Cenikor rises from the ashes, thanks to an inventor of NFL football pads, the war on drugs and the endorsement of an American president.
Shoshana Walter
Senior reporter and producer
Shoshana Walter was a senior reporter and producer at Reveal, covering the criminal justice and child welfare systems. She's working on a book for Simon & Schuster about the failures of our country's addiction treatment system. At Reveal, she reported on exploitative drug rehab programs that require participants to work without pay, armed security guards, and sex abuse and trafficking in the marijuana industry. Her reporting has prompted new laws, numerous class-action lawsuits and government investigations. Her stories have been named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Selden Ring and National Magazine Awards. She has also been honored with the Livingston Award for National Reporting, the IRE medal, the Edward R. Murrow award, the Knight Award for Public Service, a Loeb Award and Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting. Her Reveal podcast, "American Rehab," was named one of the best podcasts of the year by The New Yorker and The Atlantic and prompted a congressional investigation.
Walter began her career as a police reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida, and previously covered violent crime and the politics of policing in Oakland, California, for The Bay Citizen. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has been a Dart Center Ochberg fellow for journalism and trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in criminal justice journalism. She is a fellow with the Watchdog Writers Group at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is based in Oakland, California.
American Rehab Chapter 4: Cowboy Conman
He’s a liar, a killer and a wannabe country singer. Luke Austin creates Cenikor in the image of a cult. But graft and violence nearly destroy it.
American Rehab Chapter 3: A Venomous Snake
After building a small fortune, Synanon’s megalomaniac leader turns the revolutionary rehab into a violent cult.
The work cure
At 300 rehabs across the country, the main form of addiction treatment is work. And the participants rarely get paid.
At hundreds of rehabs, recovery means work without pay
Despite deadly injuries and multiple investigations into illegal labor practices, work-based rehabs are an American growth industry.
American Rehab Chapter 2: Miracle on the Beach
Reveal’s American Rehab exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce.
American Rehab Chapter 1: A Desperate Call
Penny Rawlings is relieved to finally get her brother into rehab at a place called Cenikor. She doesn’t realize that getting him out of treatment is going to be the bigger problem.
Listen to American Rehab, a podcast series from Reveal
Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid, shadow workforce.
Drug rehab ‘skirted compliance with the labor laws’ for financial gain, judge rules
A top Arkansas senator used unpaid rehab workers at his plastics factory. Now, participants have been awarded more than $1.1 million in back wages.
Drug rehab shutters amid coronavirus outbreak, sending residents scrambling
At a Cenikor drug rehab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, residents were given two days to find a place to live. Some became homeless.