Cracked's "6 Shocking Realities of the Secret Troubled Teen Industry."

[Shandris]

16. These are an extension of the old Tough Love program.

I was threatened with that kind of thing back in the late 80's -- they've been around forever. Many of them are offshore/extraterritorial now though.

Here's a movie that is 'based on true events' (which basically means its mostly true, but not all from the same place at the same time) starring Mila Kunis: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870204/ There are several of these kinds of movies, but this one is the only one I could cobble together decent search terms for. Age does weird things to the brain!

Yes, these are positively horrifying. One of the boards I'm a member of had a member's younger brother taken off to one of these just a couple of weeks ago. He tried to interfere and his parents disowned him. It's truly a tragic thing, and it wrecks these poor people's lives. His crime, naturally, was confessing to being gay.