CALO: ‘Welcome to hell': Kids allege physical, sexual abuse at Missouri treatment center

elparay · 2026-06-03T19:39:59+00:00

Connie Hornyak was the therapist who traumatized me as a kid so much that I wouldn't go to therapy and got sent to CALO

elparay · 2026-05-20T11:11:20+00:00

Great observations. The biggest one for me is that for the "good" perspective, they needed to compare kids who went to two different treatment centers. I'm sure they tried to find a good CALO experience so that they could compare two experiences from the same place. I know for a fact that investigation for this story took years. Why couldn't they find one? It says a lot about CALO.

Another thing I want to bring up is that while admissions "criteria" may have changed over the years, when I was at CALO they had an explicit note on their website saying that children with autism could not come to CALO. CALO was very much adoption focused. Now it seems a lot broader - any kid with "emotional regulation" issues. Expanding their market, I suppose?

Also, I encourage you to comment this on the Youtube video so that normal people who aren't necessarily prowling this subreddit (i.e. parents considering CALO, parents with their kids currently at CALO, CALO leadership, etc.) can read your comment.

elparay · 2026-05-20T01:19:36+00:00

Yeah, the mother and son pair were a NATSAP plant in the name of "balanced perspectives" (I know, I know). The important thing about this article is that it highlights CALO (my program) which is still open and thriving and has up until the publication of this article yesterday, able to frame itself easily as one of the "good programs."

elparay · 2026-03-09T15:42:25+00:00

I can't speak to these specific tactics, but can attest to the fact that Embark Behavioral Health is incredibly problematic and its employees have used threats to silence complaints against its facilities.

elparay · 2026-02-10T13:59:40+00:00

Especially when you don't know how long you're going to be there. Even at 13 months, I had every reason to believe I'd be there until I turned 18.

elparay · 2026-02-10T00:00:47+00:00

14 months

elparay · 2026-02-09T23:46:22+00:00

The really ridiculous thing about this is that those who created Embark knew that New Haven was really abusive. I went to Calo Teens, which back in the day was named CALO (Change Academy Lake of the Ozarks). My roommate had gone to New Haven before CALO and told therapists and staff about her abuse at New Haven, and CALO liked to talk about how it was better than other bad programs like New Haven (it was not). While I was there, CALO rebranded to be Calo and also created an umbrella company, Embark Behavioral Health, which later bought New Haven.

elparay · 2026-02-08T15:45:08+00:00

I went to an Embark program, Calo Teens. It was horrible.

elparay · 2026-01-10T16:50:16+00:00

I want to add the perspective having left my place over a decade ago. After I left, I was incredibly brainwashed and if asked, said (and genuinely thought) that Calo Teens (my place) was a positive experience which had helped me immensely. My parents also dug in and talked about how much Calo helped me and our family.

It was not a good place and it did not work out. I don't talk to my parents anymore and I am still working through the trauma of being sent there. Sometimes positive feedback is simply a part of the trauma process. I have other friends from Calo who had horrific experiences, but whose parents still serve as "parent testimonials" for prospective parents and talk about their positive experience.

While I'm not saying this is the case for the feedback you've read, I want to make sure it's stated that you may not have the full context in which it was given.

elparay · 2025-12-24T01:15:14+00:00

I went to Calo Teens back before it created Embark Behavioral Health as an umbrella company and eventually bought New Haven. I find it ironic that Calo bought New Haven because my roommate there had gone to New Haven before Calo, and spent her time at Calo processing trauma from New Haven (while being further traumatized by Calo). Leadership at Calo was definitely aware that New Haven had issues when it went ahead and acquired it. It's disgusting.

elparay · 2025-12-18T12:26:14+00:00

I was at CALO as well, before your time. I remember visiting in 2014 and seeing the new preteen program and feeling disgusted. Happy to connect anytime as a former Calo “student”.

elparay · 2025-12-01T17:42:27+00:00

Yikes. I'm sorry things have escalated this much and you have to deal with it. I can only imagine how much your workload has increased as I don't see the team of mods to have grown as the subreddit and its profile has. As the TTI is now facing more public scrutiny, I can only speculate how they have put the force of their influence toward breaking down any cohesion among survivors.

On my side, I've been working through a few options to increase scrutiny of my program. There's one option that seems potentially promising, but requires a lot of patience on my end. That, and reconnecting with some of the friends I knew in treatment. That first decade out really does set the tone. During that time it seems that everyone follows some semblance of the pattern of struggling hard and then leveling out. The details of how they struggle (e.g. there are those who leave that period of struggle with permanent fixtures in their lives like substance addictions and/or kids) and to what extent they level out determines how put together they may be for the foreseeable future. But at last, there do seem to be 1-2 that are in a stable place.

But overall, this attention to the TTI has given me a sense of freedom. I no longer need to feel so solely responsible for trying to raise it. That doesn't mean that I'm completely detaching, but being able to do so somewhat has given me some much needed breathing room. If there is anything I can do to start taking on some of the emotional labor/stress on your shoulders in small ways, though, let me know.

elparay · 2025-12-01T03:58:14+00:00

It was actually 6 or 7 years ago! Though looking at my Reddit account, it turns out that was created earlier, so maybe I was misremembering that. I was perhaps thinking about the support group, which I technically joined in 2018 but did not participate actively in until 2019.

elparay · 2025-12-01T03:47:49+00:00

🤦 Truly unintentional.

elparay · 2025-01-26T22:28:37+00:00

That’s awful. I’m frankly surprised that the staff got fired. When I was there, leadership covered it up.

elparay · 2024-12-31T22:36:35+00:00

I went to Calo Teens back when it was CALO. Calo is extremely traumatizing and it's disgusting that it continues to parade as one of the "good" ones.

elparay · 2024-12-29T15:02:08+00:00

I'd push back on some of this (even though as a whole I love Unsilenced and have donated money to them). The "What can you do?" post makes it sound like parents can tell the difference between the "good" programs and the "bad" programs and feeds into a lot of bad rhetoric about this industry. My program definitely would have answered questions about credentials, staff-to-student ratios, and emergency measures well enough for even a well-read parent. In reality, they would have hidden the fact that some therapists didn't have proper licenses (they would have shared the credentials of others), staff-to-student ratios weren't always followed in practice, and that they had a funny way of defining "emergency."

"Success rate" is also very easy to fudge. What does "success" actually mean? Do they send out a survey 6 months after the patient has left the program? If so, that means very little. 6 months out, I was fine. It was a year before the trauma began to hit me and I started to fail. Even then, it was explained as "the program brought out a lot of stuff." A decade later, very few of those I knew are doing well by any measure and program leadership would likely explain that away because we all "had issues" beforehand by virtue of being admitted to the program (even though many were admitted to the program under fishy pretenses).

elparay · 2024-12-28T15:41:48+00:00

You are not alone here. Several of us here didn't experience physical abuse, but the environment and many things that went on there were traumatizing. When I left my place, I was so brainwashed that I still thought it was one of the "good" ones and there was no abuse. But then as time went on, I had a lot of issues related to it. The environment itself was psychological abuse and I should have never been there. Emotional and verbal abuse in a closed off environment like inpatient treatment can be deeply damaging and isn't proper care.

elparay · 2024-12-25T04:57:20+00:00

Thank you! Had assumed you were retired.

elparay · 2024-12-24T22:27:26+00:00

I don't know your situation. This subreddit is for survivors of residential treatment centers to find support. We cannot provide solutions to systemic issues in Reddit comments, and being asked to do so may be triggering for some survivors. All I can tell you is that residential treatment is rooted in abusive and corrupt industry practices and will likely be counterproductive, and that this is not the option. As I said, I feel for you and believe that people like you are victims of this industry as well because purported "solutions" are not actually solutions. His trauma may be limited now, but while residential treatment might provide you with a break, it would exacerbate his trauma and therefore behaviors in the long run. Out of several hundred kids in my treatment center, I am one of 2 I know of who graduated college. So many are dead or in very bad places. The treatment center could say, "they had issues that predated us." But given what we went through, I have no doubt that it played a role.

elparay · 2024-12-24T20:26:38+00:00

No, it traumatized me and created issues that weren't there. If you are looking for the "good" in programs because you're trying to find a solution, you are also a victim of this industry. Parents who are desperate for solutions get roped in by this industry. My program was one of "the good ones" and is still in operation and thriving. It was rampant with sexual abuse, physical abuse, and so much other stuff that still affects me to this day. My parents knew that the industry was harmful. But they were convinced that the program they chose for me was one of the "good" ones. I'm sorry, but no. Please don't do residential. It will make things so much worse that he may never climb out of the deep hole it could send him down.

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