from Fox News to school boards

As always, send me tips! Or feel free to just say hi and check in!

NBC News email: tyler.kingkade@nbcuni.com

Alt work email: tyler.kingkade@protonmail.com

Letters of recommendation:

• Watch “M.O.D.O.K.” on Hulu. It’s silly meaningless humor in the style of “Robot Chicken” meets “Bob’s Burgers,” but with lesser known Marvel characters.

• Watch “Sweet Tooth” on Netflix. It’s an alternate, but now not unfamiliar pandemic tale involving a kid with antlers on a journey.

• Listen to KennyHoopla for a kick of Blink 182 meets My Chemical Romance nostalgia.

Three years ago, as I reported on disturbing treatment of girls at a religious boarding school in California, one of the craziest things I learned was how little oversight the state has over private schools. Essentially, all they had to do was register with the state, but they didn’t even have to employ teachers. When I learned about how (CW: child abuse) the school withheld food from girls as discipline, barred girls from even looking at each other, and punished girls for attempting suicide, it was no wonder how long they got away with it. No one ever bothered to check on them.

So last fall, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when I found out about similar allegations at another troubled teen facility for girls in Missouri also escaped oversight. But Missouri didn’t even require religious boarding schools there to tell the state they exist.

After publishing that more recent story, I huddled with producers from “Dateline” and we discussed how to look at the bigger picture. If both deep blue California and red state Missouri exercised little oversight, there had to be more. We decided one thing to do was to ask every state’s child welfare officials and education departments what sort of oversight they kept on religious boarding schools.

What we found:

• At least 17 states exempt religious boarding schools from licensing requirements by the education and child welfare agencies either because they’re private or privately-funded, or due to a religious affiliation.

• And at least 23 states don’t even require religious boarding schools to tell their state education department that they exist.

• Few states have bothered trying to fix these gaps, largely because they have no idea what’s going on until there’s a scandal.

Read the investigation at NBC News: Legal loopholes allow abuse to go undetected at religious boarding schools

The bigger context is that these religious boarding schools are part of what’s called the “troubled teen industry.” It’s a catchall term for these reform schools, bootcamps, wilderness camps, and other similar facilities where parents choose to place their kids because they think they’re out of control. Sometimes the kids do need mental health treatment, but in many cases it’s just the parents getting worried about teens trying pot or having sex. It’s almost always privately funded. And there’s no federal oversight, so that leaves everything to the states.

One way people are further isolating themselves from oversight is by claiming to be religious, which can get them an exemption, and if they call themselves a private school they escape regulation that would apply to mental health centers.

Missouri is now on track to reform state law to close this gap. That was featured in a “Dateline” episode titled “Broken Circle,” which was based on two of the stories I linked above. (Unfortunately they took it down to fix technical issues, and it might not be up ‘til later in the week, but check back at this link to watch it.)

California also changed the law to more accurately label that religious boarding school as a “therapeutic boarding school,” subjecting it to licensing. (The school I investigated fled to Texas after California officials raided it and ordered it to follow the law.)

News that should get more attention:

• A study of 40 years of school shootings found marked increase in the number of deaths when an armed officer is present on the campus.

• Welcome to Iowa, a state that doesn’t care if you live or die.

• At least nine extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 have a history of violence against women ranging from domestic violence accusations to prison time on sexual battery charges.

My recommendation:

“Dinosaurs” — as in “Not the momma!” — is on Disney+!

Earlier this year, several grown men at a Michigan youth facility pushed a 16-year-old boy to the ground and restrained him for 12 minutes. When they got up, the boy was unconscious. His body limp. After nearly two days in the hospital, he died. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide.

The incident took place at a youth facility run by Sequel Youth & Family Services, a for-profit company with locations in 20 states that’s paid over $200 million annually to care for kids in the foster and juvenile justice systems, and children with mental health challenges.

After the boy died, some states cut ties with the company, but many others did not. And we found at least 16 facilities run by this company where allegations have been raised ranging from physical and sexual abuse, to unsanitary conditions and excessive restraints. So we were left with a question: why do so many states continue to place kids in facilities run by this company?

We published a story today that tries to get as close as possible to that answer.

A profitable 'death trap': Sequel youth facilities raked in millions while accused of abusing children

To do this story, my colleague Hannah Rappleye and I spent a few weeks talking to children’s and disabilities rights groups to understand what to look for. Then we did records requests to get documents from 14 states; a mix of emails, court filings, depositions and state inspections. We also researched private equity firms and some SEC filings. And after that, we narrowed in on Alabama, where this company is headquartered and runs several facilities, to talk to children, parents, lawyers and city officials to hear first hand what’s happening.

What we found:

• Multiple children said Sequel staff in Alabama placed them in solitary confinement as punishments, one told us he was placed in there for 3 days after he tried to run away.

• A 15-year-old boy said he was repeatedly attacked by other children, and we saw photos showing him with black eyes so bruised that one eye is closed shut, and the other you can barely see his pupil. Staff stood by and watched these assaults, his family said.

• Photos showed blood and feces smeared on the walls of Sequel facilities in Alabama, and that children slept on thin pads laid on top of concrete slabs.

• State officials in Alabama had received reports since 2018 warning that these facilities were unsafe and unsanitary, but renewed contracts anyway.

  

• We got a hold of video from talk the company’s co-founder gave, where he boasted that the company made turned a $30 million profit by keeping staff costs low. He also said that they focused on getting paid by the government to be insulated from economic downturns.

• Financial disclosures we reviewed showed the company’s co-founder received a $104,000 monthly payment as a “finder’s fee,” though starting salaries for youth counselors range between $12 to $15 an hour.

• Sequel marketing reps developed close relationships with some state officials, and used it to deal with “unfavorable media coverage,” as they put it, and how to deal with lawmakers demanding information about oversight.

These facilities care for kids who’ve already been put through the wringer. The child who suffered beatings? His adoptive mother said he was sexually abused as a young child and had PTSD. The teen who was placed in solitary confinement for 72 hours? His mom died when he was 2, and his dad’s drug addiction took him out of the picture.

But one big takeaway that everyone agreed on: there is not a long list of places to take these kids. So that’s why California sent children all the way to Sequel facilities in Iowa, and it very well may be why Alabama won’t close down the company’s facilities in the state.

There will be a segment about this story tonight on NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt.

Also, we are thankful for the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, the National Juvenile Justice Network, David Muhammad of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, Disability Rights Washington, Oregon state Sen. Sara Gelser, Alabama attorneys Gar Blume, Denise Burch, and Tommy James, and Mayor Finley and city attorney Megan Zingarelli of Madison, Alabama, and the other experts who lent their time to us for this story.

What else?

Things that should get more attention, but probably won’t:

• They Didn’t Turn In Their Work For Remote School. Their Parents Were Threatened With Court And Fines.

• “The LA County Sheriff's Dept arrested a student photographer from Cal State Long Beach who'd been covering a protest against police violence. Weeks later, LASD gave him back his camera -- but it was missing the SD card. They still have his iPhone.”

• Iowa’s governor keeps using coronavirus relief funding to pay for non-coronavirus things

Recommendation:

There’s a new docuseries on Disney+ called “Marvel 616,” and the first episode is about Japanese Spider-Man. It was a TV show in the late 70s that never aired in the U.S. It’s totally different from any other Spider-Man you’ve seen, and was actually the inspiration for the Power Rangers. Most documentaries are dark, but this one give you good vibes!

Got a story tip?

Reply to this email or contact me at tyler.kingkade@nbcuni.com.

Reminder: I only send this email out once or twice a month, and mainly to share the bigger stories I write, plus some extra tidbits. I am not asking you to pay for this newsletter, but no hard feelings if you’d like to unsubscribe.

This weekend, I published a new story:

It’s a longer story, but the TL;DR is a young teacher in Burlington, Wisconsin — a small, mostly white town, a half-hour drive away from Kenosha — taught her fourth grade class why people were protesting, and explained systemic racism. As soon as parents heard about it, they became irate, and without ever speaking with the teacher, organized to demand her firing. People harassed the teacher, as well as a Black mother who had started an activist group to combat racism in the town.

After the story published, a few sources who thought the teacher needed to lose her job messaged me. They thought I used the most radical quotes. Although, I only used quotes from them if I heard very similar remarks from other people, so that I would be conveying the overall sentiment of their side of the controversy. Still, I left out some comments I heard from multiple people, like, “Burlington never had any problems until both the teacher and this Black woman got together.”

I also heard a lot of explanations from the white people who opposed the teacher’s lesson for why they aren’t racist. They often said that Black Lives Matter is a Marxist group, that they donate money to the Biden campaign, and that they want to dismantle the nuclear family unit. One man pointed out this isn’t about color, because he’s married to an Asian woman.

Then there’s a woman who complained the story was biased because it didn’t share more from the side against the teacher:

So I asked her a question:

The whole back and forth is illustrative of two things.

The Midwest has an attitude toward of racism of, We were never part of the confederacy, we didn’t have Jim Crow laws, so thankfully racism was never here. Obviously, that’s not accurate, but it’s part of the cognitive dissonance.

David Stovall, a University of Illinois professor, who studies the intersection of race and school, and is Black, put it this way: “You may have never owned slaves, you may have never uttered a racial epithet, but you live in a world that assumes my criminality over my humanity, and that I think is the toughest thing for people to grapple with.”

The other issue here is how people come to conclusions about others based only on what they know from social media, without ever talking to the person. None of the people who demanded the teacher’s firing in Burlington ever spoke to her, by phone, in person, or any other way — so they didn’t know her, and never heard her explain how she taught the lesson. Yet they still believed she was a radical leftist trying to indoctrinate children.

At least the majority of reader email I received were messages of support for the teacher. In fact, one person read the story and decided to vote. Here’s what he wrote to me:

I'm a 25 year old unemployed engineer who has every reason to be selfish right now and not think about what is going on around them, but that story brought me back to a compassionate state where I realized that you gotta fix your community before you can fix yourself. 

These BLM discussions are extremely difficult to have, especially with the deniers (like my parents) because of various points you made in your story. There's a feeling of self incrimination to accept this idea, and it's so easy to think we've done nothing wrong and just think about ourselves and move forward. 

I don't know how the country is going to get to the point where this topic isn't so taboo anymore, but the last thing this topic needs is to be hidden away again for the next 30 years until another george floyd case happens again and the cycle repeats itself once more. 

I say all of this because I wasn't planning on voting. I said I would publicly, but I knew that I wouldn't because I was so dissatisfied with both candidates, and didn't think they'd get anything significant done, just like the last few administrations. But now I am. I think there's some momentum here that the country needs to follow thru with, and even if it gets uglier, it will get better and will be worth it. 

Stories that should get more attention:

• Iowa Attorney General’s office admits governor's aide told public health spokesperson to 'hold' response to COVID-19 testing public records request

• Police Are Cutting Ties With Domestic Violence Programs That Support Black Lives Matter

• 'Live PD' was canceled. But in one Texas county, its twisted legacy lives on.

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