Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth

Anneewakee - My Story (Now Inner Harbour) | Stories about ...

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The Anneewakee Treatment Center was a Douglasville, Georgia, United States, based adolescent treatment center which changed name to the New Annewakee, Inner Harbour Hospital and now Inner Harbour, Ltd (DBA)Inner Harbour for Children and Families, after a major lawsuit by 110 former "patients" for $432M in 1990, represented by attorneys B. Randall Blackwood and Patricia Edelkind. There was physical and sexual abuse, exploitation of child labor, and deprivation of education from its inception in the early 1960s through to the mid 1980s.

Opening in 1962, the center was a wilderness treatment center for troubled boys. Anneewakee expanded from the single Douglasville, Georgia, center to include a boys campus near Carrabelle, Florida and a girls campus near Rockmart, Georgia.

Scandals emerged in the 1980s with decades long history of forced child labor, sexual abuse, physical abuse and deprivation of education. Survivors of this center today range from people who say it saved their lives, to people who refer to it as the Chernobyl of treatment centers.

Anneewakee was acquired and is now operated as Inner Harbour Ltd or DBA Inner Harbour for Children & Families. After the scandals, the court awarded the management of the organization to Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) out of Nashville, TN. A medical model was instituted where care is supervised by medical doctors/psychiatrists.

In 2015 one of the former patients at the facility wrote a book about his time there. It is the only book written by a former patient. "Anneewakee: One Boy's Journey," by Steve Salem Evans.