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Founded in 1826 as the Philadelphia House of Refuge, the Glen Mills Schools was the nation’s oldest reform school. But the beauty and reputation of Glen Mills was a smokescreen. A Philadelphia Inquirer reporter uncovered that counselors were keeping boys “in line” by violently abusing them. They dropped them on their slammed them to the floor, giving them concussions; they stepped on their faces, breaking their jaws; they threw them through windows and chairs; they choked them until they gasped that they could not breathe.