Danielle Bregoli, the 18-year-old viral star turned rapper who goes by Bhad Bhabie, has come forward with allegations of physical and mental abuse at a teen residential facility where she was sent after appearing on Dr. Phil in 2016. In an eight-minute video posted to her YouTube channel on Friday under the hashtag #BreakingCodeSilence, Bregoli shared her support for Hannah Archuleta, a former teen resident of Turn-About Ranch in Escalante, Utah, who is now suing the facility for negligence after alleged sexual assault by a staff member in 2019. Archuleta, like Bregoli, was sent to Turn-About Ranch after appearing on Dr. Phil. Bregoli begins the video by imploring Dr. Phil to issue an apology, “not only to me but to Hannah and any other child that you sent to Turn-About or any other program like this.” Dr. Phil sent Archuleta to Turn-About Ranch after it had been the site of a publicized murder in 2017, while Bregoli was there, which she says was “traumatic” for the young residents.
In the video, Bregoli gives testimony about how she was sent to the ranch by transporters “who come in in the middle of the night. They don’t tell them where they’re going. They just take them, they handcuff them, they put them in the car. It’s basically like kidnapping.” Bregoli says that at the ranch, “they take away necessity privileges, like sleeping on a bed, eating good food, not being cold.” Bregoli says she witnessed kids being forcefully restrained, “which is against the law, you’re not supposed to touch the kids,” and that “if you reported another kid getting bullied by their peers or something, they would just say, ‘well maybe that’s what they need,’ or something like that.” Punishments included being subjected to cold and menial labor. “You’re not even feeding them or letting them sleep in decent conditions. Just doing things that no one would ever want done to their child, and doing it to kids that are so helpless,” says Bregoli. “That’s the thing about these places. You have no evidence. You don’t have a phone there. There’s no cameras there. There’s no evidence.”
Bregoli’s stories echo Paris Hilton’s own experiences at a teen residential facility, as explored in her 2020 documentary This Is Paris. In fact, Archuleta’s attorney Gloria Allred stated that Hilton’s documentary is what inspired Archuleta to speak up. The Turn-About Ranch website has a blog post up from 2010 called “Turn-About Ranch Featured on Dr. Phil,” touting its relationship with the show’s host. After Bregoli’s video went live, Dr. Phil neglected to respond on it, instead spending Friday evening tweeting about Drag Race.
