A haunting and infuriating limited series on the evil Ivy Ridge school.

Academy at Ivy Ridge (NOT Ivy League) was a boarding school in Ogdensburg, New York, which was so strict that you need permission to fart, you can’t go outside, and you can barely make contact with your family. Parents would have people abduct their misbehaved kids, but what they didn’t know is that it’s a place of abuse. If kids didn’t go along with the program, they would break them in many ways. Physical restraints, solitary confinement, and even food deprivation.

This was practically a prison for students, especially if they can’t go outside, which could damage their psyche. No friends, no family, no nothing. And the only way to survive is to give in to the program.

The new made-for-Netflix limited series “The Program: The Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping” is something I never would have expected. I’ve never heard about Ivy Ridge, and I can’t believe there would be a school so strict and evil.

The documentarian Katherine Kubler tells the story of how was abducted and escorted to Ivy Ridge. She got placed there for drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade and getting herself expelled from Stony Brook School, which had a zero tolerance policy. Never dreaming she would be trapped in some kind of Hell. She does, however, become inspired “The Count of Monte Cristo” to get revenge on that school. Starting with this doc, which is divided into three parts, and here are examples of what went down there. Believe me, it’s unimaginable.

It begins with Katherine and her friends breaking into the closed school to get all the documents and video camera footage from the boys side they can find on how sadistic this school was. They see such horrifying videos of boys being strangled, tackled, and restraint.

Unfortunately, for the girls side, there were no video cameras, and they had to deal with physical and sexual abuse.

And even worse, the parents wouldn’t believe that their children were being abused, because they were deceived by the staff.

In order to complete the program, you had to complete seminars, which would manipulate the minds of students.

For example: a student would use a duct tape covered towel to scream and hit it on the floor. If you choose out of the seminar, you would get a “breakpoint” seminar, which is meant to break you.

An alumni/prisoner named Diana was forced to write an essay saying that it was her fault her father died in a car accident, and that she should have been the one to die. She compares her years at Ivy Ridge to that very fateful day, because they made her relive it. And they gave her a name tag “Mistake.”

And when your parents came to visit, you were allowed to go outside, but only under supervision. And you can’t ask them to take you home.

“The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping” is an important series about how Hellish this school was and how its alumni struggled for survival and keeping their sanity. It’s very irritable and sad, as each episode explains about the evils threatening them. Young people have problems with authority. It’s all part of our human nature. But that doesn’t mean they have to be treated like criminals. These students are human beings who were wrongfully treated like garbage, and I’m glad this place closed down.

If you don’t have the stomach or if you were a victim, then nobody here is telling you to watch this doc. But I still think it’s very informative and riveting.

3 Part Series Streaming on Netflix