Inside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse

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THE GREAT DIVIDE Inside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse

As a Boston high school sophomore, Keondre McClay said he was pressured by the head of a district-sponsored youth advocacy program to attend an overnight retreat in Newton, where white adults asked the Black teenager to wrestle out his emotions on a gym mat with them. They said it would help him purge his trauma from experiencing racism. The retreat was part of an unorthodox brand of group therapy that program leader Jenny Sazama introduced to the Boston Student Advisory Council, a prestigious student government group that advises the superintendent and School Committee on education policy. In a report released by the school department Monday, an independent investigator wrote that students described the “Re-Evaluation Counseling” sessions as “weird, uncomfortable, and cult-like.” But the report barely scratched the surface of students’ experiences. Read the full story.