This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007)

The Anneewakee Treatment Center for Emotionally Disturbed Youth was a Douglasville, Georgia based adolescent treatment center which changed names to the New Annewakee, Inner Harbour Hospital and now Inner Harbour, Ltd (DBA)Inner Harbour for Children & Families. There were allegations of physical and sexual abuse, exploitation of child labor, and deprivation of education in the 80's.

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

At its inception, Anneewakee was not ground-breaking but certainly trend-setting. It became a model for wilderness treatment centers. It was considered extremely effective in its basic tenets. The organization bragged of well over an 80% success rate.

Eventually scandals emerged in the 1980s with allegations of Anneewakee's decades long history of forced child labor, sexual abuse and physical abuse. 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 today is a totally new and different organization now known 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. It never closed. Today it operates successfully and is continuing to help children and their families. It is a 501(c)3 private non profit organization. Inner Harbour treated over 850 children and their families in 2008. Inner Harbour is accredited by both Joint Commission on Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)and Southern Association of Colleges & Schools (SACS). It is licensed in Georgia as a Residential Mental Health Facility (RMHF) and a (PRTF) Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Anneewakee survivors website
• Former patients sue Anneewakee 1986 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article