IN Teen Challenge Faces Lawsuit for Trafficking and Forced Labor
Nine young women claim they were victims of abuse that often worsened their conditions.
Haven Murdock, who is now 28, said she was a 13-year-old struggling with an eating disorder, self-harm, and suicidal ideation when her parents took her to Central Indiana Teen Challenge.
Central Indiana Teen Challenge, now The Refuge Teen Challenge / Google Maps
She told WRTV the program “added severely” to her mental health issues.
Murdock said she had limited contact with her family, and that if she tried to tell her family about how she was being treated, she would be punished.
One of her worst memories is of the isolation room.
“You’re just supposed to sit there in this empty room as they watch you on a camera and watch you do nothing but stare at the wall,” Murdock told WRTV. “The longest I was in there was a month. It was horrible. It was humiliating.”
Nine young women claim they were victims of “systemic abuse, neglect, trafficking, exploitation, and forced labor,” according to a federal lawsuit they filed last month against Central Indiana Teen Challenge, now operating as the Refuge Girls Academy.
The girls claim the abuse occurred between 2012 and 2017 while they were minor residents of the therapeutic recovery program.
According to the plaintiffs, “from the moment they arrived, [they] were abused, neglected, humiliated, physically assaulted, spiritually coerced, given simplistic and largely meaningless ‘workbooks’ in the guise of education, and forced to perform a variety of physically hard, dangerous, and even bizarre and cruel unpaid labor.”
They are suing for claims of multiple violations of federal anti-trafficking laws.
The plaintiffs address questions about the timeliness of the lawsuit upfront, claiming their allegations either fall under the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act of 2022 or by the “discovery rule” that tolls the statute of limitations until victims discover they were the subject of abuse.
Central Indiana Teen Challenge is part of the Adult and Teen Challenge USA network for addiction and mental health treatment. The network was started by Assemblies of God Pastor David Wilkerson.
The lawsuit claims the parents and families of the plaintiffs were persuaded to enroll their children in the program with assurances that it was a “safe and therapeutic environment” and used “faith-based focus to bring about life transformation.”
However, instead of being therapeutic and safe, the plaintiffs claim they were subjected to a “structure and practice” that Central Indiana Teen Challenge knew would worsen their conditions.
Some of the practices listed in the lawsuit include isolation for up to 30 days; being forced to eat stale, moldy, wilted, and outdated food; and daily hard physical labor including cleaning and scrubbing floors and bathrooms and cutting the lawn with child safety scissors.
The young women were also forced to perform tasks for others outside the organization but were not paid for their work, the court documents claim. If they didn’t comply with the daily manual labor requirements, the plaintiffs claim they were punished.
Most of their time, at least four hours per day the plaintiffs claim, was taken up in these “forced labor” tasks while their education took a back seat. No licensed teachers worked at Central Indiana Teen Challenge, the lawsuit says, and “when they left [Teen Challenge] they were significantly behind their peers in their education and could not expect to attend college.”
The lawsuit claims parents were misled about the level of education their children would receive. “At no time did the Defendants advise Plaintiffs and their families that CITC is not an accredited high school, or that it could not offer the residents a high school diploma,” the lawsuit states.
The nine plaintiffs, namely Emily Dupuis, Eliana Greenfield, Christine Hong, Autumn Mays, Haven Murdock, Kirah Oswald, Hannah Scragg, Chelsie Turlich, and Kristin Williams, claim to have suffered injuries including severe psychological distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, lost faith in God, lost wages, and permanent disabilities from their psychiatric and psychological conditions.
While the lawsuit includes many allegations of forced labor and coercion, it does not list them in direct relation to each plaintiff. In other words, each plaintiff’s specific experience and suffering at the hands of Central Indiana Teen Challenge is not detailed in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 in statutory damages for each violation of the federal anti-trafficking statute. They also are seeking compensatory damages and damages for pain and suffering.
Central Indiana Teen Challenge, also known as the Refuge Girls Academy, did not respond to a request for their statement before the time of publication.
The ministry’s attorney, Jeffrey Roberts, provided the following statement to WRTV:
“The Refuge Girls Academy, like the other facilities in the Indiana Adult and Teen Challenge family, has a long history of achieving positive, life-changing, and, in many instances, life-saving results for countless individuals who have participated in its treatment programs, as so many of them would attest.
This mission and the dedication to helping individuals recover from addiction and life-controlling behaviors will not be daunted by law firms using the media to scour the country for opportunistic claims to bring against ‘troubled teen industry’ organizations. The new lawsuit purports to arise from events dating back, in most alleged instances, well over a decade. The lawsuit equates the Lebanon, Indiana, faith-based addiction treatment, chosen for these plaintiffs by their parents or guardians, to human trafficking and criminal ‘conspiracy,’ all to save claims that we believe would otherwise be summarily dismissible by the court. The complaint is comprised of allegations that are unproven and unverified.
Even once we review the complaint in detail, we would prefer not to litigate this case in the media. Our client will file a response to these allegations with the court as the rules allow and intends to aggressively defend itself against the claims.”
Central Indiana Teen Challenge has not yet filed a response in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
In the MinistryWatch 1000 database, Teen Challenge USA has one out of five stars for financial efficiency, has a C Transparency Grade, and a Donor Confidence Score of 69 out of 100—a “Give with confidence” designation.
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