A woman who says she was 'kidnapped' and taken to a wilderness therapy programme as a teen has labelled them "exploitative" and "harmful"."

Kennedy Trainor, 16 at the time, claims she was taken from her bed against her will by two men she didn't know.

She says she was then transported thousands of miles across the US to take part in the program.

The teen had started to neglect her homework after her parent's divorce and had become rebellious, she said.

She spent the next nine weeks with other 'troubled' teenage girls hiking in the gruelling Utah desert heat, over 2,000 miles from her home.

But she has now hit out at their treatment and says she was only given one bottle of water a day, made to sleep on the floor and denied a hot meal unless they could start their own fire.

Kennedy, now 23, an office manager from Connecticut, US, said: "They have a list of things they claim to treat and the goal is to make any 'troubled teen' easier to parent. "

"They try to tell the parents that if you don't send your kids here, they'll end up dead or in jail."

"We weren't allowed to know our release dates and if they thought that you weren't making progress, they'd keep you longer."

"Not every single person who works at these types of programmes has an exploitative mindset, but they are systemically run that way. "

"They think they are doing what's best for kids but it's more harmful than helpful."

Kennedy says she struggled with depression and anxiety and stopped caring after her parents' divorce and adopted a "rebellious lifestyle"."

Just days before being taken away, she had a "huge" argument with her mum and ran away from home with a friend."

She said: "I was home for one day, thinking that I'm going to a mental hospital following day."

"But that night two strangers walked into my room at 4am in the morning and said 'you can come the easy way or the hard way.'"

"I still had make-up from the night before and pyjamas on. "

"They said I had to come with them right now and they linked arms with me. "

"They said if I complied, they'll make sure I'll be able to go back home sooner. "

"We got in the car and I'm child-locked in the backseat and they kept saying I was so easy and calm and then started laughing about previous people who'd put up more of a fight."

Kennedy says she was taken to JFK Airport in New York City where she boarded a flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, she said.

She claims she was driven five hours south across the border to northern Arizona and told to remove her clothes to see if she had anything dangerous, before being taken back across the border and dropped in the Utah desert with a survival pack.

Kennedy says she and five other girls were told they'd spend the next nine weeks hiking with wilderness staff and speaking with a therapist once a week.

She said: "To me, none of this therapy was helpful or of note."

"It wasn't easy hiking. One time when we got lost, we had started before sunrise and were hiking well into the night. Over 12 hours. It was horrible."

"If we refused to do these hikes, they just wouldn't give us water and if we didn't hike, they would double whatever the previous hike was that we refused to do and move the water even further."

"When we got there we'd set up our sleeping bags on the ground and try to create a fire. "

"Only one girl in the group was strong enough to do it, but she couldn't do it every time, meaning we couldn't always have a hot meal."

Kennedy claims the extreme surroundings meant many of the girls fell ill and weren't taken to hospital promptly.

She said: "A lot of girls are sent with eating disorders and underweight. There was a 13-year-old girl there carrying all this strenuous stuff. "

"This one girl couldn't keep any food down and was vomiting every single day for six weeks. "

"This other girl couldn't use the bathroom for four or five weeks and finally after being in so much pain they brought her to the hospital where she had to have her digestive tract flushed out. "

"It strips you of any individuality. We couldn't talk about anything unless the therapist was there."

"We couldn't use bug spray and we were bleeding with open sores."

After finally being allowed to leave the camp, Kennedy says her relationship with her mum was "really bad" and they didn't talk for months. "

Kennedy says she feels "robbed" of a high school experience and felt "compelled" to share her story after suffering nightmares."

She added: "I get comments a lot from people planning to send their kids there but changed their mind."

"Knowing that I've made a difference, that makes it so worth it to me."

Kennedy's mum, who asked not to be named, says she regrets sending her to wilderness therapy with "every fibre of her being" after believing it was a "better solution" than getting the police involved."

She added: "I regret sending Kennedy to wilderness with every fibre of my being. I wish I could go back in time and make a different decision."

A spokesperson for the programme said: "[The] nature-based therapy program is founded on love, respect and a deep desire to help children and families heal. "

"While we acknowledge there may be individuals who feel the program did not help,"
there are hundreds of individuals who credit our safe, clinically proven therapeutic model for guiding them to discover for themselves the inner motivation that is required for sustainable change.

"Their stories of hope and healing remind us that what we do [...] is life changing and, in many instances, life-saving."