Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth

The Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth was a Douglasville, Georgia based adolescent treatment center which was shut down in the mid 1980s amidst allegations physical and sexual abuse, exploitation of child labor, and deprivation of education.

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Opening in 1962, the center strove to be a wilderness treatment center for troubled boys. Anneewakee expanded from the single Douglasville, Ga center to also include a boys campus near Carrabelle, Florida and a girls campus near Rockmart, Georgia.

At its inception Anneewakee was not ground breaking but certainly trend setting. It became a model for wilderness treatment centers. It was considered extremely effective in its basic tenets. The organization bragged of well over an 80% success rate.

Eventually scandals emerged in the 1980s with allegations of Anneewakee's decades long history of forced child labor, sexual abuse and physical abuse. Survivors of this center today range from people who say it saved their lives, to people who refer to it as the Chernobyl of treatment centers.

22 former patients sue Anneewakee: Hospital accused of plot to hide evidence of abuse http://nafcj.org/PoetterPlot22patients.htm 1986 Atlanta Journal Constitution article