Laine was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1981 and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Summers spent in the South with her grandmother, a ceramicist, and her aunt, a painter, nurtured her early love for art and making. At age 11, she began formal life drawing classes at the Portland Art Museum and later continued studying on her own using a treasured, inherited correspondence course from the Art Instruction School. Both experiences were unexpectedly cut short during her early teens.
At 14, Laine’s life took a stark turn when she was taken—without warning or consent—to North Idaho, where she spent her formative years in CEDU, a network of group homes and wilderness programs rooted in Synanon, a cult known for its harsh behavioral modification tactics. The program imposed extreme restrictions on autonomy, education, and personal identity, using pseudopsychology and ritualized control to reshape children's behavior and beliefs. Laine’s sense of self was dismantled and redefined in this isolating environment—an experience that continues to inform her work, where she explores the evolving nature of identity, the hidden inner worlds we create to survive, and the deep connection between memory, place, and transformation.
Returning to Portland at eighteen, Laine studied life drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art before transferring to Pratt Institute in New York. She earned her BFA in painting from Pratt in 2003, with additional study in sculpture and painting in Lucca, Italy, supported by a Gilman travel grant, where she learned traditional paint-making and became enamored with the sculptural qualities of paint.
Laine is a San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award Finalist and recipient of both a Community Foundation Sonoma Award and Chalk Hill Residency Fellowship. Her paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Sonoma Valley Museum and Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is held in permanent collections at The Oliver Ranch and Denver Health Medical Center, and has been featured in major publications including House Beautiful, Luxe Magazine, Sonoma Magazine, and San Francisco Magazine.
Living with multiple chronic conditions including Lupus, ME/CFS, and POTS, Laine’s studio practice focuses on working within disability. She creates a limited series of oil paintings and commissions every one to two years, alongside water based works in the form of scrolls, artist books, textiles, and works on paper.
Laine lives and works in Northern California with her husband, son, and their pug, Bernie, surrounded by the landscapes that continue to inspire her ever-evolving artistic vision.
What is the TTI and the #ISeeYouSurvivor movement?
I am a survivor of the Troubled Teen -or- Teen Treatment Industry (TTI).
This means I am also a survivor of ritual, institutional, physical, and sexual child abuse, kidnapping, benefits and labor trafficking, involuntary incarceration, medical neglect, moral injury, and thought reform/brainwashing. My advocacy work focuses on telling my story, raising awareness about institutional child abuse within congregate care, promoting community based care, and aiding in the passage of legislation that protects youth.
It doesn’t matter that the program that held me is closed due to lawsuits for RICO, neglect, abuse, and fraud. Hundreds have emerged in its place, many employing the same people who abused me, who unfortunately remain free to work with children. There are no regulations that prevent someone who was fired, accused, issued a citation, or investigated for abusing a child at a private facility, from being employed in the same role, in a different facility or state. States also fail to enforce their own laws: it’s common for social services or child welfare to issue citations, only for that state’s legal apparatus not to enforce the law, investigate, or close the program down. TTI facilities are extremely profitable, often supporting an entire towns economy, particularly in Utah, Montana, and North Idaho.
Once in this system not only do kids find nothing but abuse, but they also become victims of benefit and labor trafficking. Designed to hold children as long as possible for profit, this can and often does include extended custody past the age of 18. Children become inventory items tied to state IEP/IDEA dollars, foster dollars, and health insurance benefit dollars, even though they receive little to no legitimate medical care or specialized education based on their disability. These children are relied upon to provide the labor to operate their own incarceration, which can include building their own housing in unsafe environments, being put to work on a working ranch with out pay, sent out to solicit for donations, or being put in a ‘junior staff’ role where they are responsible for enforcing both physical and emotional abuse, on other children.
There are currently hundreds of thousands of children institutionalized in the TTI. Most people are not aware that children in congregate care systems, have less rights than an adult convicted of a crime like child abuse. The rights we assume we have, wether it be the right to a phone call, access to law enforcement or legal help, medical care, or even the ability to talk, sing, smile, or be touched are all things that these children are put in the impossible position of having to earn or never receive.
It’s important to note that most youth sent into the TTI are far from troubled. These vulnerable children are sent away for a myriad of reasons. Disabled, neurodivergent, foster kids with no placement, depressed / having attempted suicide, kids with high achieving parents who are aren’t satisfied with their kids B+, children of blended families with a step parent who prefers no preexisting children, LGBTQIA+ children sent away for conversion, adoptees, the list goes on. They are not the only victims, the TTI destroys families. Siblings are torn apart and unable to communicate for multiple years at a time. Parents are victimized, particularly when they turn to professional educational consultants, believing they are buying the best treatment available for their special needs child. Hard earned college funds that will never be replaced, get depleted to pay for what the parent’s are told is a school, only to find out later that their child was abused and didn’t even get a high school education. Educational consultants receive kick backs for each child they refer, giving them a gross financial incentive to send children into the TTI.
Some children never make it out. Daniel Yuen, Blake Pursley, and John Inman vanished from CEDU as children and remain missing. Placed in the TTI as a ward of the state, Cornelius Fredericks was 16 when he threw a sandwhich in a cafeteria. For this age-appropriate behavior, he was tackled and restrained for 12 minutes, resulting in his death. Of the children that are fortunate enough to make it out of this system, there is an epidemic of CPTSD, physical disability, and suicide.
Inspired by the courage of fellow survivors in the #ISeeYouSurvivor movements, I shared my testimonial with #IGotOut.org about my time at CEDU Rocky Mountain Academy, Ascent, and the process of being kidnapped by transport agents. Thousands of survivors have bravely come forward to share their experiences in support of the The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act (SICAA), which has finally been passed into law. While the SICCA act is a step forward, it is far from sufficient. Children will continue to suffer.
To read more testimonials or to learn about the survivor led movement seeking the exposure of injustice and legislative reform, visit Unsilenced.org. HBO’s new series, Teen Torture Inc, is a great resource for insight into the history of the Teen Treatment Industry, as is Netflix’s The Program. The Sunshine Place by Susan and Robert Downey Jr, and The Lost Kids by USG Audio are podcasts about what life was like for kids at Synanon/CEDU. Dead, Insane, or In Jail and Overwritten, both by Zack Bonnie, are poignant memoirs about CEDU Rocky Mountain Academy.
#Unsilenced #ISeeYouSurvivor #UnitedWithOneVoice #KidsOverProfit #LetsTalkAboutIt #ThinkOfUs #IGotOut