![]() and yet there are lots of hugs." Accounts of former students include mentions of physical and mental abuse, including degrading tasks such as " of cleaning urinals with a toothbrush that can last for hours" and up to the point of critical malnourishment. In 2002, a New Jersey educational consultant told The New York Times that the school was "certainly not for the faint-hearted." He said "There's lots of confrontation. In 2002, a New Jersey educational consultant who had referred students to Élan for twenty-two years told The New York Times that he would refer only "the most serious cases" to the school, which he said would "take kids who haven't responded to other programs and who are really out of control." The school's treatment methods were based on the "TC" or therapeutic community modality popularized in the 1960s at facilities such as Synanon, and later at Daytop Village. In the school's program, described as "controversial", "humiliation" was identified as a therapeutic tool, as was following up on such intervention with encouragement and warm support. Maine politician Bill Diamond served as the school's Director of Governmental Relations. In 1974, Élan 1 was damaged by a fire with damages estimated as $100,000. Ricci headed the school until his death in 2001, when his widow Sharon Terry took over. Gerald Davidson and investor David Goldberg. Élan School was founded in 1970 by Joseph Ricci, a former heroin addict who had worked with young people in drug-treatment facilities, along with psychiatrist Dr. The school was also the subject of persistent allegations of abuse in their behavioral modification program. The school acquired notoriety during the 1990s and early-2000s when former classmates of Michael Skakel, who had attended Élan in the 1970s, testified against him in his trial for an unsolved murder that had occurred about two years before he enrolled at Élan. This campus was known to have some of the worst abuse in the school's history, and has been said to have been put out of use sometime in the 1980s. There were also other campuses, such as the one on 424 Maplecrest Road in Parsonsfield, Maine, which was formerly a hotel and hospital before it was bought by Élan in 1975. Élan was located on a 33-acre (13 ha) campus that was formerly a hunting lodge. The facility was closed down on April 1, 2011, due to reports of abuse, many from former students, dating back to its opening in 1970. It was a full member of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP) and was considered to be a part of the troubled teen industry. ![]() Élan School was a private, coeducational, and abusive residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school in Poland, Androscoggin County, Maine.
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