The Elan school was an institution selling itself as a reformatory for troubled and wayward youth. Their claim to parents and the state was that their children’s behaviour would be corrected through various therapeutic methods. The truth of Elan was that it was a snake pit where residents were subjected to every kind of abuse.  Elan did change its students: most of them emerged with post-traumatic stress disorder and other long-term psychiatric problems. In this episode I speak with Elan survivor Karen Watson whose disclosures were even more horrifying than I expected.

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