[Julia] We're spending the day at the biggest Russian base
in Central African Republic.
Wagner has close ties to Putin and his allies.
It's part of Russia's strategy
to spread its influence globally.
speaking French
Who exactly were you surrendering to?
both speaking French
[Julia] Why is that such a sensitive thing
to call these instructors Wagner?
[Seb] Today, there are more mentally ill in jail or prison
than there are in hospitals.
[] They're just put in with general population.
[Seb] Old stereotypes creating new levels of fear.
Involuntary treatment is necessary.
[Seb] You don't think it's time to bring back the asylums?
-No. -[Eileen] I wanna talk to you.
[Eileen] Treat, release, repeat.
It's like being on a rollercoaster.
dramatic music
tense music
[indistinct shouting]
speaking native language
[Julia] The Russian military trainers at this space
are part of the world's most inaccessible
mercenary group, Wagner.
They're mostly ex-military
working for a notorious private military company
which has close ties to Putin and his allies.
Legally, Wagner doesn't even exist.
It's just a network of companies
operating under the radar
which makes them nearly impossible to hold accountable
as they spread Russian influence globally.
They're sent around the world mostly to intervene
on behalf of certain governments
and advance the Kremlin's agenda
while flying under the radar of international law.
Recently, they were reportedly deployed to Ukraine
to take out President Zelensky.
They've had the most success
in the Central African Republic,
where the mercenaries seized on the national military's
chaotic losing battle against rebel groups
to cement Wagner's position
as invaluable on the battlefield
and as advisors to the government.
It's a model they're already trying to replicate
in other countries.
Vitalii is the head of Russian contractors
in the Central African Republic
and the top security advisor to the president.
To keep the focus on their legitimate activity here,
he insisted we call his men simply instructors.
Vitalii agreed to show us their operations
across the country, a rare offer for a group
that's rejected most media coverage.
Why now do you think it's important to show people
what you're doing here?
speaking Russian
[Julia] The Central African Republic has been battered
by a conflict that started as a sectarian war in 2012
and morphed into fractured rebel groups
fighting for resources like diamonds and gold.
Rebels have controlled at least 3/4 of the country
for most of the last decade.
The national military hasn't been able
to regain this territory
even with a 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force
and training from the EU and French military.
[Vitalii] speaking Russian
[translator] speaking native language
[both] speaking native language
[Julia] I saw you speak a bit of Russian yourself.
speaking French
[Julia] speaking French
[Narcisse] speaking French
[Julia] After just a few years on the ground,
Russian presence turned the tide of the war.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Since then, the narrative of Russian success here
helped legitimize Wagner
in the eyes of other governments
dealing with instability.
Now, they're cashing in on conflicts across Africa.
[pilot] speaking native language
In early 2021, an alliance
of CAR's rebel groups circled the Capitol,
threatening to overthrow the government.
The Russians and their national army trainees
were the most visible in pushing rebels back
and in retaking major cities.
Soon after, the secretive mercenaries
started to come out of the shadows.
President Touadéra's administration
deepened diplomatic ties with Russia
and struck the deal for Wagner to operate here.
Five years later, their ranks have quadrupled in size.
Russia has unseated France
as the main international partner,
and Vitalii has the ear of the president.
Given all of the challenges you're facing,
what do you say to countries like France, like the U.S.,
who are critical of your military cooperation agreement
with Russia?
speaking French
So do you think this criticism is unfair, then?
speaking French
What is your own personal relationship,
what's your working relationship like,
with your Russian security advisor?
speaking French
[Julia] Governments working with Wagner
have to be willing to make unsettling trade-offs.
Wagner's success and CAR's stability
has come at a massive human cost.
Nearly everywhere Wagner has gone,
they've been accused of war crimes
ranging from torture, murder, rape,
to disappearing people and looting resources.
With all the allegations of abuse,
Vitalii wanted to show us some of their successes.
speaking French
[Julia] As soon as we arrived here,
the Russian contractors wanted to show us
about 200 guys who they say are ex-rebels
who have recently surrendered
completely voluntarily without a fight.
We're not really sure
what exactly they want us to do next.
These men were recently
Wagner's enemies on the battlefield.
Now, they were being trotted out for us.
We were told to speak to Colonel Kiri,
a former rebel with one of the groups
trying to overthrow the government.
He's now working with the Russians.
speaking native language
[Julia] When you surrendered,
who exactly were you surrendering to?
speaking native language
[soldier] speaking French
-Pardon? -[both] speaking French
Our hosts pulled Colonel Kiri out of the interview
and cut it short after he referred to them as Wagner.
Most of the world knows the group as Wagner,
but it's clearly a label that they're sensitive to.
[Vitalii] speaking French
[Julia] speaking French
[both] speaking French
[Julia] Russia wants to keep the spotlight
on the legitimate part of their activities here,
but it's an open secret that it's Wagner
that's operating in CAR.
[Vitalii] speaking Russian
Why, though, is it so sensitive
to call these instructors Wagner?
speaking Russian
[Julia] But it's not just rumors.
There's evidence they're responsible
for arbitrary arrests,
mass rape, and extrajudicial killing.
We were able to confirm at least 500 incidents
involving Russian contractors and their trainees
in the last year alone.
Many of the abuses they're accused of
take place in areas rich in resources
in part because they reportedly get paid
by the government with access
to the country's vast gold and diamond mines.
In the town of Ndassima, at least 12 people were killed
in just one incident earlier this year.
speaking French
[Julia] Several civilians with accusations
against the Russians told us they don't believe
they'll get justice from the authorities
who are working with the Russians.
We spent weeks in CAR with our Russian contacts.
It was unprecedented
they allowed us access in the first place.
Reporting on Wagner is nearly impossible
and can be deadly.
In 2018,
three Russian journalists were murdered in CAR
in the middle of their own investigation into Wagner.
-[Julia] Really? -[producer] Yep.
They just went in front of us?
Did they look at us?
[Julia] They want us to know
that they know what we're up to.
When we tried to film without them,
we were followed.
We wanted to do an interview with a national army trainee
who said he witnessed Russian soldiers
committing crimes against civilians.
But as soon as we got there,
armed men were waiting to arrest us.
It was ultimately Vitalii himself
who secured our release.
The Russians blame accusations against them on misinformation
and they have their own propaganda machine
pumping out an entirely different narrative.
Vitalii wanted us to see that many local leaders
support their mission in CAR
and took us to a meeting in a central mosque.
[civilian] speaking French
[Vitalii] speaking French
speaking French
[Julia] Most in the meeting were quick
to praise the Russians for bringing stability,
but their reputation for violence
is effective in instilling fear.
No one wanted to confront them except for one lawyer.
speaking French
[Vitalii] speaking French
[Youssouf] speaking French
[Vitalii] speaking French
speaking French
[Julia] Accusations against the group continue to pile up,
but Wagner is still able to keep advancing
Russia's agenda abroad.
The way they operate is intentionally opaque.
It's hard to pin them down
on their strategy or their crimes.
speaking Russian
Every time you get a report, you do a local investigation?
[Vitalii] Of course. Of course.
[Julia] When you've investigated
all of these rumors,
you haven't found one example
where a Russian soldier has behaved badly
towards a civilian?
-Mm-hmm. -[Julia] Not one?
Not one.
speaking Russian
[Julia] But you know.
You've been here long enough to know
that very few people have any faith
in the justice system here.
People hear that when they went to the authorities,
then they got killed for sharing their story.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So you can't just say to people that they should report this.
They're afraid.
speaking French
Yes, but it's difficult to fake a rape test
It's so difficult, but you never know.
But they're telling me they're very scared,
and when you see Russians around, you can understand.
They have masks on.
You guys have big guns.
Like, of course they're afraid of you.
They're scared.
speaking French
[Julia] So few accusations are actually investigated,
and yet Wagner's expansion across the continent
continues unchecked
with new units recently deployed
to Mali, Sudan, even Ukraine.
And despite international condemnation,
desperate governments will keep hiring them.
Why do you think the UN peacekeeping forces here
and the French forces are so critical of your work?
speaking Russian
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solemn music
[Seb] So when's the last time you saw him?
January 4th is the last time I saw him.
He cannot meet his own basic needs.
Food, clothing, shelter.
And when's the last time you talked?
The last time we talked, he denied that he was my son
and he hung up on me.
He's got a false fixed delusion against us
that we are his enemies.
[Seb] Eileen and Jack's son has been hospitalized
four times in the past seven months
for severe mental illness.
He keeps getting discharged
and then breaking into his parents' beach cottage
here in Connecticut.
That's the cottage too.
Oh, my God.
[Eileen] He was sawing up furniture
and burning it in the fireplace.
He's been in that house for roughly two weeks again,
so we don't know what we're gonna find when we go in there.
-I'll follow behind you guys -Are you gonna follow us?
-Okay. -[Jack] Okay.
[Seb] All right.
So this cottage is a place that Jack and Eileen's son
has been coming to since he was a kid.
He keeps going back there
after getting released from hospital,
and this is the first time that they're gonna
have seen him since January.
tense music
Oh, he changed the lock.
[Eileen] He changed the lock? You sure?
[Jack] I'm gonna see if I can open it.
Oh, my goodness.
Look at this room!
-[Eileen] Oh, wow. -[Jack] The bed is up here.
[Eileen] Listen to me.
We haven't seen you in two months.
I wanna talk to you.
[Jack] Look at this!
[Eileen sighs]
[Jack] I mean, we have-- we gotta stop this.
This is just--
[Seb] The level of stress,
I mean, how much does it occupy your--
your lives right now?
It's like--it's like being on a roller coaster.
You know, you'd be up thinking, like,
"Oh, it's gonna work this time.
"This is a really good hospitalization.
Everybody's looking like they're really gonna help him,"
and then somebody discharges him,
and then it's like-- [whistles]
Right down, right back to square one again.
Why aren't they able to hold them
at the hospital for longer?
Why does he get discharged?
[Eileen] According to Connecticut state law,
he was no longer exhibiting symptoms of psychosis,
so we had to discharge him.
And it's just a cycle.
Treat, release, repeat.
It just keeps going on and on and on.
[Seb] Today, there are 10 million people
with mental illness in the U.S.
A large number are in an endless loop
of homelessness or jail,
and many of the public resources
that are available for free
have been diverted to another crisis.
The pandemic has created a shortage of beds
and other services and pushed the mentally ill
onto the streets in staggering numbers.
[Yvannie] Do you have a mental health diagnosis?
What is it?
[Yvannie] Manic depression and bipolar disorder.
Okay.
[Seb] Some don't even want help,
and with this population
more visible than ever in major urban centers,
public concern is on the rise,
exacerbated by isolated incidents of violence.
[journalist] 61-year-old Martial Simon killed Go
when he shoved her into the path
of an oncoming train.
[Seb] The New York subway pushing
of Michelle Go in January is a case in point.
Her killer suffered from schizophrenia
and had been discharged from hospitals
at least 20 times.
Even more recently, this mass shooting
on a Brooklyn subway platform.
The man behind it had openly posted
about his declining mental health,
blaming systemic failures for worsening his condition.
With every incident,
the media coverage raises the same question.
Why weren't these people committed
to a mental institution years ago?
What goes through your mind when you read about incidents
like what happened to Michelle Go on the subway?
[Harvey] I'm devastated.
What worries me is the quick moves to lock 'em up,
round 'em up.
[Seb] Harvey Rosenthal is a patients' rights advocate
and in recovery from mental illness himself.
He thinks unless someone poses a risk,
they should be free to choose their own path to recovery,
utilizing services that exist in the community,
like this Manhattan drop-in center,
and that calls to bring back a system
of state-funded psychiatric institutions
where the mentally ill could be sent
for long-term involuntary care
are both unhelpful and unethical.
We can recover.
We should have rights.
We should live in the community.
This move towards coercion is a pure excuse
for not having the right services.
You don't think it's time to bring back the asylums?
No.
[Seb] 50 years ago,
the mentally ill were locked up.
Psychiatric treatment took place
mostly in long-term,
purpose-built facilities like this.
Kings Park Psychiatry Center is now abandoned,
and today, it looks pretty scary,
but it was one of a network of state hospitals
built in the 1800s
to house and therapeutically treat
those with mental illness.
But asylums became infamous for overcrowding,
inhumane conditions, and forced medical treatments
on people who were often held without their consent.
These abuses combined with advances in drug treatments
and changes in federal funding led to a movement
known as deinstitutionalization.
Between 1955 and 2016,
the number of public hospital beds
dropped by 97%,
meaning those unable to afford private care
were mostly left to fend for themselves.
You think deinstitutionalization
was a mistake?
No.
I think it was well-intended,
but we needed to have a plan B in place,
and there really wasn't a plan B in place.
[Seb] Dominic Sisti is a professor
in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2016, he penned an academic paper
arguing that America's mental health crisis
could be fixed by bringing back asylums,
coercive treatment and all.
Getting arrested, being discharged from hospital,
that that's something that just repeats and repeats
without any kind of solution.
[Dominic] Treating and streeting.
That's what the psychiatrists call it.
You treat, you stabilize a person in crisis,
and you try to find them a place to go.
No place to go.
When you look around, you see the most
vulnerable people happen to be people
with serious mental illness.
They belong in a hospital setting,
in a therapeutic setting where they can potentially get better
and move on with their lives.
There's an argument that if you engage with them
on a voluntary basis,
the recovery is possible for anybody without coercion.
I mean, I think that's largely true,
but I do think there's gonna be a subset of people
who really need,
frankly, to be coaxed into treatment,
coerced into treatment.
And for those that say we already have
these community services
to deal with the problem as needed,
what's your response to that?
Visit a jail.
[Seb] Across the country, jails have become
the de facto modern replacement for asylums.
Today, people with severe mental illnesses
are ten times more likely to be in a jail or prison
than in a hospital bed.
In fact, nearly half of the people in jail
right now nationwide are people with mental illness.
[Steve] Do you mind coming forward?
Have you ever been treated
for any kind of mental health issue?
[Seb] Miami Dade County Judge Steve Leifman
has figured out a different approach:
a multi-part program focused on keeping
the mentally ill out of jail.
Once arrested, individuals are assessed for mental illness
and removed from general population if they qualify.
Then, rather than treating and streeting,
they can agree to complete a community-based care program
in exchange for getting the charges dropped.
It's not complicated.
You have two choices.
You can release people with treatment
or without treatment, and we know what happens
when you release them without treatment.
[Seb] For the last 20 years, the county's program has had
a dramatic impact on how those with mental illness
are cycled through the criminal justice system.
It's resulted in nearly 40% fewer inmates
and savings of nearly $40 million
from reduced recidivism.
The county even closed one of its jails.
I mean, obviously, it's had some big wins here.
We've been successful with about 70% to 80%
of the people that have come into our program,
but the 20% to 30% left
are really the highest utilizers
of both criminal justice and mental health services.
We had a study conducted
by the University of South Florida in Tampa.
We sent them the names of 3,300 people
who had been arrested and had come through our program.
We said, tell us who the highest utilizers are
in that group.
There's one piece of paper.
And on this one piece of paper are the names of 97 people.
97 people over five years were arrested 2,200 times,
they spent 27,000 days in the Dade County jail,
and it cost taxpayers in today's dollars
$17 million.
-Just 97 people. -[Steve] 97 people.
And every community in the United States
has those 97.
I mean, there's no place for those people
to go right now, right?
Nothing and that's why this building is so important.
[Seb] Paid for partly with the savings
from keeping people out of jail,
the county now has a solution:
a dedicated, publicly funded facility
for the mentally ill offering a range of services
and more than 200 beds.
[Steve] So I'm gonna give you a full tour of the building.
It's a one-stop-shop and has all the essential elements
of recovery in one location.
These are nursing and doctors' stations,
and there's medical offices all along here for exams.
We're gonna have a program that teaches self-sufficiency,
and it's run by people with mental illnesses,
and that's gonna be in this room.
[Seb] The idea is to rehabilitate.
There are classrooms, job training,
even a culinary program.
Services designed to draw people back into society
even if they're not convinced they want to be there.
[Steve] If they're a high user and they're cycling
through this deep end again and again and again,
they get to stay, and they can stay
if they're either voluntary or involuntary.
The vast majority will be involuntary.
[Seb] A taxpayer-funded secure facility
where the mentally ill can be sent
to get specialized care with or without their consent.
Sound familiar?
[Steve] Yeah, it's an in-between
of what we have now and what used to be.
What if they don't wanna have that kind of treatment?
Where do you stand on involuntary care?
Yeah.
I think involuntary treatment is necessary.
To me, there's nothing civil or right
about a man or woman living under a dumpster
and eating garbage and thinking
that God is telling them to live that way.
You are condemning them to a life of hell
by not getting them treatment at times.
[Seb] What would meaningful recovery
look like for your son?
[Eileen] I think it would take some long-term treatment.
-Involuntary treatment, then? -Yes, definitely.
'Cause he doesn't think he needs it.
I would compare it to someone who's got Alzheimer's
who doesn't know they have Alzheimer's.
Do they let them live by themselves
to set the house on fire?
No, they have someone looking over them.
Well, he needs someone looking over him too.
We just wanna help him.
We wanna give him back his life,
not take his life away.
dramatic music