IN Teen Challenge Faces Lawsuit for Trafficking and Forced Labor
Published May 21, 2026
According to the plaintiffs, “from the moment they arrived, [they] were abused, neglected, humiliated, physically assaulted, spiritually coerced, given simplistic and largely meaningless ‘workbooks’ in the guise of education, and forced to perform a variety of physically hard, dangerous, and even bizarre and cruel unpaid labor.”
Haven Murdock, who is now 28, said she was a 13-year-old struggling with an eating disorder, self-harm, and suicidal ideation when her parents took her to Central Indiana Teen Challenge.
She told WRTV the program “added severely” to her mental health issues.
Murdock said she had limited contact with her family, and that if she tried to tell her family about how she was being treated, she would be punished.
One of her worst memories is of the isolation room.
“You’re just supposed to sit there in this empty room as they watch you on a camera and watch you do nothing but stare at the wall,” Murdock told WRTV. “The longest I was in there was a month. It was horrible. It was humiliating.”
Nine young women claim they were victims of “systemic abuse, neglect, trafficking, exploitation, and forced labor,” according to a federal lawsuit they filed last month against Central Indiana Teen Challenge, now operating as the Refuge Girls Academy.
The girls claim the abuse occurred between 2012 and 2017 while they were minor residents of the therapeutic recovery program.
