Rehab ‘abuse’ film based on former KIDS

The drama of Antonio Carrera’s recent suit against the directors of KIDS of North Jersey, a now-defunct drug rehab center in Secaucus, was simultaneously being played out in a premire at an international film festival.

Nick Gaglia, a 24-year-old native of The Bronx and former patient at KIDS, premiered his first feature film, “Over the GW,” Jan. 19 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Slamdance is a side festival to the better-known Sundance Film Festival, featuring mostly documentaries and small independent films.

Loosely based on Gaglia’s time at KIDS, where his sister was also a patient, “Over the GW” details the harrowing experience of a patient in a fictional drug rehab center in North Jersey. Gaglia hopes his film can serve as “entertainment as well as education,” and see the flip side of America’s “war on drugs.”

“The way the system worked, they had to make people lie. Anything you said, they’d make you think it wasn’t good enough,” Gaglia said of the Newtons, who have paid out $15 million in settlement money to former KIDS of North Jersey patients, including Carrera.

Gaglia said one of his goals was to let the general public in on the trials and tribulations of patients at KIDS and other treatment centers.

“One former patient, who I didn’t know, came to one of our earlier screenings, and said that the details were so specific that he felt as if he were back in group,” Gaglia said.

Gaglia was a patient at KIDS during the same span of time as Carrera, who last month agreed to a $3 million settlement with the center’s owners, Virgil Newton Miller III and his wife, Ruth Ann Newton. Carrera’s suit alleged that he was kept at KIDS against his will, undergoing treatment for addictions he did not have.

Gaglia hasn’t filed a suit of his own against them, but said he supports those who do; so far, the Newtons have agreed to more than $15 million in settlements with former patients.