I See You, Survivor

March 1, 2023

It's called the Troubled Teen Industry, known for its institutionalized abuse of teenagers, and Ianelli has seen it from the inside; from 1995 to 1998, she was confined at the Family School in upstate New York. Now she goes by Survivor993 online, and her hashtag #ISeeYouSurvivor has been posted more than 237 million times. A book aimed at survivors: "You are not broken. You are not unlovable. And you are not alone." Prepub Alert.

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May 8, 2023
Ianelli debuts with a disturbing exposé of the “troubled teen industry,” focused on the upstate New York institution she attended starting at age 12. Donning the moniker Survivor993 (a reference to the number of days she lived at an establishment called the Family Foundation), Ianelli gained traction on social media detailing horrors she expands on here, including physical abuse and coerced “confessions” that were later used as evidence of nonexistent drug and alcohol addictions to persuade her parents to keep her institutionalized. In between bombshell revelations (Family Foundation administrators promoted themselves as addiction and recovery experts, but did not meet state requirements to provide those services), Ianelli celebrates the resilience of her fellow survivors. Her quest for justice against so-called “tough love” schools that allow abusers to act with near-impunity is incendiary and uncompromising. So much so that Ianelli’s anger can sometimes feel misplaced: “Because you haven’t listened, this abuse is happening today, right now, as you read this,” she writes at one point, not quite earning the indictment of her audience. Still, this unflinching memoir presents a moving message of triumph over trauma. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Literary.

July 15, 2023
The author recounts the shocking abuses she suffered at a boarding academy and takes aim at the "Troubled Teen Industry." "What you will read here is upsetting," writes Ianelli, "especially if you have suffered abuse....This is not a story of trauma but of triumph over trauma." At age 15, the author was committed to the Family Foundation School, a boarding academy in rural New York that incorporated anger and violence into its troubled-teen program. "The Family is not unique. You need to understand that," the author writes. "The Family is a pinhole is a multibillion-dollar industry that uses the same basic approaches, mindsets, and techniques on 'troubled' teens. Prolonged restraint, beatings, starvation, savage verbal attacks...this is standard stuff." Punishments included moving huge rocks back and forth from one pile to another for consecutive days as well as digging graves. Despite its facade as a high school, writes the author, "there were no classes my first year." Ianelli describes being sodomized by a violent cook in the school kitchen. After the school priest ("that former Catholic piece of shit") failed to help her, she was locked in the boiler room, taped inside a blanket, eating from a dog bowl. As the author recounts, the horrific abuse continued. "The abuse becomes the reason not to believe the abuse, and the worse the abuse, the more the story is disbelieved," she writes. Although efforts by the author and fellow survivors contributed to the Family being shuttered in 2014, she writes, "This abuse is happening today, right now, as you read this. The Troubled Teen Industry that created and enabled the Family is still here, as massive as ever." Online, Ianelli uses the identity Survivor993, "for the number of days I'd been imprisoned at the Family," and she now lives in an undisclosed location. A devastating explication of widespread overlooked abuse and a call for change that must be heeded.

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