Amy julia Harris

Recovery Connections Community in North Carolina is one of many drug rehabs nationwide that put their clients to work in private businesses, and keep their wages.

The sexual harassment allegations are the latest disclosure in an ongoing Reveal investigation into exploitative rehab programs across the country.

“It’s like slavery,” said one rehab participant, “like we were on the plantation.”

We found that the program required defendants to sign up for food stamps and then confiscated the cards.

A judge started his own rehab where defendants must work at a bottling plant and other companies, under threat of prison if they don’t comply.

Rehabilitation centers put men to work for free in chicken processing plants and a plastic manufacturer, under threat of prison.

Men in the program work for free, under constant threat of being sent to prison, on products for big-name brands, including Popeyes, KFC and Walmart.

“A more religiously coercive environment is scarcely imaginable,” says the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Judges across the country had ordered defendants into rehab programs that double as work camps for for-profit companies.

We found a slew of rehab programs that supply cheap and captive workers to major poultry companies, such as Tyson Foods and Simmons Foods.