Indiana Teen Challenge is closing a facility some former residents have called a house of horrors that promised “hope for your struggling girl” but delivered “bizarre, random and cruel” punishments.
The Refuge Girls Academy in Lebanon, about 25 miles north of Indianapolis, cannot afford to stay open while fighting a federal lawsuit, attorney Jeffrey Roberts told WISH-TV Ch. 8, the CW Network affiliate in Indianapolis. Current residents — how many is not clear — have been sent home to their parents or moved to another program.
“Operating the Lebanon academy was unfortunately no longer tenable,” Roberts said, “due to the … resources required for a faith-based nonprofit to defend a lawsuit filed by girls who were there, in some cases, up to a decade ago, now seeking eight-figure monetary sums.”
The Indiana facility was one of more than 200 residential programs begun by Teen Challenge, a ministry of the late David Wilkerson, author of the 1963 bestseller “The Cross and the Switchblade.” The programs offer faith-based treatment for people struggling with addiction, criminal behavior and destructive life choices.
Roberts described allegations that the nonprofit “recruited, exploited, and manipulated children from desperate families” as “deliberately outrageous” and “opportunistic.”
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The Indiana program, launched in June 2000, reported an annual budget of $3.4 million in 2025, the last year on record.
The federal suit filed in the Southern District of Indiana asks the court for $150,000 per violation of civil rights, plus “punitive damages as applicable.”
More than three dozen women have signed on to the allegations since the lawsuit was first filed in March. The complaint has been amended twice to add more plaintiffs as former residents continue to come forward, alleging “discipline” that included isolation, humiliation and denial or restriction of basic necessities.
One new plaintiff, for example, said that in 2025 she was given food that was crawling with mites. When she complained, staff accused her of putting the bugs in her own food to be difficult, the Indiana woman told her attorneys. When she would not eat, she alleges, staff said she had an eating disorder.
Another new plaintiff, also from Indiana, claims she was made to wear an unwashed orange jumpsuit and put in isolation for days. She told her attorneys she also will testify under oath that the Teen Challenge employees made her cut grass on her hands and knees, using only children’s safety scissors.
Relieved house is shutting down
CohenMalad LLP, the law firm representing the former residents, said the women suing, who were ages 13-17 at the time, are relieved the house has been shut down.
Attorney Andrea Simmons told the Roys Report (RR) podcast in July that stopping The Refuge from hurting more girls was her clients’ No. 1 goal.
“They wanted to see change,” Simmons said. “All of the young women that we spoke to, that was a universal request. In fact, they were disappointed to hear that as their civil attorneys, we don’t have any authority to close these places down or to force them to be licensed or to improve their conditions.”
Court records obtained by RR show CohenMalad LLP intends to ask all the women suing to testify to their mistreatment in front of a jury.
The firm said it will also ask nearly 40 other former residents to testify, along with 33 family members, 18 healthcare providers who treated residents and more than a dozen employees. Lawyers plan to subpoena other witnesses, according to court documents, including “any yet to be determined church member or church leadership” who partnered with the Lebanon Teen Challenge.
Attorneys are also asking the nonprofit for an extensive list of internal documents in a legal process known as discovery. Those include: disciplinary records, counseling records, documentation of education, medical records, resident handbooks, training materials, employment records, policy documents, internal emails and “evidence of all police runs and interactions.”
“It will be a long, complicated piece of litigation once we get the ball rolling,” Simmons said.
Defense wants case dismissed
Indiana Teen Challenge denies almost all the allegations — and argues that the parts that are true have been misconstrued.
The organization admits, for example, that residents were sometimes forbidden to talk. But according to The Refuge leadership, the disciplinary practice was not intended to humiliate the teenagers. Instead, it was intended as a “behavioral intervention” for young women who struggled with “impulse control.” During the “talking fast,” as leaders called it, residents were allowed to communicate basic needs in writing.
“Defendants admit that, during certain periods relevant to the allegations, … residents could temporarily lose certain privileges,” Indiana Teen Challenge’s attorneys told the court. “Defendants deny that residents were deprived of personal hygiene products, human contact, or other necessities.”
The motion to dismiss, filed in July, included a list of reasons the federal court should throw the case out.
Indiana Teen Challenge’s attorneys appealed to the constitutional prohibition of government meddling in religious organizations. They also claimed some of the women’s claims should be barred by the Indiana statute of limitations, which ranges from two to 20 years.
They add that the women should not be allowed to sue because they or their legal guardians waived their rights and “knowingly, voluntarily and freely consented to participate in the Teen Challenge rehabilitation program.”
The federal court has not yet scheduled a hearing on the motion to dismiss.
The women suing the Indiana Teen Challenge told RR they know that the legal process is slow, but they are waiting for the day they can testify.
Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.
2 Responses
“They add that the women should not be allowed to sue because they or their legal guardians waived their rights and “knowingly, voluntarily and freely consented to participate in the Teen Challenge rehabilitation program.” I am very suspicious that any actual “exploitation of the vulnerable” is the victimization of a well-meaning organization that has a fully transparent reputation for being a charitably motivated Christian ministry that employs tough-love in service to assisting adults and juveniles who are seeking sobriety and rehabilitation from a wide variety of addictive bondages and life threatening situations. Clearly faith-based, two groups emerge from Teen Challenge programs – wonderfully transformed people who often remain connected to the ministry – oftentimes as workers or supportive alumni, and regrettably many who flee the program because its rigors and requirements are not their taste – particularly the young ones. They are fair game for not only continuing self-destructive lifestyles but attorneys who could potentially coach numerous unsuccesful program dropouts with the promise of financial reward to participate in a lawsuit of this sort. A pox on those parents and family members who struggled with these girls, finally despairing in their efforts to help them and sent them to Teen Challenge, who now remain silent and allow lies and avarice to destroy what has been hope and deliverance for many.
Rev. Scott Woods – former Teen Challenge employee
Hopefully discovery clears up what happened there. I was not there, so I’m going on someone else’s testimony, but if the plaintiffs’ arguments bear out, I’ve got to ask “precisely what does this have to do with the Gospel?”, even beyond the legal issues. And if the legal team and ministry leaders are finding “oh boy, this stuff is largely true”, I would hope that they’d get together and say “you know, we need to come clean with this, settle, and work to improve these things.”.
Really, when you’re talking about helping with people with substance abuse and the related mental health problems that come with that, there is only so much you can do with control because of Mises’ Law: Man Acts. Real help must address, successfully, human motivations.