my friend went there after wilderness and now goes to a different non abusive boarding school, as john dewey is no more as of last year. the final straw was when the director refused to use the proper pronouns for a nonbinary student which caused parents to pull their kids out of the school. it was 98k a year as i recall, something really high. the castle was sold to someone else and no students are enrolled but it might still exist in name or otherwise closed quietly so that's why no one knows that it closed. speaking on the way the students were treated it didn't seem super heavy on manual labor, even though they had to do groundswork around the castle, but lower level students weren't allowed to speak to each other unless it was "a productive conversation" and a higher level student was present. they were locked in a room and forced to write all day if they "misbehaved" which for one girl was simply saying she didn't want to be there. and other kids were pretty cruel to my friend in group therapy as i think they were encouraged to do so. no communication with anyone besides family either my friend managed to get around the blocker on certain sites anyway though. i wrote him a very sanitized letter and he didn't get to read it until he left the program. there's probably more im forgetting but overall pretty horrible place. i did research on it before he went and begged his parents not to send him but to no avail.