"Absolutely Do Not Send Them There"

Foster kids have few advocates and little agency. That makes them the perfect cash cow for the country's biggest psychiatric hospital chain.

- By Julia Lurie 

THE FIRST TIME Katrina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day.

It was a spring evening in 2012 when Edwards, then 12 years old, was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage—the latest in a series of events that had turned her world upside down. That January, Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services had put her in foster care after she reported being sexually abused, according to court records. Edwards, who has a round face and a quick laugh, found herself living in the home of a woman in her late 50s. When Edwards mentioned thoughts of suicide to her foster mom, she told me recently, she hadn’t meant it literally; she’d meant that she was miserable and wanted someone to sit down and listen to her. Still, the foster mom called OCS, which instructed her to bring the girl to North Star.

Edwards sobbed and yelled in protest as she handed over her cellphone and jewelry and changed into blue scrubs and hospital socks. She refused to sign the admissions paperwork; an OCS caseworker did so instead, according to court documents. Her outburst continued as a staffer ushered her into the unit for adolescent girls.

“If you keep acting like this,” one girl warned her, “you’re gonna get booty juiced.”