Mitt Romney: A Voice of Freedom and Hope? Not for America’s So-Called “Troubled” Youth

Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mitt Romney’s Deep Connections to the Troubled Teen Industry

Mitt Romney’s biography describes him as a well-educated businessman, skilled economic adviser, and typical family man.  He is quoted as stating, “I refuse to believe that America is just another place on the map with a flag.  We stand for freedom and opportunity and hope.” [1] 

His biography references his involvement in the formation and operation of Bain Capital in 1984, an investment company that purchases and rebuilds otherwise failing enterprises.  What the biography fails to include is that some of these enterprises – including CRC Health Group and Aspen Education Group – have directly profited off of the abuse and imprisonment of American youth.

The connection does not stop there.

Mitt Romney is linked to the troubled teen industry in more ways than perhaps any other candidate running for office.  Outside of directly owning some of the most notoriously abusive programs he has also employed a litany of financiers who have made their living off of what can only be described as the antithesis of Mitt’s political slogan; enslavement, restriction, and hopelessness.

Bain Capital, CRC Health Group, and Aspen Education

In 2006, Bain Capital acquired CRC Health Group.  The $720 billion dollar deal was the most expensive acquisition of its kind and helped to position Bain Capital at the forefront of the addiction treatment playing field. (2)

Bain Capital spent an additional $290 million in 2006 to acquire Aspen Education Group, a network of private, for-profit adolescent treatment facilities. [3]  Aspen Education Group is largely considered one of the top players in the adolescent behavioral health field.  Their network of programs include behavior modification facilities, residential treatment centers, wilderness therapy programs, therapeutic boarding schools, and long-term residential weight loss centers for children and young adults.  Their target clients are middle to upper class American families who are looking for substantial changes from their children and are willing to spend anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands monthly to achieve the desired results.

As Bain Capital gained entry into the adolescent behavior modification field, private therapeutic schools and wilderness therapy programs had become a booming industry with estimated profits exceeding $2 billion in 2007.  [3]  More and more private companies were seeking to gain access to the profitable field and Bain Capital, armed with its newest acquisition CRC Health Group, was one of them.  Upon acquiring Aspen Education Group, Bain quickly merged the two companies together and Aspen became the adolescent division of CRC.  The powerhouse created would persist until this day.

Aspen Education Group describes itself as being, “recognized nationwide as the leading provider of education programs for struggling or underachieving young people.”  [4]  While Aspen programs may be recognized as “leading” in their industry, their network of facilities has also been one of the most notorious in regards to allegations of abuse, neglect, and negligent homicide.

Family Light, an IECA certified group of educational consultants responsible for referring children to private facilities posted an open letter to Aspen Education Group stating that they now only recommend referring to or enrolling in any Aspen or CRC program with “great caution.”  Their list of complaints include Bain Capital’s overarching interest in profits over patients, deceptive marketing practices by Aspen Education Group, one-size-fits-all treatment methods and the use of counterproductive, harsh, and punitive therapeutic methods across the facilities overall. [5]

Mount Bachelor Academy in Rural Oregon where DHS alleges Students Suffered Abuse

Mt. Bachelor Academy, Aspen Education’s flagship program, was closed following substantiated claims of abuse by the Oregon Department of Human Services on November 3rd, 2009.   At least 17 former students have filed a lawsuit seeking $25.5 million in compensatory damages.  [6]  Students suing for sexual and emotional abuse have asserted that as part of the program’s Lifestep seminars children – some of whom were victims of prior rape or incest – were forced to dress in provocative clothing including fishnet stockings, high heels and miniskirts in order to provide lap-dances for fellow male students.  [27]  The experiential therapy was designed to help them to overcome their pasts and take ownership for the actions that had led them to being abused.

Mt. Bachelor Academy offered behavior modification therapy based on a method developed within the Synanon model, a self-help group that was largely considered to be a cult by the late 1970’s.  The teenage version of Synanon’s controversial “game” – an attack-based therapy – was developed at Mel Wasserman’s CEDU school in Southern California.  Practices developed in both Synanon and CEDU were at one time considered to be ground-breaking and effective in behavior modification however their harsh methods and unconventional tactics had become highly criticized in later years.  Both programs are no longer in operation however methods developed within the facilities continue to be utilized in behavior modification centers across the United States and abroad. [7]

Synanon Members Had Shaved Heads, Lived Communally

The Oregon Department of Human Services complaint against Aspen’s Mount Bachelor Academy, which eventually led to its closure, found that the school used methods that were “punitive, humiliating, degrading, and traumatizing.” Children housed at the facility – ranging in age from 13 to 17.5 – were found to have been forced to re-enact past physical and sexual abuse in front of peers, to refer to themselves with derogatory phrases, to allow staff and peers to name-call and ridicule in humiliating manners, and were deprived of sleep. [7]  The pending lawsuit against Mt. Bachelor Academy substantiates these claims, asserting that students who attended the school were regularly subjected to psychological abuse and shaming, endured severe isolation and deprivation of basic necessities including food, water, shelter, and medical care, were subjected to harsh labor punishments and were only offered brief, monitored contact with parents and guardians.  Before being allowed contact with their families, family members were warned not to believe any claims of abuse by the children, insinuating that all troubled children are inherently liars and all claims of mistreatment were simply “manipulation.” [8]

Youth Care of Utah, another Aspen Education facility, was placed on a brief probation following the death of 14-year old Brendan Blum in 2007.

Brendan died of an untreated bowel obstruction.  His bowel had twisted leading to a cut-off of blood to his small intestine.  The death was extremely painful and violent.

Despite persistent vomiting, diarrhea and loss of bowel control the counselors on duty at the time of Brendan’s illness – Deborah Cole and Jorge Ramirez – gave him over-the-counter medication and placed him in a separate room away from the other students.  The on-call nurse was never contacted.

The special-needs child who suffered from Asperger’s syndrome was found dead on his mattress the following morning.

The two staff members were fired and charged with felony child abuse, though neither was convicted.  While Aspen Education Group took no public responsibility for Brendan’s death, autopsy reports determined that if proper medical attention had been given he would have survived. [9]

Also in 2007, an unnamed 16-year old male died after hanging himself with a shoelace at Aspen Achievement Academy after asking to use the latrine.   The wilderness facility which treated children ages 13 to 17 suffering from moderate to severe emotional and behavioral problems [10] did not find the youth until after he was already unconscious.   Though briefly revived the child died during a helicopter transport to the hospital. [9]  The young man’s death was not the first controversy to affect the Academy.  In the late 1990’s several youth staged an elaborate and violent runaway prompting the Utah Bureau of Land Management to reconsider the use of State lands for the wilderness facility.  [11]

Aspen Achievement Academy has been merged with another wilderness facility in Lehi, Utah and is still in operation today. [10]

On August 28th, 2009 16-year old Sergey Blashchishen collapsed and died on his first day at Aspen Education’s SageWalk Wilderness Expeditions program.

The day prior, Sergey was awoken in the early morning hours and forcibly removed from his home, blindfolded and transported to the remote Oregon facility.  His parents, along with SageWalk, had contracted the use of a “transport” company – an enterprise designed to legally kidnap unwilling children from their homes and escort them to the facility of their parent’s choosing.

Sergey’s death was likely a slow and painful demise.

SageWalk records can only account for a mere 400 calories being consumed by the teenager before embarking on his wilderness hike.  He carried a backpack weighing anywhere from 40-50lbs.  There was little shade and Sergey was never made aware of the length of his hike or the terrain he would experience throughout it.

Staff recollected Sergey walking strangely, carrying his backpack in a different manner, and not resting properly.  Aspen’s staff members assert that they did not push the youth to continue however they did not intervene when other students encouraged him to push forward.

As the hike continued, Sergey fell multiple times and eventually vomited.  Though staff called the main office to report his illness, the hike continued as planned.  Eventually, Sergey collapsed to the ground in the blaring sun while the rest of the students and staff prepared lunch.  He denied offers of food and began flailing his arms and shouting in another language.

In less than half an hour he began to hyperventilate and eventually stopped breathing.

It took nearly an hour before a helicopter arrived at their remote location.  By that time, the youth was dead.

Five hours after he stopped breathing, the medical examiner noted that his body was warmer than his own, comparing the feeling of Sergey’s skin to someone who had just stepped out of a hot shower. [12]

Investigators called the school reckless in Sergey’s death, eventually requesting that homicide charges be filed.  As of the writing of this article, no criminal charges have been brought against those involved in the youth’s death.  16-year old Sergey Blashchishen died as the result of a combination of poor nutrition, heat stroke, and improper staff medical response.  Though SageWalk was ordered by the Oregon Department of Human services to send all students home two weeks following Sergey’s death no one from the program or Aspen Education group has faced trial. [12]

Claiming that its population is by nature “sick and troubled” CRC Health Group has also denied allegations that it is responsible for deaths in its Tennessee facility New Life Lodge. [13]  The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services froze admissions at New Life Lodge for children in state care in August 2011 along with several other managed care providers. [14]   Medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuits have plagued the Southern facility.  Though closed in March 2012, the facility is set to reopen this April – though now only accepting adult patients.  It is estimated that the facility lost over $10 million in revenue when State-funded groups stopped referring patients to their care. [14]

Bain Capital and Bain & Co – the parent company of both CRC Health Group and Aspen Education Group – have contributed a combined total of $267,300 to Mitt Romney’s 2012 election run. [15]  Though Mitt Romney publicly left Bain Capital in 1999, his retirement package has allowed him to earn more following his leave than gained during his tenure.  In 2011, Romney reported between $1.5 million and $9.3 million in income gained from Bain’s investments.  An additional $10 million has been set aside from Bain income in 2011 for his wife, Ann.  Due to reporting laws, the amount could be considerably more as he is only required to report the minimum income obtained. [16]

Protesters seen out side the IECA conference hotel in Toronto (Photo credit: foot fingers)

Robert Lichfield, Utah Finance Co-Chair and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs

The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) was born in the late 1990’s in the predominantly Mormon and loosely regulated State of Utah.

Robert Browning Lichfield got his start working at the Provo Canyon School in Provo, Utah in 1977 before formally founding WWASP in 1998.  Though he had no college degree or relevant training in education or child psychology Lichfield was entrusted to lead young boys at the controversial behavior modification center. [17]  His experience at the school – along with his strong Mormon faith – encouraged him to begin working with troubled teens and forming his own schools based on what he had learned while working for Provo Canyon.

Robert Browning Lichfield, Founder of WWASP and Former Utah Finance Co-Chair for Mitt Romney

By the early 2000’s WWASP had become an extremely profitable enterprise with 25 programs operating under its umbrella operation.  At its peak WWASP was responsible for the operation of programs in the United States, Mexico, Jamaica, Samoa, the Czech Republic and Costa Rica.  The private, for-profit enterprise charged tens-of-thousands annually in tuition and accepted students with any range of emotional or behavior issues.  No court orders or evaluations were necessary for children to be held against their will in WWASP programs.

Current lawsuits against WWASP allege that children it its care were forced to eat their own vomit, endure extreme physical beatings, be bound and tied by their hands and feet, endure hours or days locked in dog cages under the blaring Mexican sun, sleep on concrete or plywood beds, assume painful “restraint” positions for extended periods of time, live in unsanitary conditions, be restricted from access to proper food, water or medical care, experience verbal and emotional abuse, endure pepper spray as punishment, experience sleep deprivation, undergo mind-altering seminars, experience near to total isolation from society and family and undergo unnecessary strip-searches and sexual abuse. [20] [21]

Primitive Housing in WWASP's Samoa Facility

WWASP publicly claims to be an affiliation of independently owned programs however closer scrutiny has found that all WWASP facilities – including affiliated operations responsible for billing and referrals – were owned by the same individuals, their family members, or close friends. Many were incorporated under the same street address. [18]

WWASP operated strict behavior modification facilities.

Children within its facilities progressed through six different levels with each advancement granting them new privileges and freedoms.  On the first level children were not allowed to speak, move, cross through a doorway or use the bathroom without staff permission.  Conversation between students on levels one and two was forbidden at all times.  New program attendees could only speak to those level three or above – most of whom had been in the facility for at least three to six months and were well indoctrinated in the program’s methodology.  Contact with parents and families was limited to mail communication for several months.  Mail was censored and parents were warned to disbelieve any claims of ill-treatment noting that the children were “manipulative” and prone to lying in the hopes of being removed from the facility.  Brief monitored phone calls were allowed only after the child had reached the appropriate level and face-to-face visits were prohibited until both parent and child had completed a series of multi-day experiential seminars.  [28]

Loosely based on EST and Lifespring, WWASP’s seminars were confrontational and unconventional.  Accountability – a primary focus of all seminars – was based on the motto that, “Based on Your Results, You Have Exactly What You Intended.”  In the seminars, “right” and “wrong” were considered to be the equivalent of swear words.  All actions were either “working” or “non-working.”  Any negative experiences – including rape, incest, physical abuse, or traumatic events – were considered to be the result of a series of non-working choices.  In order to successfully complete the seminars, students had to rid themselves of their prior “images” and take responsibility for their choices that had not only led to past traumas but also had led to their placement in the program.

Two Primary Seminar Slogans - Participant Handouts

While the seminars were optional for parents of program attendees, they were mandatory for students enrolled in any of WWASP’s facilities.  The seminars touted the belief that a “magical child” lived within the soul of all participants.  Unlocking the magical child would free the individual to be a healthy, whole and capable adult.  The idea of the magical child was explored through a variety of modules and activities designed to show that anything not part of the magical child was instead a part of the person’s image – a false cloak designed to protect them from harm and lock-in their total potential.

Seminar Overview

The rules in WWASP facilities were extensive and covered nearly every aspect of the child’s life from communication, movement, expression, hygiene and participation in daily activities.

Rule breaking resulted in a reduction of points or loss of level depending on the degree of the infraction.  Punishments included study hall or essays – where a student was required to write a 3.000 – 5,000 word essay by hand in under three hours – or observation placement.  Observation placement was described as a form of “suicide watch” or cooling-off room however many students (and staff) have reported children remaining in isolation for months or years at a time.

Consequences that could lead to immediate placement in isolation included looking out the window (a form of run-away plans), making eye contact with the opposite sex (sexual encouragement), knuckle cracking or picking at a mosquito bite (self-injury) or any litany of “blatant rule violations.”

Observation Placement or "Suicide Watch" in Jamaica

Children in the WWASP system spent anywhere from ten months to multiple years at WWASP programs.  The schools located in the United States were considered to be the “least-harsh” of the programs with the overseas locations promoted as more intense options for children who were unsuccessful domestically.  At all schools, therapy was performed in large-groups led by “case managers.”  Within the groups, students were responsible for providing each other “feedback” and calling our one another’s faults and issues.  Though one licensed therapist was employed by WWASP for all of its facilities, Dr. Chappuis, private sessions were not included within the standard tuition.

Male Group Therapy Session

Of the locations overseas, Tranquility Bay in Jamaica was considered by most to be the “punishment” school for most United States programs.  Noted for having one of the harshest reputations of all WWASP facilities the tightly guarded compound on the remote northern coast of Jamaica had both fierce critics and strong supporters.  Before closing the gated facility housed up to 300 children – both male and female – ranging in age from 12 to 19.  Despite having no hot water, plywood beds and no oversight from either Jamaican or US officials the program charged parents up to $40,000 annually. [22] [23]

Tranquility Bay has been the subject of various documentaries and scathing articles.

In response to allegations of abuse at the facility, Ken Kay – Robert Lichfield’s partner in running WWASP – stated that, “The accusations are from students. The parents may believe them, but the parents weren’t there.  The teens making the allegations generally have a long history of lying, exaggerating and dishonesty.” [21]

Untreated Sores on the Back of a Boy's Head at Tranquility Bay

Child Displaying Pepper Spray Burns from Punishment at Tranquility Bay

In an interview for the French Documentary on Tranquility bay “Les Enfants Perdus De Tranquility Bay” Randall Hinton was interviewed regarding the use of pepper spray on former Tranquility Bay student Kerry Layne.  Following the filming of the documentary, Kerry took his own life after suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.  He was held at Tranquility Bay for nearly a year.  He spent more time in isolation than in the general population and was the recipient of countless acts of abuse.

Randall Hinton, Former Tranquility Bay Staff Member

Hinton is quoted as stating, ” he was pepper-sprayed by myself and by Jay Kay. I think we were the only ones who could actually pepper-spray students. I think I can remember Kerry Layne being pepper-sprayed more than once in a day. I know he was pepper-sprayed more than two times in a day. I don’t think it would have been more than three times. …And from somebody on the outside looking in I would say it was abusive. For somebody that stayed with him 24/7 I would say I received as much abuse as he did as a staff. But that’s what we’re getting paid to do.”

Hinton continued describing the program, stating that “Restraints could be used – mechanical devices could be used – pepper-spray could be used to gain control of your child. It’s just a job that, that helps people. Instead of the pizza coming to you we’ll come and pick the pizza up and take it and let it get cooked for a while, in a sense.  Until it’s ready to come home and then you get a brand new hot pizza.” [22] [23]

Randall Hinton would be convicted of third-degree assault and false imprisonment of a minor in 2007.   Though no charges were brought against him during his employment at Tranquility Bay, Hinton continued to work within the WWASP system.  He was the director of WWASP’s Royal Gorge Academy in Colorado at the time of his arrest.  He was sentenced with 25-days in jail and one year of probation.  Royal Gorge Academy remained open for at least a year following his arraignment though under the leadership of a new director. [29]

Violence was a part of life at many WWASP facilities.

Shannon Levy experienced a brutal restraint at Tranquility Bay in 2001.

She details that, “One staff held my arms behind my back when I was standing up so I couldn’t grab onto anything. Another staff ripped my feet out from underneath me so I fell with all my weight right onto my chin. I immediately started gushing blood everywhere, but that didn’t stop them. They still continued restraining me.” [23]

Though no medical treatment was provided by WWASP, Shannon’s parents were eventually called to collect her from the Jamaican facility.  She was unable to open her mouth wide enough to eat or insert a toothbrush.  Her injuries were long lasting.  She lost over 40lbs following the incident due to being unable to consume solid foods. [23]

Amberly Knight, the former director of WWASP’s Dundee Ranch in Costa Rica, wrote to the Costa Rican authorities in 2003 detailing human rights violations and cases of abuse at the facility.  She had resigned from her position the previous year.  Her efforts led to the immediate closure of the program. In her letter she stated that, “The purpose of Dundee Ranch is not to help teens in crisis or their families; it is to make millions of dollars for the owner,”  She also said students were improperly restrained; in one case, staff dislocated a teen’s shoulder. [23]

A Child Demonstrating the Restraint Positions Used at WWASP Facilities

For students who couldn’t perform at Tranquility Bay or at WWASP’s other tough overseas programs High Impact in Tecate, Mexico was the final option.

High Impact was a short-term program that was raided and shut down by the Mexican police in the early 2000’s.  Its reputation within the WWASP system was well-known as being nothing shy of torture.  Children were required to run laps around a fenced in field while dressed in thick sweatsuits.  Graduation was only obtained when the required number of laps was completed.  Students were not allowed to speak, make eye contact, or interact with anyone during their stay.  Punishments at High Impact were the most severe of any WWASP facility.

When High Impact was raided, children were found hog-tied in dog cages under the hot Mexican sun as a form of isolation punishment. As in most facilities, it was initially claimed to be a form of observation placement or “suicide watch” but former students allege it was used for even minor infractions.

Children Hog-Tied in Dog Cages at High Impact

Close Up of Child in Dog Cage at High Impact

As of 2012, WWASP is no longer operating programs under its own name though the company remains undissolved on paper due to pending litigation. [18]

Robert Lichfield served as Mitt Romney’s Utah campaign finance co-chair until 2007 when he was asked to step down following media attention over high-profile lawsuits against WWASP.  Lichfield was Utah’s largest political donor before his resignation, generating over $300,000 for Romney’s campaign in 2008 and helping to facilitate donations of $17,000 from family members and associates. [19]

The Huffington Post listed Robert Lichfield as one of the GOP’s Dirtiest Donors in 2008, noting that Romney asked his Utah money-maker to step aside from the campaign until the lawsuit was settled.  It is also noted that Romney brought in over $2.7 million in Utah donations, much of which was helped by Lichfield’s campaign efforts. [26]

Paul Babeu, Arizona Finance Co-Chair and the Desisto School

Romney with Babeu at a Speaking Event

In early February 2012, Paul Babeu stepped down as Mitt Romney’s Arizona Finance Co-Chair following allegations that he had threatened to have his gay ex-lover deported back to Mexico if details of his homosexuality were made public.   Babeu denies the threats but has since confirmed his homosexuality.

The Romney campaign supported his decision to resign so that he could focus on settling the allegations made against him.  [38]

While the allegations against Babeu are shocking and potentially damaging to the strictly Conservative Romney campaign, Babeu’s involvement in the controversial (and now defunct) DeSisto school in  Massachusetts seems to be yet another dismal link between Mitt Romney and the mistreatment of troubled youths.

The co-ed private boarding school was founded in 1978 and charged parents over $78,000 annually in tuition.   Babeu became headmaster in 1999.  According to Massachusetts Office of Child Care records, investigations into the school began in 2000 following nine separate claims of abuse.  Abuse reports indicated that students were regularly isolated, deprived of food, given unnecessary strip searches, forced to partake in group showers and monitored bathroom trips and were regularly restrained.  Further investigations revealed that sexual relations between staff and students had occurred regularly as improper background checks were not performed on employees.  Students were also regularly tied together as part of treatment and forced to strip down to their underwear and perform other humiliating acts in the name of therapy. [39]

Court Documents Detailing the State’s Investigation into the DeSisto School

Before stepping down, Babeu was a skilled fund-raiser for the Romney campaign.  He was a former Tea Party favorite in Arizona and his strict anti-immigration attitude helped to win many staunch conservatives to Romney’s side.  Babeu, who was also running for Congress while supporting Mitt’s Arizona campaign financing, raised over $200,000 for his own Congressional efforts.  The exact amount contributed to Romney is unknown.  [36] 

Mel Sembler, National Finance Co-Chair and Straight Inc 

Mel Sembler - Mitt Romney's National Finance Co-Chair

Though Mitt Romney asked Robert Lichfield and Paul Babeu to step down while their legal woes were sorted, he retained one of the biggest and most controversial names in adolescent treatment as part of his group of financiers:  Mel Sembler.

Mel Sembler – a well known name in GOP politics – remains as Mitt Romney’s US National Finance Co-Chair.  Prior to working with Mitt Romney, Sembler served as U.S. ambassador to Australia under President George Bush, served as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2000 and in November, 2001, was appointed ambassador to Italy by President George W. Bush.   [30]

Mel Sembler is known as the “Money Man” of Republican politics.  To many he is also considered the God-Father of today’s booming adolescent behavior modification industry.

Mitt Romney chatting with National Finance Co-Chair Mel Sembler (Center)

In 1973 Mel and his wife Betty came to the realization that one of their children had begun smoking marijuana.  Betty Sembler is quoted as stating, “We saw this as a fundamental breakdown of everything we believed in: family, education, law and order, responsibility to the community.  Drugs represented the very antithesis of these ideal – pure selfishness.” [31]

The first Federally funded drug rehabilitation program for minors – The Seed – got its start in Sembler’s home state.  In a scathing government report that led to the Seed’s closure, methods used within the facility were compared to those used in North Korean brainwashing camps. [32]  In 1976, seeing a need for additional assistance for struggling teens, Mel Sembler formed his own privately-funded, non-profit drug rehabilitation program called Straight. [31]

Straight used the same tactics developed within the Seed and was staffed by former Seed parents and participants.  As early as two years following its opening, claims of abuse began to surface from participants and past staffers. [34]

Miller Newton, Straight’s national clinical director, admitted to authorities in 1982 that he had kept teenagers awake for 72-hour periods, put them on peanut butter–only diets, and forced them to crawl through each other’s legs to be hit in a “spanking machine.” [34]

Children in Straight’s facilities endured 12-hour daily group therapy sessions.  During these sessions, they were forced to repeatedly confess their various crimes in front of a large group of peers.  To gain attention from the group’s facilitators the children – who were not allowed to stand – flapped their arms wildly in an act called “motivating.” [34]

Group Therapy Meeting at Straight

Richard Mullinax, a former Straight staff member, replied to an open request for apology posted by Surviving Straight Inc, an advocacy group of former attendees and abuse victims.

In his apology, he states that during his time of employment with Straight from 1985-1989 he personally participated in and witnessed acts of abuse.  His letter quotes his apology for participating in and not-stopping the occurrence of, “Brainwashing, physical abuse, usage of illegal or unethical restrains, unethical forms of extreme humiliation, food deprivation, sleep deprivation, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, coerced confessions, unjustifiable and lengthy isolation in intake and/or time our rooms, denial of necessary medical care, kidnapping, and false imprisonment.” [34]

Like the allegations against Aspen Education Group, WWASP and the DeSisto School, lawsuits against Straight included claims of kidnapping, physical violence, false imprisonment, isolation, brutal restraints, and sexual humiliation. [32]  While Sembler has not been linked with any abuse personally, the organization he co-founded, Straight Inc., paid out millions of dollars to victims during the 1980’s and 1990’s.

By 1993, all of Straight’s facilities had closed.  In every state where Straight facilities were located, abuse was substantiated by regulators or lawsuits.  Some of the allegations involved children being gagged with Kotex, boys being called “fags” and girls “whores,” and instances where children were held down to the point of urinating or defecating on themselves. [32]

Mel Sembler would oversee Straight during its 17-years of existence.  He claims that Straight Inc graduated over 12,000 youths and has never separated his name from the program despite the persistent allegations of abuse.  Mel remains an avid anti-drug activist, sharing a spot on the board of directors for the Drug Free America Foundation along with his wife Betty. [33]

Mel Sembler is set to bring in millions for Mitt Romney’s White House bid.   Following Santorum’s decision to drop out of the race, Sembler stated, “The primary is over. The finance team is focusing on the general election and will begin raising victory money.”  [37]

Between 2011 and 2012, Mel Sembler personally donated $61,400 to the Republican National Committee.  Sembler, his wife Betty, son Brent, daughter-in-law Debbie and son George all donated the maximum individual contribution of $2500 each to Romney’ primary campaign.  [36]  Through his fundraising efforts, Sembler has assisted Romney in generating over $76 million for his presidential bid and the number is expected to continue to increase.

Freedom and Hope?  Not for Children.

Mitt Romney and his political camp must be aware of the allegations surrounding his previous enterprises and various campaign financiers but they aren’t speaking.  No one from Romney’s camp has made a peep regarding his deep connections to the troubled teen industry.

His wife, Ann, however has pledged that – if she becomes first lady – helping troubled teens will be her primary focus.

“At risk youth has been a concern of mine and love of mine for a lot of years,” she said while speaking before a group in Iowa.  [40]

Romney has also eluded to her cause at several additional campaign events.

If the work of Romney’s friends and former employer are any indication of what that would look like, it might be time to let our troubled teens remain “troubled” before they end up being sent back to us, brainwashed, emotionally scarred and haunted by the deep wounds of child abuse.

C. Kapela  April 13th, 2012

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• [1] Mitt Romney’ Biography Mitt Romney For President, 2012 Campaign
• [2]  CRC On The Sell Side by Ted Jackson, October 2005 Treatment Magazine
• [3]  Therapeutic Schools A Boom Unabated by Ted Jackson, July 2007 Treatment Magazine
• [4] Aspen Education Group Homepage Help for Troubled Teens – Residential and Wilderness Programs (Company Homepage)
• [5] Aspen Education Group (Open Letter) A Subsidiary of CRC Health Group and Bain Capital Family Light – A Service of Thomas J. Croke and Associates, Inc.
• [6] Lawsuit Against Mt. Bachelor Academy Exands Now Totals 17 Plaintiffs; Damages Sought top $25 Million by Barney Lerten and Shannon Mendiola, August 24, 2011 KTZV.com
• [7] Ever Unconventional, Long Controversial The school’s history is a twisted one, involving atypical therapy methods and company mergers, good intentions and success stories, but also cases of what some, including the state, call abuse. The story behind the academy’s closure by Keith Chu, November 15, 2009 The Bulletin
• [8] KTVZ Story Concerning Mount Bachelor Academy Lawsuit From KTZV News Sources, Published July 6, 2011 on KellyClarkAttorney.com
• [9] Four recent Utah Deaths in Treatment Programs by Kirsten Stewart, Published October 2007 (available only as archive) The Sale Lake Tribune
• [10] Aspen Achievement Academy Wikipedia
• [11] Tough Love Proves Too Tough by Christopher Smith, June 10th 1996  High Country News
• [12] Investigator Calls Wilderness School Reckless in Teen’s Death by Erin Golden, October 20th 2009, The Bulletin
• [13] New Life Lodge Owner’s Troubles Aren’t Confined to TN Despite deaths, lawsuits, investigations, New Life owner says cases are isolated by Nate Rau, December 18th 2011, The Tennessean
• [14] New Life Lodge in Burns to Reopen in April Nate Rau, March 28th 2012, The Tennessean
• [15] Top Contributors to Mitt Romney 2012 taken from OpenSecrets.org Center for Responsive Politics
• [16] Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney by Nicholas Confessore, Christopher Drew, and Julie Creswell, December 18th 2011, The New York Times
• [17] Key To His School’s Success?  It’s God, Founder Says. by John-Thor Dahlbur, July 13th 2003, Los Angeles Times
• [18] World Wide Association of Specialty Programs Wikipedia
• [19] Romney Cans Golden Goose Over Abuse October 2008, Radaronline.com
• [20] Troubled Teen Programs – 25 Plaintiffs Join in Lawsuit Against WWASPS, Cross Creek Manor, Robert Lichfield, and Associates – More Expected to Join In October 2006, Webwire.com
• [21] Turley Law Firm vs. WWASP – Official Filing, 2011 Updated Complaint, 2011 www.wturley.com
• [22] Parents Divided over Jamaican Disciplinary Academy by Tim Weiner, June 17 2003, The New York Times
• [23] Rough Love Kids from South Florida and beyond are sent to Jamaica to straighten up. Or else. by Joanne Green, June 22 2006, Miami New Times
• [24] Abuse at Tranquility Bay by Isabelle Zehnder, jaykayletter.blogspot.com
• [25] Les Enfants Perdus de Tranquility Bay (2005) IMDB listing.  Directed by Mathieu Verboud, Jean Robert Vialle
• [26] Republican Rogues’ Gallery: The GOP’s Dirtiest ’08 Donors September 2007, Huffington Post
• [27] An Oregon School for Troubled Teens is Under Scrutiny by Maia Szalavitz, April 17th, 2009  Time Magazine
• [28] Spring Creek’s Short Leash by John S. Adams, June 16 2005 The Missoula Independent
• [29] Randall Hinton Sentenced to Jail for Bloody Assault on Child by Tracy Harmon, November 20th 2007
• [30] Mel Sembler’s Penis Pump, Privacy Claim Headed to Trial  November 17 2006  The North Country Gazette
• [31] Money Man While Washington debates “soft-money” and foreign contributors, St. Petersburg’s Mel Sembler, chief national GOP fund-raiser, charges ahead filing party coffers on a run for the White House by David Villano, May 1997  Florida Trend
• [32] Romney Fires One Teen-Abuse Linked Financier, Keeps Big One by Maia Szalavitz, September 6th 2007 The Huffington Post
• [33] Mel Sembler, Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Biography The Sembler Company
• [34] The Trouble with Troubled Teen Programs by Maia Szalavitz, January 2007 Reason Magazine
• [35] Mr. Mullinax’s Public Acknowledgment and Apology to Straight, Inc. Survivors  Richard Mullinax, January 1st 2009, Surviving Straight Inc
• [36] Donor/Recipient Searches through  OpenSecrets.org Center for Responsive Politics
• [37] Trump Fundraiser for Romney Sold Out by Catalina Carnia, April 2012 USA Today
• [38] Paul Babeu, Arizona Sheriff, Steps Down as Arizona Co-Chair of Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign  by Elise Foley, February 18th 2012 The Huffington Post
• [39] Legal troubled dogged school led by Babeu Officials Probed Abuse Claims While Sheriff was Headmaster by Robert Anglen, Robert J. Hansen, Sean Holstege, March 1st 2012 The Arizona Republic
• [40] Ann Romney Says She’ll Work with Troubled Teens as First Lady by Russell Goldman, October 5 2011  ABC News

Remembering Tranquility Bay

C.Kapela 2012 – I am a Captive

I can still remember the way the humid air felt against my skin as I stared at the white gated facility that would house me for months and haunt me for years.   I can still recall my hand shaking as I frantically inhaled the last few drags of my cigarette – a final favor granted to me by my father before he walked away and left me there alone.

It has been eleven years since I arrived and nearly eleven since I left.

Though the years continue to pass the memories of what I saw and experienced remain vivid – festering beneath the surface like an open wound.

I was abused.

Systematically and purposefully, my rights were stripped from me – much like my clothing as I leaned over the nurse’s bed for my initial contraband search minutes after my father’s taxi pulled away.

I shivered and cried in the dark nightly as I tried to rest on my thin mattress while loud Jamaican voices echoed through the corridor.  Though we were never allowed to speak without permission those who enforced such rules did so often and carelessly.

I heard the screaming of children being restrained and injured on a daily basis.  I saw those who needed medical attention denied care and writhing in pain.  I heard whispered stories of atrocities I have tried to forget.  I ate food that made me sick – small portions of meat, mostly fat, with hair still stuck to the tough skin attached to it.

I saw blood each time I went to the bathroom.  When I complained, I was told it was normal.

I listened to useless tapes for hours each day and wrote meaningless essays until my hands burned.

I felt bugs and worms crawling on my feet as I showered in ice cold water, twice daily.

I ran laps around a barren field.

I stood in lines, eyes cast down, turning my head each time a boy was present.

I learned how to take verbal assaults and put downs from my peers and family representative without crying.  I learned how to attack others – seeking out their vulnerabilities and darkest secrets to use as weapons.  I learned that to move ahead I had to climb over my friends.  To be seen as progressing, I had to show how others were not.

I sat in a sweltering basement for days at a time receiving vigorous experiential seminars from an organization that is now directly labeled as a cult.

I slapped towels against the tile floor with my eyes closed, screaming at the top of my lungs, listening to the cries of anguish from those around me as I did so.

I walked from person to person and told them if I thought they should live or die with just a glance.

I called people fakers, I called people on “their crap,” and I called myself a strong, independent and beautiful young woman.

I dressed in costumes on command.

I watched a sweaty, overweight woman named Jan scream at rape victims as she told them their choices led to their molestations.  I joined her.  I joined the crowd.

I listened as children poured out their stories, weeping and screaming, and told them they weren’t saying enough.  I stared blankly and accepted it as I was told the same.

I believed in a magical child that lived inside of me.  It was all that was beautiful in me and somehow I had stifled and killed it.  I wrote it letters.  I spoke at length about it.  In moments that felt like drug-induced hysteria, I convinced myself I could feel it inside me.

I learned to follow orders, to deny the existence of wrong and right, to admit my own fault for anything painful that had happened in my life.  I let the system take my mind and bend it until the part of me that screamed, “this is wrong,” was stifled into silence.

I watched a bald suntanned man pull up in an expensive car a few times each week, sauntering through the complex with the casual attitude of one who has everything.  I watched him as I stood in flip flops and a faded hand-washed uniform that I had scrubbed myself in a bucket the day before.  I watched him take a pretty young blond to his office – the same girl every visit – for private discussions.  I told myself to believe it wasn’t what it appeared.

I can still remember the smell of sewage and vomit that wafted through my room nightly, sweat dripping from my forehead as I mopped up the spills in the morning.  With each push of the mop my muscles became more accustomed until I no longer thought it was strange.

I stood in lines doing jumping jacks, yelling out the moment my name was called, reciting pledges and words until they became second nature and I no longer had to think about it.  I learned to ignore the sad eyes around me, to become hardened like the others, to let my dreams wander into the darkness until they never returned.

I watched as girls were told that they would never see their families again.  I watched as new adults, reaching the magic age of eighteen, fought to walk through the barbed wire fencing that restrained us all.  I watched as staff ignored their pleas, denied their legal rights, and forced them back into line with the rest of us.  I watched the hope drain out of others as quickly as it leaked out of myself.

I remember my anger, silent dreams fueled by vengeance.  I remember longing to return to the island, a free woman, to play music loudly from a nearby hilltop for everyone to hear.  I envisioned tossing candy and food over the fence, a rallying of other young adults around me, screaming loudly to those captive that they could leave, that they were human, that they were not prisoners – that no wall, no staff, no man with an expensive car, could take that away from us.  I longed for someone to do the same for me.

I am free now.

I am long past eighteen.

I can speak when I want, go where I want, cross through doors when I choose, go to the bathroom without publicly declaring what I intend to do, walking with shame and humiliation to the front of the room to collect my allotment of toilet paper squares.

I never returned to the island and I still feel guilt.  My only redemption comes through these pages, this idea – the notion that somehow freedom can be granted to those who are denied a true existence.

Though I am free, I am still a captive.

I am a captive until the day no more children are roused from their beds in the middle of the night to be deposited into the care of money-hungry strangers.

I am a captive until those who imprisoned me are given due justice.  I am a captive until everyone, no matter their age, has basic human rights and cannot be detained against their will without due trial.

I am a captive until the words that I write are read by someone with the power to make changes.  I am a captive until there is no more WWASP, no more Tranquility Bays, no more children’s gulags preying upon the lives of the weak.  I am a captive until behavior modification becomes a thing of our past, a shameful dirty part of history which we are not proud to speak about.  I am a captive until child abuse is no longer legally prescribed as help for those most needing love.

I am a captive until we are all free.

Tranquility Bay, I remember.  I am angry.

I am angry, Jay Kay.  I will not forget what you did and I shall never forgive.

I am angry, Mom and Dad.  I don’t care what you say this wasn’t your best and it isn’t my fault.  I will not take responsibility for this abuse no more than a beaten child should take responsibility for their bruises.

I am angry, Kathleen Sullivan.  You call yourself a doctor, a therapist, yet you hand out glossy brochures and accept commissions from a place that causes more harm than good.

I am angry, I am still a captive – haunted by the memories that you created.  But I am a fighter, and I will keep fighting.

I will fight until I am free by death or until freedom is granted to those who, like me, are facing the degradation and abuse that will hold them captive too.

I will fight until those who are simply standing by begin to fight with me.

I will fight, I will be angry, I will remain a captive, until we all are free.

As Anti-Youth, Anti-Woman Agenda Takes Center Stage, Conservative Party Suffers

Can the GOP survive the loss of the both the Female and Youth Vote?

As Republicans mourn the failure of their attempt to overturn President Obama’s newest health care mandate requiring that all insurance policies – even those funded by Religious organizations – cover birth control for women, the GOP’s anti-woman stance appears to be growing louder as it gains traction within the Conservative community.

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, recently outraged by a young college woman’s attempt to speak before the all-male congressional committee deciding on the controversial “Blunt Amendment,”  went on a public rampage this month attacking not only the speaker herself but women in general.  A strong supporter of the failed bill, Limbaugh made his opinions known through his outspoken remarks lamenting the forced coverage of birth control as part of mandatory employer provided insurance.

In his rage, Limbaugh accused the young woman of being a “slut” and a “prostitute” for speaking about the issue.  He claimed that women were receiving payment for having sex by accepting and using “free” birth control (ignoring the fact that women often have to contribute more for insurance costs because of their financial risk of pregnancy) and were using taxpayer money because they were having “so much sex.”  In a later angry session, Limbaugh launched a hate-filled speech alleging that the “taxpayers” who are paying for women to have endless amounts of sex should have the favor returned to them. He demanded that in return for their investment any woman using insurance-paid birth control should be forced to put videos of herself having sex online so that men like himself could watch.

Mitt Romney – the current front runner in the GOP primary race has his own ties to degrading anti-woman organizations.  Romney’s former Utah Finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, is the owner of the extremely profitable Mormon-based chain of teenage behavior modification schools known as The World Wide Association of Specialty schools, or “WWASP.”

Among its various facilities within the US and abroad, WWASP, now operating under the name Teen Revitalization, offers a residential program for pregnant teens. Based in rural Utah, the school keeps young girls against their will while they face their deepest issues and undergo strict behavior modification training, all while preparing for child-birth.

Directly taken from the school’s most recent advertisement, the school promotes itself as supporting, “expecting teen mothers in identifying and carefully considering their options, including the option of giving their baby up for adoption. A young woman can learn a valuable lesson about love and personal responsibility by choosing to use our adoption services to give her baby to a family that is prepared to raise a child and can provide for all their needs. Although young women may experience the loss and grief of letting go of their new baby, they will experience this loss in a supportive environment with plenty of resources to help them deal with these feelings. The pain caused by irresponsible choices can eventually be replaced with a sense of inner strength and the peace of mind through making the unselfish decision to give a child a chance for a better life.”

How shocking that a pro-life advocate and recent supporter of the Blunt amendment would have ties to a “school” that not only forces women to carry their children to term but then “encourages” them to give their infants away, far from the prying eyes of judgemental neighbors and other “traditional” onlookers.

Romney’s involvement in the troubled teen industry is nothing new.  By supporting the demand for “family values” based candidates, this industry has not only helped to silence our nation’s youth into submission but has also helped to perpetuate outdated ideas about women and their roles in sexual violence, rape, and molestation.

A 2003 article by Decca Aitkenhead for the Guardian includes a rare interview with the psychologist tasked by WWASP for leading its optional issue-based support groups.

Dr. Chappuis, a Utah-based psychiatrist who ran both the support groups and private sessions within all WWASP facilities is quoted as stating, “’One of the groups I do here, it’s called Rape And Molest. They struggle with a lot of guilt in that group. You know, a lot of these girls dress and act provocative. They get involved in substance abuse. They place themselves at risk and then they get taken advantage of. Now, we always say no means no. We’re real clear about that. But then we say, you know, you’ve got to look at how you market yourself. Girls can be hard work to help,’ he chuckles. ‘They are so much more dramatic than boys.”

To even dabble in the psychology that a woman is somehow to blame for her own rape, molestation or abuse is a disgrace both to modern psychology and women in general.

Romney’s former company Bain Capital now holds ownership of Aspen Education Group.  Once heralded as the most prominent and sought-after provider of long-term experiential treatment for troubled youth, Aspen’s programs have since faced disgrace under allegations of negligent homicide, emotional and sexual abuse and general disregard for human rights.

Aaron Bacon died under Aspen’s care, the result of untreated illness. Before his death, he was referred to by staff as “Fakin’ Bacon” as a reply to his consistent claims of illness.  Though he defecated on himself multiple times a day, complained of intense abdominal pain and could not manage to hike through the remote Utah wilderness without frequent falls and periods of mental delusion, staff members refused to seek medical care.  When he finally collapsed, it was found that none of the wilderness staff had been adequately trained in CPR or emergency medical skills.  Upon autopsy his body showed not only signs of severe external trauma, likely brought on through violent attacks, but also untreated internal illness that eventually lead to his slow and painful death.

A separate $14 million dollar lawsuit was filed by former students of Aspen’s programs, most of whom attended the programs in the 1990’s, alleging gross negligence, physical abuse, and the humiliation and degradation of young female students within its care.

The lawsuit asserts that as part of treatment children – mainly young girls – were forced to perform lap dances, mantras involving repetitive and degrading statements involving their sexuality in front of staff and peers, and public reenactments of their own enjoyment of rape and molestation in front of their peers..  According to the lawsuit’s press release, “The allegations…are consistent with the findings by the Oregon Department of Human Services.  The DHS report cited nine substantiated claims of abusive practices, including sexualized role play and reenactment of traumatic events such as prior physical or sexual abuse.”

Other conservatives are adopting many of the same principles as Romney.

Indiana lawmaker Bob Morris recently refused to support the Girl Scouts, openly admonishing their feminist and “pro-gay” agenda.  Rep. Morris wrote a letter to his fellow lawmakers, encouraging them to boycott the all-girls group after performing “web research” that helped him to conclude that, “The Girl Scouts of America and their worldwide partner, Word Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood.”

Outside of their “pro-abortion” agenda, Morris goes off further to attack the female role models promoted by the Girl Scouts.  Despite their successes as independent, financially stable and morally admired women within society, he denounces these individuals noting that, “..only three have a briefly mentioned religious background – all the rest are feminists, lesbians, or Communists.”

Rick Santorum, who is largely coming up second in the Conservative primaries, is funded largely by Universal Health Services (UHS).  UHS is yet another private, for-profit health care provider that makes its money largely off the suffering of teens and young women struggling for independence and choice about their own bodies in a strict, religious environment.

According to Esquire magazine, Santorum is quoted as stating that sex is, “supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal… but also procreative.  That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen… This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”  Further, contraception, according to Santorum is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

The current Conservative attitudes – and acceptance of funds – indicate that most right-wind politicians are willing to attempt election without the support of women or youth voters.  Can this be accomplished?  We shall see.  The GOP, with each act of public disappointment, seems to alienate itself further from those forces that helped Obama to win in the prior election.  Unsure of their current motivations, one can only speculate that these are the true beliefs of the right-wing fanatics.  As a women, or young adult – do you support this rhetoric?  Sound off below.

The Politics of the Troubled Teen Industry

“Money is the Mother’s Milk of Politics.” – Jesse M. Unruh, 1966

Without massive campaign contributions from major industries and special interest groups, politics as we know it today would be a completely different battlefield.  Today’s politicians are not only expected to produce results for their constituents, but also to protect the interests and financial gains of the various groups who helped pave the way for their election.

The troubled teen industry as we know it today would never exist without political influence and protection.   If you were to ask the average citizen if painful electric shock therapy, isolation in dog cages, or reinactments of traumatic sexual abuse in front of other peers were therapeutic or effective methods of treating troubled children or teenage addiction, they would likely say no.  Re-word your questions and ask those same individuals if they support involuntary drug treatment for youth or the War on Drugs and you may get a different answer.

Politicians and corporations have long embraced the power of spin and public perception.  What can be called abuse can just as easily be called “intensive therapy” or “tough love.”   The art of playing off fear is nothing new and has been exploited in politics and advertising since the beginnings of each.  What we fear most we seek to be relieved from.  The one who offers us the quickest alleviation of our fears is the one we trust to receive our money, votes, and agreement that whatever methods they employ are necessary to keep us safe.

Setting the Stage:  The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs began with the formation of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the 1970’s when President Nixon declared drug-use to be “public enemy number one.”  Though America had been fighting against drug use before the official start of the “war,” Nixon’s policies greatly strengthened the government’s power to take action.  Originally focused on heroin use, the war on drugs would eventually expand to include additional substances and offer harsher sentences for offenders.

In the 1980’s, Nancy Reagan‘s “Just Say No” campaign began to reshape America’s attitudes towards drug use and teens, helping to pave the way for additional legislation and laws.  According to a War on Drugs timeline by PBS.org, her efforts focused on white, middle class children and were funded by corporate and private donations.  As new campaigns and initiatives were launched nationwide to raise awareness of teenage substance abuse, America became gripped with fear.

In 1982, Phyllis York, David York and Ted Wachtel published a book entitled “Tough Love.”  Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book helped to form a new perception of teenage behavior and its causes, stating that, “The common denominator is rotten behavior.  Despite a wide range of geological, social and economic backgrounds, our young people behave with stereotypical predictability.  Like clones stamped out in some satanic laboratory, they share an underlying selfishness and similar ways of demonstrating it.  If youthful destructive behavior were a manifestation of individual family problems or pathology, then the dillema would be manageable….But exactly the opposite is true. Looking for family problems and pathology which “cause” this behavior distracts from the real issue: the responsibility of each young person for his or her own actions.”

The setting was ripe for a new industry.  Parents could now relieve themselves of responsibility for their children’s actions.  Teenagers had become identical beings, rotten creatures who were in no way a product of their environments.  Businessmen and politicians saw a new opportunity.  Everyone was desperate to get on board, to spread the message and offer a quick fix for society’s newest enemy: its children.

The Founders

Charles Dederich – Founder of Synanon

Synanon was the first doctor-free drug treatment facility to exist in America.  Founded in 1958, the program began its first facility in California.  Over the next several decades, Synanon grew into what is now considered to have been both a cult and a quasi-religion.   Synanon’s methods involved the Synanon Game, a highly confrontational method of treatment.  In “the game,” addicts were forced to endure hours of harsh criticism and attack therapy in order to gain self-awareness.  Eventually, graduation from Synanon was no longer an option.  Members and their children lived communally within the program, attracting the attention of celebrities and non-users seeking an alternative way of life.  Within the program, Dederich created a series of seminars that would eventually develop into EST training.  These seminars were designed to produce personal break-downs followed by mass euphoria.  Inside the Synanon community, Dederich led as both a patriarchal figure and a sort of semi-god.  His followers obeyed his every command.  Shaved heads, strange styles of dress, forced abortions and vasectomies, open marriages, and lack of contact with children became the norm for those living within Synanon.  Though Synanon stopped all operations in the 1990’s, the methods  developed within the program and the influence Dederich held over his followers still has repercussions on the industry today.

Mel Wasserman and Bert Brown  – Founders of CEDU and the Brown Schools

CEDU was formed by Mel Wasserman, a former Synanon attendee, in 1967.  Hugely influenced by Mel’s personal experiences in the program, CEDU utilized a watered-down version of the Synanon method.  CEDU schools implemented similar seminars as the ones held at Synanon, titled “Propheets,”  inspired by Mel Wasserman’s interest in the works of Khalil Ghibran.  Eventually, CEDU would be purchased by The Brown Schools, another chain of troubled teen institutions originally founded in 1940 by Bert Brown and his wife.  Eventually, both the Brown Schools and CEDU would be purchased by McCown, DeLeeuw & Co., a Menlo Park,  Calif., holding company  In 2005, all CEDU operations ceased after a multi-million dollar lawsuit from parents alleging abuses against their children.  Accusations against CEDU and the Brown Schools included physical abuse, rape, failure to properly restrain students from running away, emotional abuse and brainwashing.  Some of the former employees and leaders of these schools went on to form Camelot Schools and other CEDU/Brown-based facilities.

Art Baker – Founder of Seed

In the 1970’s, the SEED became the first children-only program to utilize some of the harshest methods developed at Synanon.  The program was founded by Art Baker and was wildly popular with American parents upon opening.  In 1974, the US Government published a study that compared SEED’s methods to that of North Korea’s detention camps.   SEED ceased operations shortly after due to negative publicity, however the need for a quick “fix” for troubled teens still existed and parent’s sought new methods of treatment.

Mel Sember and Betty Sembler – Founders of Straight, Inc.  

In the late 1970’s, Mel Sembler and Betty Sembler formed Straight Inc, filling the gap that SEED had left behind.  Straight Inc marketed largely to white, middle-class American families and admitted both users and non-users into it’s programs.  Straight Inc quickly became the largest scale treatment center of its kind, lauding praise from celebrity figures such as Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana.  According to an article published in May 2002 by Radley Balko for Fox News, Straight was directly influenced by the SEED model.  Despite the negative attention and eventual loss of funding for SEED, Florida Congressman Bill Young convinced the Sembler’s to invest in and form Straight.  The programs would operate under the Straight name until 1993, when they would eventually close after a series of lawsuits and allegations of abuse.  Criminal accusations ranged from false imprisonment, sexual abuse, food and sleep deprivation, forced abortions, physical and mental abuse, and brainwashing tactics.  In 1996, Straight reopened under the name “Drug Free America Foundation,” another organization founded by Betty and Mel Sembler.  Though the DFAF does not operate residential programs, it does offer advice to parent’s seeking residential treatment for teens and opposes all legislation towards decriminalization.  Straight Inc is widely considered to be the most influential program of its kind, helping to pave the way for future “troubled teen” facilities to utilize its methods.

Dr. Miller Newton, Dr. George Ross, Helen Gowanny and Terri Nissley – Founders of Second Generation Straight Facilities

Dr. Miller Newton, a former national director of Straight Inc’s St. Petersberg, Florida facility, formed Kids of North Bergen County in 1984 following investigations into abuses at his Straight facility.   In 1990, investigations into abuse at Kids of North Bergen County inspired Dr. Newton to rename the program Kids of North Jersey and relocate again to Hudson County.  The program followed the same principles developed by Synanon, SEED, CEDU, and Straight Inc.  He also founded the Kids Center of America, which operated similar franchises across the country.  Again, a series of lawsuits would lead to the eventual closure of Kids facilities.  Accusations included physical abuse, denial of medical treatment, false imprisonment, fraudulent insurance charges, and hazards to health and safety.  Allegedly in 2001, Dr. Miller Newton changed his name and relocated to Florida following a massive $4.5 million dollar civil suit from a former patient.

Dr. George Ross, another former clinician from Straight Inc, went on to form LIFE Inc in 1980, a Straight-based program in Florida.  Following the founding of LIFE, he would move on to form Kids Helping Kids of Hebron, Kentucky,  along with Possiblities Inc, another Straight spin-off.  Again lawsuits would follow, though all charges would be dropped.  Charges included unlawful imprisonment, threatening to kidnap the 2-year old child from a would-be patient, and various physical and mental abuses.  Though unsuccessful in regards to the verdict, the charges are largely attributed to the eventual closing of Possibilities Inc.  Dr. George Ross now offers private counseling services and motivational speaking appointments.  By the early 1990’s, Dr. Ross’ programs had all closed their doors.

Helen Gowanny, former Straight director, and Terri Nissley, former parent of a Straight student, opened The Pathway Family Center in 1993.  They operated locations in Detroit and Indianapolis and were modeled after the Straight program.  Both facilities would eventually close and continue to face allegations of abuse, invasive thought reform, brainwashing, and psychological torture.

Additional schools were formed by former Straight employees, often in former Straight facilities, including the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (AARC), and  Growing Together, along with many other less-known facilities.  Some of these programs are still operating today and more continue to open across the US and abroad, following the same methods utilized by Straight.  The following article and corresponding flow chart  offers a look at the impact Straight has had on other facilities.

Robert Lichfield – Founder of the Word Wide Association of Specialty Schools (WWASP) 

Robert Lichfield, a businessman with no clinical training in psychology, formed the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs in 1998.  The Utah-based organization promoted itself as an umbrella company that linked independently run programs operating under WWASP guidelines to families in need.  Further investigations have revealed however that all programs were operated and run by family members and business associates of Robert Lichfield.  WWASP operated programs both in the US and abroad.   Multiple lawsuits have led to the closure of all official WWASP facilities, though rumors persist that several schools have reopened under new company names.  Accusations include locking children in dog cages, severe physical beatings, food and sleep deprivation, pepper spraying of minors, isolation, lack of communication to parents, unreported sexual abuse, unsanitary living conditions, and brainwashing/emotional abuse.  Treatment modules within WWASP run facilities were directly influenced by those created within CEDU, Straight, Kids Inc, and the SEED.

Elliot Sainer and Bain Capital – Founders of Aspen Education

In 1997, Aspen Education Group was founded in part by Elliot Sainer.  A subsidiary of CRC Health Group, Aspen Education is owned by Bain Capital Group, founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney.  Aspen Education Group provides therapeutic programs for youth including wilderness therapy, residential treatment facilities, therapeutic boarding schools, and weight loss facilities.  Aspen Education is one of the most profitable teen treatment chains, boasting annual revenue of $150 million plus.  According to an article by Keith Chu of The Bulletin, many of Aspen Education Group’s programs – including now defunct Mount Bachelor Academy – were based directly on the CEDU methods of treatment.  Lauding support by celebrity figures such as Dr. Phil and several other TV programs including “Brat Camp,” “I Know What You Ate Last Summer,” and “Intervention,” Aspen Education has become one of the most revered and successful programs of it’s kind.  Recent lawsuits and scrutiny, however, have led to the closure of multiple facilities and a total restructure announced in March of 2011.  Mount Bachelor Academy, once one of Aspen Education’s top programs, closed in 2009 after lawsuits alleging sexual reenactments of past sexual abuse in front of peers, sleep deprivation, forced lap dances as part of therapy, and emotional and physical abuse.  Sagewalk, one of Aspen’s top wilderness therapy facilities, was called “reckless” by State authorities following the death of 16-year-old Sergey Blashchishen.   At least four other teenagers have died under Aspen’s care.  Criticisms of Aspen’s weight loss facilities have also indicated child abuse, noting that children within it’s care were subjected to diet plans of under 10 grams of fat daily.

Alan B. Miller – Founder of Universal Health Services

In 1978, Alan B. Miller founded Universal Health Services, a for-profit hospital holding company.  In 1983, Universal Health Services entered the behavior health sector of the market where it remains a power player to this day.  A full list of their current behavioral health facilities – including those for minors – can be found on the Universal Health Services Website.  Since their emergence in the behavior health market, Universal Health Services has quietly purchased many of the closed facilities of former troubled teen industry founders and reopened them under new or slightly-different names.  The Psychiatric Crime Database reports a litany of abuse, death, and negligence beginning in 1991 and continuing to this day at UHS facilities.  UHS relies heavily on State and Federal assignments to their programs, though they also accept and operate private payment centers as well.  In recent years, more agencies have shied away from placement with UHS due to growing concerns over abuse and neglect within their care.

The Politicians and Financiers

Betty Sembler and Mel Sembler – Contributors to the Republican National Committee, Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Guiliani, Jeb Bush, George Bush (Sr. and Jr.), Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Joseph Lieberman and Mitt Romney.

Betty Sembler is a current board member of D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).  She has also participated in the White House Conference for a Drug Free America, as a member of Florida’s Drug Policy Task Force, and is the founder of S.O.S (Save our Society from Drugs).  In 2008, she received a lifetime achievement award from the DEA Museum Foundation for her work fighting drug addiction.  Additional recognition of her efforts has been given by The Jewish National Foundation, The Houston Drug Free Business Association, the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame, and the NNAOC, a foundation of narcotic officers nationwide.

Mel Sembler went on to form the Sembler Company.  He also served as U.S. Embassador to Italy from 2001 to 2005 and as Ambassador to Australia and Nauru from 1989 to 1993.  He served a leadership role in generating funds for George H.W. Bush beginning in 1979, and  was Finance Co-Chairman of The American Bicentennial Presidential Inaugural, raising the dollars needed for the nation’s 41st inauguration of the President of the United States. Sembler served as Finance Chairman for the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2000.  He also served as Florida’s National Committeeman to the Republican National Committee after his election in 1994 until 2000.  In addition, Sembler  has serves on the board of the Drug Free America Foundation, the Florida Governor’s Mansion Foundation, , and is a member of the Florida Council of 100, a business advisory group to the Governor of Florida.  Politicians who have directly profited from campaign contributions from Mel Sembler and Betty Sembler include Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Rudolph Guiliani, Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney.

In the current 2012 election cycle, the Sembler’s have contributed a total of $24,000 as posted on the Huffington Post, to a variety of Republican candidates.  Mel Sember has also served as the chairmen of the Scooter Libby Defense Trust.  In April 2000, Mel Sembler raised an astonishing $21.3 million dollars at  single campaign dinner.  In 2005, he became the first person to have a U.S. Embassy named after him in Rome, allowed through legislation passed by former Congressman Bill Young, the same individual who encouraged him to start Straight Inc.  Despite the license revocation by the U.S Senate in 1993 for Straight, citing that the government should not be funding “cruel and inhumane behavior modification,” Sembler went on to form the Drug Free America Foundation along with his wife.  Former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, the brother of President George W. Bush, Former Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Karen Tandy, and Congressman Dan Lungren of California are on the advisory board. Additional details on the Sembler’s contributions to various Republican campaigns can be found here.  Mel Sembler has also directly served as national campaign finance director for Mitt Romney.

George E. McCown, CEO of MDC Partners (former owners of Brown Schools and CEDU) – Contributor to Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, John McCain and The National Republican Committee

McCown De Leeuw and Co’s CEO George McCown, former owner of the Brown Schools and CEDU directly contributed to Mitt Romney’s and Scott Brown’s current political campaigns, as noted by OpenSecrets.org.  CampaignMoney.com lists past donations to the McCain/Palin Presidential run and  The National Republican Committee.

Dr. George E. Ross, former owner of  LIFE, Inc., KIDS HELPINGKIDS, Inc. and POSSIBILITIES UNLIMITED,Inc – Contributor to Fred Dalton Thompson

While little information can be found on Dr. George E Ross’ current political donations, Newsmeat.org does show him contributing to the Fred Dalton Thompson Political Action Committee.  Thompson served as the campaign co-chairman for John McCain and was a long-term lobbyist in Washington.  He also assisted in the defense of Scotter Libby.  George Ross co-starred on Thompson’s “Focus on the Family” radio show, as noted in Dr. Ross’ brief online biography.

Outside of his donations, George E. Ross has participated in the White House Conference for a Drug Free America and offers private counseling in Kentucky.  His research and writings are currently centered around “Building Comprehensive Mental Health Strategies”

Robert Lichfield – Contributor to Mitt Romney, George W. Bush,  Robert Bennett, Orrin Hatch,  Richard Burr, John Swallow, Utah Republican Committee, Arizona Republican Committee, National Republican Committee, and the 2001 President’s Dinner.

Robert Lichfield, the founder of WWASP, served as Mitt Romney’s campaign finance adviser until 2007, resigning after a major lawsuit against his chain of schools gained public notoriety.  He is noted for having collected over $300,000 for Mitt Romney at one campaign event in St. George, Utah.   Further investigation reveals that Lichfield and assorted family members donated over $1 Million in campaign contributions to various GOP candidates between 2001 and 2002.  Additional details on Robert Lichfield’s campaign donations can be found through searches on NewsMeat.  Narvin Lichfield, Robert Lichfield’s brother and former owner/operator of several WWASP facilities donated to Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2007.  Ken Kay – one of the heads of WWASP – donated to John Swallow, and J. Ralph Atkin, former program director and member of WWASP’s advisory board who served as Coordinator of Business and Economic Development for the State of Utah.

Aspen Education Group and Elliot Sainer (AEG’s Founder) – Contributor to Mitt Romney, Adam Schiff, National Association of Psychiatric Health Services Political Action Committee, and the California Hospital Association Political Action Committee.  Additional ties to Jim DeMint, John McCain, George W. Bush, and Rick Santorum

After being acquired by Bain Capital, Aspen Education Group became a direct source of revenue for Republican candidate Mitt Romney.  Elliot Sainer, the founder of Aspen Education Group personally donated to several California politicians as well as Psychiatric and Hospital Political Action Committees.  Aspen Education Group itself has also donated directly to the IECA Foundation, a group providing grants and assistance both to struggling families and educational consultants who refer student’s to various facilities.  The National Association of Psychiatric Health Service PAC lists several known teen treatment facilities as direct contributors to their cause in 2012 and has directly provided funding to political candidates sympathetic to their causes.  Mitt Romney, the former owner of Bain Capital, has made personal contributions to Jim DeMint, John McCain, George W. Bush, and Rick Santorum in past election cycles.

Alan. B Miller and Universal Health Services  – Contributor to Rick Santorum, The Republican Committee of Pennsylvania, and the Universal Health Services Political Action Committee

Rick Santorum worked with Universal Health Services from 2007 to 2011, according to Jason Cherkis’ 2012 article in The Huffington Post.   Not only has Santorum profited directly from his employment with UHS, but the Universal Health Services Political Action Committee donated $5,000 in 2012 towards his current campaign, as noted by OpenSecrets.org.  Alan B. Miller, the CEO of Universal Health Services has made contributions to the Republican Committee of Pennsylvania and other candidates through UHS’ Political Action Committee.

The Consequences

There is currently no Federal legislation that has been passed to regulate the troubled teen industry.  New bills have been introduced into the House and Senate that seek to add additional oversight to the industry.  The major players in the industry have used lobbying and campaign contributions in the past, as noted in this 2004 article, to stop the passing of both State and Federal reforms on private residential treatment facilities.  Without additional reforms and the loss of political clout for the founders of these abusive institutions, the troubled teen industry will remain a threat to America’s children and vulnerable parents.

Though tedious work, tracking the campaign financiers of today’s politicians may help us to change the face of this horrific industry in the future.  It is time for our voices to be heard.  No child deserves to be abused in the name of treatment, nor should anyone profit from the blood and tears of helpless children.  Before you head to the ballot box, remember who is paying for these politicians flashy ads and lengthy campaign trips – and imagine what they will be expected to give in return.

Story Submission – R. Nelson, Majestic Ranch Academy 2007

“My name is Robbie Nelson. I attended Majestic Ranch Academy in 2007. I have a story that has not left my mind since I was there. It is something I’ve always thought was wrong and should not have ever happened to me or to anyone else, but have always thought I could do nothing about it. I don’t even remember what it was that I did wrong but one of the house parents brought in two five pound dumb bell weights and made me hold the weights up straight in front of me. If my arms dropped, he stomped on my feet or in front of everyone. I must have gone up and down with those weights for more than two hours. I was stomped on and stomped on. I remember finally being able to go to bed. I remember not being able to lift myself up to the top bunk because my arms were so tired and died. The house parent said ether get in your bed or do pushups on the floor. I told him I could not lift myself up or climb up. He wouldn’t help me to bed or let me sleep on the bottom. He then tripped me to my stomach and stood on my back and told me to do pushups until I was strong enough to climb into bed. I have plenty of stories like this but dont like to climb into depth of thought about them. Just thought id share this one.”

Thank you for sharing this, Robbie.  The more stories that come out about WWASP and other abusive institutions, the more exposure we will receive as survivors.  Also – it is never too late to report child abuse such as this.  I strongly recommend reaching out to your local authorities.  Thanks for your bravery in sharing.  Should you wish to provide anything further, I’d be happy to publish.

Behavior Modification and Brainwashing

For-Profit Therapy Damaging America’s Youth

If you were to poll the average American about the use of behavior modification and brainwashing in today’s society, they would likely respond by naming cults, POW camps, secret government agencies, and foreign propaganda films. Should you attempt to explain that these tactics are currently being used today in America against unwilling children and teenagers, they would likely respond in disbelief.

For those of us who have endured the troubled teen industry, we understand firsthand that these practices are alive, well and thriving in this underground industry.  While a comprehensive total of the number of privately run “behavior modification” facilities for teens and children is unknown, it is estimated that tens of thousands of children move through this system every year, virtually unknown to the general public.  Due to lack of Federal (and in many cases State) oversight, these programs are able to operate independently without licensure, inspections, or any comprehensive definition of the type of treatment, length of stay, or admission requirements that they must adhere to.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, behavior modification and brainwashing are defined as the following:

Behavior Modification: psychotherapy that is concerned with the treatment (as by desensitization or aversion therapy) of observable behaviors rather than underlying psychological processes and that applies principles of learning to substitute desirable responses for undesirable ones (as phobias or obsessions) —called also behavioral therapy, behavior therapy

Brainwashing:  a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas, 2: persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship

While these definitions seem vague by nature, a brief search on facilities currently operating the United States notes the following within their literature – all quite similar to the definitions described above:

Island View – a high-impact residential treatment facility operated by Aspen Education Group with ties to Republican candidate Mitt Romney‘s former company, Bain Capital – offers the following advice to parents as to how not to sabotage their child’s treatment opportunities.

What do you mean by “shutting the door?”

Imagine that your child is standing in a corridor with both sides lined with doors. There is a door at the other end of the corridor. That’s the door you want your child to go through. It is the door that leads to success, well-being and personal happiness – in your opinion. Unfortunately, your child thinks that walking through that door is stupid, impractical, lame, not cool and utterly ridiculous. Perhaps at some conscious or unconscious level, he may have a desire to walk through the door but fear of the unknown, effort to get to the door, or any other underlying issues may make it impossible for him to walk through this door without some sort of a assistance.

The problem is that he is being distracted by all the other doors that are lining the corridor. To you, the signs on the doors read: Party, Drugs, Negative Friends, Hanging Out, School Failure, Depression, Psycho-Neurological Problem, Learning Difference, Manipulation, Excuses, You Don’t Understand, Loss of a Close Friend, Divorce, Low Self-Esteem, etc.

Your child, distracted or mitigated by these doors will opt to slip through one or more of these doors. If we let him do so, will he ever get through the door at the end of the hall? Maybe, but when? This year, next year, when he is 20? The reason you place the child in a treatment facility is that you thought that the time is NOW to make the change.

The best way to make it happen NOW, is to shut all other doors so that the only door that can be opened is the one you want him to walk through – the one at the end of the hall.

Shepherd’s Hill Academy, a private Christian behavior modification center in rural Georgia describes its multi-step programs as the following:

New Creations Wilderness Therapy:

The challenge of living in the woods without electricity or flowing water takes the teens out of their comfort zone. It requires they learn new and more effective coping and teamwork skills.  They participate in experiencing life without the negative cultural influences that so often draw attention away from the responsibilities and obligations of the real world.  Rights and privileges are taught to be exercised only to the degree that responsibilities and obligations are fulfilled.

Without a healthy concept of authority, teens have no reference point for moral right and wrong. As the teens see staff and leadership submit to God, an Authority greater than themselves, the reference point becomes clear. This, in turn, fosters a sense of security which frees the teens to better submit to their authority figures and to God.

Our ability to think and reason is rooted in the spiritual nature of our being. As the confusion of the culture is removed, they are challenged to choose and think for themselves about the reality of the inevitable issues of life such as origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

Next-Step Program:

Upon transitioning to the Next Step Program, the resident moves out of the wilderness program and into a home on campus. They are allowed more individual freedom and chances to make “right choices.” They also have the opportunity to gain back certain privileges they did not enjoy in the wilderness program, such as TV and video games. The Next Step Program offers the teen a chance to exercise their new healthy behavior patterns while living in a safe and structured environment. Although they are still in a controlled environment, they have many more opportunities where they must choose the way they will act and/or react to any number of societal situations. They are assisted in practicing healthy social interactions and relationships with their peers in a supervised environment. In other words, they get to practice behaving appropriately in the real world.

All in all, Shepherd’s Hill Academy embodies the qualities necessary to transform trouble teens into productive, caring, and spiritually mature young men and women.  With God’s help, we strive to bring about the necessary behavioral changes in struggling teens to become responsible and fruitful citizens who know how to think!

The Judge Rottenberg Center, a special needs program located in Canton, Massachusetts that accepts students as young as eight years old struggling with Autism, Aspergers, and other “severe, case-hardened problem behaviors” offers a few highlights of it’s “holistic” medication-free program.

Use of highly consistent application of behavior modification procedures both in the education/treatment of its students and in the management of its staff.  JRC offers intensive behavioral treatment based on peer-reviewed and accepted methods of behavioral psychology, which has been extremely effective for students who could not be effectively treated with psychotropic medication, psychotherapy, or positive only behavioral programming.

Positive reinforcement and non-intrusive procedures are tried first to determine if they can be sufficiently effective. If not, JRC considers supplementing them with professional approved “aversive” behavior modification techniques such as brief shock to the surface of the skin.

The most commonly used restrictive procedure at JRC is an electrical stimulation device that JRC manufactures called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (“GED”).  The GED unit consists of a transmitter operated by a JRC staff member and a receiver worn by the student.  The receiver delivers a low-level surface application of electrical current to the student’s skin upon command from the transmitter, as part of a designed behavioral treatment.  Minor side effects may consist of a redding of the skin and, on rare occasions, a small blister may appear if the device is not making full contact with the skin.

The implementation of the GED device leads to the immediate deceleration of a student’s aggressive and self-injurious behaviors, allowing that student to progress both academically as well as socially.  For the approximately 50% of the current JRC population that have the GED as part of their treatment program, the average (median) student received only one two-second application during that week.  46% received no applications at all and 78% received fewer than ten applications during the entire week.

For most of us, it is unthinkable to consider the very idea that these types of facilities exist and are exercising these practices.  The following links offer unique, brutal glimpses into the types of torture, abuse, and brainwashing being forced upon teenagers in the name of “behavior modification.”

GRAPHIC:  VIDEO FOOTAGE OF ACTUAL PASADENA BOOT CAMP                                                                                

FORMER STAFF MEMBERS DISCUSSES THE CEDU SCHOOL’S & THEIR PHILOSOPHY OF “EMOTIONAL GROWTH” TRAINING

ACTUAL PROMOTIONAL VIDEO FROM PROVO CANYON SCHOOL EXPLAINING THAT EDUCATION IS “PART OF THE MIX”

DOCU-SHORT ON THE JUDGE ROTENBERG CENTER’S USE OF ELECTRIC SHOCK THERAPY

CLIP ON CEDU’S LIFESPRING STYLE LARGE GROUP AWARENESS THERAPY CALLED “PROPHEETS”

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO FOR WWASP’S FORMER SEMINAR PARTNER RESOURCE REALIZATIONS “DISCOVERY” SEMINAR (MANDATORY FOR ALL STUDENTS)

LATEST GRADUATES OF THE PARENT”S DISCOVERY SEMINAR BY RESOURCE REALIZATIONS

PARENTS RECEIVED DISCOUNTED TUITION FOR ALL REFERRALS SENT TO WWASP FACILITIES.  HERE IS A VIDEO CREATED BY PARENTS OF WWASP STUDENTS

Get Involved: How You Can Help

What are the Facts?

Each year, tens of thousand of American children are forcibly sent against their will to private, for-profit “treatment” facilities across the United States and abroad.

These children are sent away by desperate parents, often looking for an alternative means of coping with their child’s behavior. Encouraged by marketing websites, parents are convinced that the only way to help their teenager and save their family is to send the child away – sometimes for years at a time – for intense behavior modification.

Operating under many different names – wilderness therapy programs, boot camps, behavior modification centers, residential treatment facilities, specialty boarding schools, and emotional growth academies – these programs exist without any standard definition, are not regulated by any Federal oversight, and many operate without State regulation as mental health facilities or educational providers. (see FTC report here)

These facilities often promote the use of escort services to transport children to the program.   As many children are unwilling to go to these facilities, this option allows parents to hire a fully-legal company to come to their home – often in the middle of the night – and forcibly restrain or handcuff the child and take them to the program of their choice.

A 2007 Report by GAO indicated that abuse within these programs was widespread and lack of oversight and regulation resulted in the unnecessary death and injury of many youth within these programs.  Many of these programs utilize treatments that have not been proven to be safe or effective and, in many cases, have led to PTSD or other psychological problems as a result of their use.

Some of these methods include attack therapy, large group awareness therapy, Lifespring or EST based seminar trainings, aversion therapy, seclusion & restraint, and intense behavior modification therapy.

Why is this a Problem?

Of the children sent to these programs, a widespread number report having experienced trauma – both during and after the program – as a result of their treatment.

A survey conducted by the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) in 2006 reached out to 700 youth who had attended 85 programs -located in 23 states and 5 different countries.  This sample is similar to other findings found by the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth (CAFETY).

Of the 700 students surveyed by ASTART, these children reported the following:

USE OF ESCORT SERVICES:

• Trauma reported – 48%

COMMUNICATION AND PRIVACY RIGHTS VIOLATIONS:

• Mail-monitoring – 93%

• Call-monitoring – 96%

• Filtered, restricted or interrupted correspondence – 86%

PHYSICAL RESTRAINT

• Experienced physical restraint – 34%

• Witnessed peers physically restrained – 60%

INNAPORPORIATE USE OF SECULAITON AND RESTRAINTS AS A RESULT OF:

• Breaking a program rule – 67%

• Saying something disrespectful – 52%

• Cursing – 48%

• Making a face – 30%

INHUMANE TREATMENT:

• Forced labor – 71%

• Restricted access to the bathroom – 68%

• Scare tactics – 63%

• Exposure to harsh elements like extreme heat, snow or rain – 60%

• Excessive exercise – 58%

• Food/nutritional deprivation – 43%

• Sleep deprivation – 41%

• Physical punishment – 31%

• Emotional, physical or sexual abused by staff – 45%

EDUCATION AND MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

• No individualized plan – 60%

• Not satisfied with the training background of the staff members who were providing education, therapy, support and/or care –  87%

Further studies by government agencies, reporters, independent organizations, and private individuals have found similar cases of abuse, death, and inhumane treatment.

How Can you Get Involved?

1.  CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS TO PROMOTE THE PASSING OF HR. 3126 ANDS. 1667.

These bills will help to provide Federal oversight of these facilities.  It only takes a brief moment to show your support.  The more letters and information sent, the more likely these bills are to pass.  It only takes two minutes to add your letter of in support of this legislation to help change the life of a child.

2. EDUCATE YOURSELF AND OTHERS

There are a litany of great, free films and documentaries available that provide a unique look into this industry.  Where words sometimes can’t capture the horrors of these facilities, watching live interviews and footage in undeniable truth.

Tranquility Bay Documentary- Les enfants perdus de Tranquility Bay (2005)

English-language pic by Gallic Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet provides a unique inside look into Tranquility Bay, the notoriously abusive World Wide Association of Specialty Schools (WWASP) Jamaican facility, as well as insight into other WWASP programs.  Rare footage and interviews with school directors and founders.  Excellent film.

Part 1 and Part 2 are both available for free streaming on Live Leak.

Who’s Watching the Kids? –  Montana PBS
Who’s Watching The Kids? There are more than 30 privately run schools for troubled youth operating in the state of Montana. They employ more than 600 people and pump an estimated 4 million into the state income taxes. It’s an exploding industry, but strangely, most Montanans have no idea the schools even exist. In this hour-long documentary, Montana PBS explores a lucrative industry praised for its novel approach to reforming youth, yet shrouded in disturbing allegations of abuse and neglect.

Free Streaming is Available Through PBS Montana

Double Feature: Over the GW & Aaron Bacon
by: Nick Gaglia (survivor of Kids of North Jersey) 

Over the GW (2007) is based on Nick Gaglia’s own experiences as a drug-addicted teen who underwent physical and psychological abuse at a cult-like, tough love rehab center. Tony Serra a drug-abusing Bronx teen whose worried mom (Julia Moriarty) checks him into a New Jersey rehabilitation clinic where physical restraint, mental abuse and will-breaking brainwashing are routine therapies.

Aaron Bacon (2009) – Inspired by the book “Help at Any Cost” by Maia Szalavitz, this film is based on the true story of a 16-year-old boy who dies as a result of malpractice and abuse in a wilderness program.

These films are both available for free streaming on Nick’s fansite.

3. SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE PROMOTING REFORM AND CHANGE

Without support, organizations such as these cannot continue to advocate on behalf of troubled teens.  Their efforts have led to teach-outs, protests, potential legislation, and great media coverage of our cause.  Please, get involved if you can or donate if you can’t.  We need your support!

Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth (CAFETY)

The members of CAFETY envision the day that no young person is harmed in the name of treatment and when youth are empowered to be equal partners in their own care.  They have advocated tirelessly on behalf of troubled youth not only to provide statistical research and data to support claims of abuse and neglect, but also to protest, speak out, and work with politicians to help draft legislation.

National Youth Rights Association (NYRA)

NYRA’s mission centers on challenging age discrimination against young people, both in law and in attitudes and supporting the basic freedoms afforded to young Americans in the Bill of Rights.  They have worked closely with CAFETY in recent protests and also provide advocacy to those youth who have endured – or will endure – the hardships of the troubled teen industry.

Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, & Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (ASTART)

A START, the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment, is an organization of mental health professionals, parents, advocates, and young adults who came together in 2005 amidst growing concern about mistreatment of youth in residential programs.

The Hobbit - Actual WWASP Isolation Room in the US where kids spent years.

Synanon: The Beginning of the Troubled Teen Industry

How Did Today’s Troubled Teen Industry Come to Be?

Synanon – The Beginnings of an Industry

Before reading the history of Synanon, I encourage you to visit The Synanon Museum. The online “Museum” offers a unique view into life at Synanon.

In 1958, Charles E. “Chuck” Dederich, Sr, a well-respected member of the Alcoholics Anonymous community, decided to fill a need for those who were previously denied entry into the A.A. system. At that time, A.A. only accepted those addicted solely to alcohol. Noting the need for effective treatment for drug users, Dederich formed Synanon. What began as a two-year residential program primarily focused on heroin addiction would later become something much larger, eventually forming into the “Church of Synanon.”

As his two-year program flourished, Dederich began to form a theory that treatment for drug addiction was never complete. Rather, it was a life-long process that required constant participation in Synanon’s programs. He first developed a series of supplemental materials for use outside of the program, an industry that at one point generated approximately $10 million annually. As time went on, Dederich began to feel that this wasn’t enough. Life-long residential care became Dederich’s primary focus.

Synanon then purchased the Club Casa del Mar, a former 1920’s beachside hotel in Santa Monica, California and formed a “lifelong recovery center” for Synanon members. There members of Synanon lived with their families communally raising children and forming a cult-like society for lifelong recovery. Not only did the community admit drug addicts, they also admitted those who did not use or who had never used, following what would later become known as the “Dry Addict Philosophy.”

Treatment was based on what was called “The Synanon Game.” This “game” formed the beginnings of what would later be called “attack therapy,” a method of treatment that still exists in behavior modification centers today.

Dederich is quoted as stating, “The Synanon Game began with an idea I had of getting people together in a room to pursue a conversation with a “line of no line.” I began to yell and curse and accuse and ridicule: I talked to everyone in the room as if he had a tail. Boy I felt great, and everyone else loved it too. The next week they all came back. That was the birth of the Synanon Game, which basically hasn’t changed at all since 1958. Before the days of Synanon nobody had ever told addicts to stop using drugs. People tried to love them out of it, reason them out of it, and motivate them out of it. We said to them: “Hey, KNOCK THAT OFF! If you shoot dope here we’ll throw your ass out. Synanon came into existence because our society is composed of mama’s boys and daddy’s little girls who have been innundated by attempts to produce nothing but agreeable sensations in them. Character disorders, quite simply, are people who had too strong a dose of “mother love” and were never properly housebroken by fathers. The childish idea that money can accomplish something without people is rampant in our society. At the top, its always the manipulation of people — the people business — that makes for success or failure. I am proposing a counter-philosophy, a rather old-fashioned, commonsense approach to things: ‘Good boys and good girls get good things — bad boys and bad girls get bad things.’ This idea is the very basis of Synanon. We are a father principle phenomenon which rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior.”

By the 1970’s, Synanon had grown into a multi-million dollar empire.

A 1977 article in People Magazine details that, “The number of people who have undergone the Synanon experience recently passed 15,000. About a third of the 1,300 currently in residence are so-called “squares” who are there not because they have drug problems but because they like the communal, highly structured way of life….Adult members’ time is divided into two periods: seven six-hour days of “motion,” or work such as maintenance and construction, and seven days of “growth,” when they are free to rest, read and pursue hobbies. Children at Synanon attend school for three weeks, then work as apprentice carpenters or scullery maids for three weeks. “Everybody teaches,” Dederich says, “secretaries, prostitutes, ex-drug addicts.” Discipline is harsh. “When kids get out of line they are knocked on their asses. That treatment turns them into woolly lambs in about a week.” The system seems to work. Synanon children have been given national achievement tests and score well above average.”

Outside of round-the-clock drug treatment & discipline, life at Synanon required many other strange things of it’s members. Should a woman become pregnant, she was forced to live in “the Hatchery” beginning in the seventh month of pregnancy until the child was six month’s old. In the same 1977 People Magazine article, Dederich is quoted as stating, “It removes the father from some unpleasant aspects, like getting up for the 2 o’clock feeding. We don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but we’re trying it. Nothing is sacred just because it’s been done for a million years.”

According to a Time Magazine article , “In 1970 Dederich decided that because he was giving up smoking, everybody else would too. In 1975 the women at Synanon began shaving their heads. Any that refused were ostracized. When Dederich’s wife Betty went on a diet in 1976, all the other members had to cut down on the vittles. That same year Dederich concluded that Synanon had too many kids. So all the men were pressured into having vasectomies. This year [1977, sic] Betty Dederich died. Dederich found another woman and soon decided that everyone would benefit by taking a new mate. Couples who had been married for as long as 30 years are now in the process of divorcing and remarrying.” Eventually women were “encouraged” to have abortions against their will as Dederich felt childbirth was no more important than squeezing out a football.

In order to help protect their tax-exempt status, Dederich began to seek the placement of troubled youth into his facilities. Teens were sent to Synanon by state and Federal organizations, but were housed in separate facilities. They were referred to as “The Punk Squad.” According to a 2008 article by Paul Morantz, “As these juveniles did not want to be there, Synanon methods failed. Violence was then permitted upon them, breaking for first time Synanon’s “non violent rule.” Children were struck across the face, knocked down, otherwise punished and then “gamed.” Soon the OK on violence would spread to “splitees,” suspected thieves and perceived spies and enemies.”

As Synanon’s methods became more widely criticized, the “Church of Synanon” was formed to help establish itself as a religious institution, thus devoid of tax regulations. In addition, Dederich helped to organize the “Imperial Marines,” a group of members dedicated to protecting the institution and fighting those who criticized or threatened its existence. As Synanon began to fail, the Imperial Marines began to beat and even kill splitees, news anchors who reported on Synanon’s abuses, and family members of “patients” who were trying to escape. An underground railroad had formed outside of the main compound which helped to return kids to their families as they ran away from the program. Participants were met with severe violence.

In 1991, Synanon finally came to its end, though it still operates abroad in Germany.

How Did Synanon Shape the Troubled Teen Industry?

In 1967, Mel Wasserman – influenced by his participation in Synanon – formed CEDU Education. CEDU was the first of many programs influenced by former Synanon members. It was also the first parent-choice, private-pay adolescent behavior modification center.

Like Synanon, participants in the program were not treated by psychologists or trained staff. Therapy was much like the Synanon game, however it was referred to as “Raps.” While Raps were a slightly watered down version of the original game, they still used attack therapy as a model and relied on verbal assault to help modify children’s behavior.

According to a Wikipedia article, “The average time a student spent at a CEDU school was 2½ years. The school year was year-round. The original CEDU program did not believe in use of psychological medicine. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 1pm to 5pm (sometimes 6pm) students were required to attend group therapy sessions called Raps. In this CEDU period, Raps were highly confrontational, at any given moment in a Rap there were could be between 1 to 15 students screaming at other students or, with their head pointed towards the floor, screaming at their own ’emotional issues’ and/or crying uncontrollably. Approximately 95% of the faculty had no accreditation or training specific to intensive Gestalt based ‘group therapy’ which was very popular during this time period.”

CEDU also began to implement large group awareness therapy, something that would persist throughout future troubled teen programs. Wasserman created a seven-part series of 20-24 hour seminars titled “Propheets.” Each Propheet focused on a different topic, all inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” In addition to the Propheets, students were acquired to attend two workshops. The “I & ME Workshop” and “The Summit Workshop.” The workshops were based on the Lifespring program, which now has developed into Landmark Education. These seminars were highly confrontational and utilized a variety of games, tactics, and large-group therapy to change children’s thought patterns.

A full breakdown of the Propheets and seminars is found on this Wikipedia article.

CEDU operated from 1967-1998, when it was purchased by Brown Schools. Brown Schools went bankrupt in 2005, marking the end for CEDU. Three of the programs, however, were purchased and reopened by Universal Health Services and are still currently operating today.

Today’s Troubled Teen Industry

Behavior Modification Centers, Bootcamps, Wilderness Therapy Programs, Residential Treatment Facilities, and Christian Treatment Facilities have flourished in recent years.

The majority of these programs utilize the same methods employed by Synanon and CEDU, including attack therapy, large group awareness training, levels and point systems, strict authoritarian leadership, and harsh punishments. In 2008, there were an estimated 650 private, nongovernmental residential treatment programs in the US alone.

Some of the most notable offspring from the Synanon movement are The Elan School, Straight Inc, The Seed, Kids Inc, The Pathway Center, and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP).

The Mitt Romney & Troubled Teen Connection

Mitt Romney:  Helping Troubled Teens?

If Mitt Romney is elected president, his wife has already committed to “helping” troubled teens.

This seemingly innocuous statement would appear to be nothing more than genuine concern for youth…unless you do your homework on the type of “help” that Romney has supported and benefited from throughout his career.

Romney’s former Utah finance co-chair Robert Litchfield is the founder of WWASP (World Wide Association of Specialty Schools).  WWASP operated schools both in the US and abroad, the majority of which have now been shut down over allegations of abuse.  Current civil litigation filed in Utah on behalf of both parents and students of former WWASP institutions alleges, “teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.”

Romney’s national finance co-chair is Mel Sembler, the founder of Straight Inc.  Straight Inc operated from 1976 until 1993 and ran nine programs in seven states.  As noted in Maia Szalavitz’ 2007 article, “At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon. According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

Neither Robert Litchfield or Mel Sembler have ever admitted guilt or doubt regarding their program’s methods, both blaming the allegations of abuse on teens who have a history of lying and deceiving and parent’s with a financial axe to grind.

In 1984, Mitt Romney founded “Bain Capital Group,” which now owns and operates Aspen Education Group.

Mount Bachelor Academy, an Aspen Education Group program, was shut down by DHS in Oregon after nine substantiated cases of abuse and neglect were found by investigators.  Sagewalk, another Aspen Education Group program, was called “reckless” in regards to a 16 year old boy who died in the program.

Several lawsuits have been filed against Aspen Education Group with allegations including, “emotional, physical, and sexual abuse while residents.”  and further alleges that teens in it’s care, “were subjected to regular psychological abuse and shaming, including being required to reenact  traumatic experiences (such as prior instances of child sexual abuse) in front of their peers; that they were subjected to extreme isolation and prolonged deprivations of food, water, shelter, and basic medical care; that students were required to go days with little or no sleep and were also regularly forced into “chain gang” style labor; that phone calls to their families were limited and were monitored…and that parents were instructed by staff not to believe their children if they claimed malfeasance or abuse – i.e., the children will lie, it is all part of the treatment process, parents were told”

An interesting clause can be found in the initial agreement signed by parents handing their children over to Aspen Education Group:

“Sponsor intends by this Waiver and Release to release, in advance, and to waive his or her rights and discharge each and every one of the Released Parties, from any and all claims for damages for death, personal injury, or property damage which Sponsor may have, or which may hereafter accrue as a result of Student’s participation in any aspect of the Programs, even though that liability may arise from negligence or carelessness on the part of the persons or entities being released, from dangerous or defective property or equipment owned, maintained or controlled by them or because of their possible liability without fault.  Additionally, Sponsor covenants not to sue any of the Released Parties based up their breach of any duty owed to Sponsor or Student as a result of their participation in any aspect of the Programs…Released Parties shall be exempt from liability to Sponsor, his or her heirs, assigns, and legal representatives.”

For someone with so much history of supporting & being supported by institutions that abuse teenagers in their care, it seems ironic that he would allow any further connections to this cause.  Hopefully, by spreading this information, we can bring awareness to the fact that teens are being abused every day in the name of “treatment” and that NO ONE who profits off of this deserves to be in any place of power.

DO NOT SUPPORT MITT ROMNEY!

Romney’s Connection to Abusive Boot Camps

Robert Litchfield Connection

Romney, Torture and Teens

Romney Owns Bain Capital

Aspen Education Group Lawsuits

Wikipedia on WWASP

Wikipedia on Aspen Education Group

Wikipedia on Mel Sembler 

Survivor Stories from Straight Inc.

Miller, Harkin Reintroduce Legislation Against Troubled Teen Industry

The Fight Arrives at the House & The Senate: We Need YOU!

As detailed by the Committee on Education & the Work Force, Democrats are reintroducing legislation that will help to regulate the troubled teen industry.  Formerly called HR-911, this bill will provide some key changes in the way that institutions caring for troubled youth are allowed to operate.  Several notable organizations have stepped forward to support this bill, but we still need support from individuals.

Please, call the founders of this bill and show your support:

Melissa Salmanowitz (Miller) 202-226-0853
Justine Sessions (Harkin) 202-224-3254
Shams Tarek (McCarthy), 516-739-3008

Further, write your locate representatives and senators and urge them that this legislation NEEDS to pass.  Too many kids are suffering and dying in these abusive programs and we MUST put an end to this.  CONTACT YOUR SENATORS  and CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES today!

Keeping Kids Safe

The Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2011

Tens of thousands of U.S. teenagers attend private and public residential programs – including therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness camps, boot camps, and behavior modification facilities – that are intended to help them with behavioral, emotional, mental health, or substance abuse problems. Depending on the state in which the program operates, some of these programs are subject to State law or regulation, while others are not. As a result of this loose patchwork of state oversight, children at some the programs have been subject to abuse and neglect with little to no accountability.

The Government Accountability Office found thousands of allegations of child abuse and neglect at residential programs for teens since the early 1990s. Tragically, in a number of cases, this abuse and neglect led to the death of a child. To address this urgent problem, the “Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2011” would:

Keep teens safe with minimum standards for residential programs that are focused on teens with behavioral, emotional, mental health, or substance abuse problems

• Prohibit programs from physically, mentally, or sexually abusing children in their care;
• Prohibit programs from denying children essential water, food, clothing, shelter, or medical care – whether as a form of punishment or for any other reason;
• Require programs to provide children with reasonable access to a telephone and inform children accordingly;
• Require programs to train staff in what constitutes child abuse and neglect and how to report it;
• Require that programs only physically restrain children if it is necessary for their safety or the safety of others, and to do so in a way that is consistent with federal law already applicable in other contexts; and
• Require programs to have plans in place to provide emergency medical care.

Increase transparency to help parents make safer choices for their children

• Require programs to disclose to parents the qualifications, roles, and responsibilities of staff members;
• Require programs to notify parents of substantiated reports of child abuse or violations of health and safety laws; and
• Require programs to include a link or web address for the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will carry information on residential programs.

Hold teen residential programs accountable for violating the law

• Require states to inform the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of reports of child abuse and neglect at covered programs and require HHS to conduct investigations of such programs to determine if a violation of the national standards has occurred; and
• Provide HHS the authority to assess civil penalties up to $50,000 for every violation of the law.

Ask states to step in to protect teens in residential programs

Within three years, states must require all public and private programs to be licensed, meet standards that are at least as stringent as the national standards, and implement a monitoring and enforcement system. The Department of Health and Human Services would continue to inspect programs where a child fatality has occurred or where a pattern of violations has emerged.

Circle of Hope Girls Ranch

Circle of Hope Girls Ranch:  Abuse in the Name of Religion?

Thanks to Donna for bringing this school to my attention.  Donna has been working tirelessly on behalf of her daughter and other children in teen institutions to bring awareness to this little-known “school” in Missouri.  Having aged out of the foster system, she wanted nothing but a great life for her eight children.  Her husband was sent on three consecutive deployments to Iraq and her daughter started acting out.  In an effort to help, she selected “Circle of Hope Girls Ranch,” a school which promised to provide a loving, Christian boarding school experience.

The following article, “Horror Stories from Tough Love Homes” by Kathryn Joyce offers an insightful look into this program and the terrifying experience that Donna and her family faced as a result.

The incredible blog, “Chuckles Travels” includes disturbing images, documents, and findings from the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch as well, including a letter from it’s founder to parents urging them to not question his motives.

Through her efforts, Donna has managed to secure a meeting with a Senator outside of her state and is currently seeking survivor stories from children who suffered abuse at the hands of a troubled teen program.  She can be reached at declutterbuddy(at)aol(dot)com.  Stories can also be posted as comments to this post.

Thank you, Donna – without people like you, we’d be one step further from fighting this abusive system.

 

 

 

Before Tranquility Bay

Stories from Before Tranquility Bay – © C.Kapela

It seems to be such a common theme among parents who sent their kids to programs to state, “But there was no other option!” Looking back at my life, I am in no way guilt-free. I made poor decisions and experimented with things at an earlier age than many. But the important thing to remember is that, no matter the crime, we were all children. Whether we were 12, 15, or 17 – our parent’s job was to care for us, protect us, and teach us how to survive in the world. I wanted to share some excerpts from my memoir that took place before Tranquility Bay. Many of these stories are deeply personal and affected me tremendously. I don’t share them lightly. Rather, I hope to bring awareness to the fact that, for most of us, the problems we encountered before being sent away were often just as difficult as what we experienced in the programs. Kids don’t become “bad” out of nowhere. Most children do their best to be good, to succeed, and to make do with whatever tools their families have provided them. The issue isn’t solely abusive programs, but rather it is all too often a combination of troubled experiences during childhood as well as the poor decision of parent’s to relinquish their child to a system widely known to cause further harm and abuse.

These stories are not complete and do not flow as well as I would like them to, but I wanted to share them with my fellow survivor friends in an effort to help us all come to terms with not only our own choices but the experiences we endured that led to our abandonment in an abusive facility.

…

I remember standing on the edge of the property, staring out at the huge expanse of field and trees. My parents were going to build a barn for me on the back of the lot so I could finally have my own horse. I had loved horses since I was small, riding and taking lessons at every opportunity. I was going to get a Palomino – they had been my favorite since I was five. My brother and I had already drawn up maps of the land. We were going to build a tree house in the far left corner. We had planned for everything – stakes to tie the horses up, trails for racing, multiple rooms and a flag post on top where we would create our own banner. It was going to be “our world.” We couldn’t wait.

Most of the spring had been spent helping with the design of the house, reviewing floor plans and meeting with architects. It was so much fun playing with the software and adding walls and windows wherever we wanted. Although my parents had already selected the final plan, it didn’t stop us from coming up with new dream homes to present them with.

One afternoon, just after summer break had finally started, I snuck into my older sister’s room while she was out with her friends. Originally, I was just looking for a shirt to borrow but then my curiosity got the best of me. I opened a drawer and it was filled with letters from her school. I pulled them out and started reading them. I found notices that she had skipped class, that her grades were slipping, even an edited report card. For a girl who was constantly trying to one-up her sister, it was a jackpot.

I grabbed them all and ran upstairs. I handed them to my father. I felt so proud, like I had discovered something really wrong and was doing the right thing by letting them know. I was obsessed with being the “good kid.” I always got straight A’s, always made honor roll, and never let my siblings get away with anything. My parents praised me up and down for my diligence and I reveled in the feeling of being such a perfect child.

In contrast, my sister was constantly in trouble. My parents berated her for lying, for not doing chores, for choosing the wrong classes in school. My brother and I were encouraged to participate in giving consequences to her and joining in the lectures. They explained that her actions affected us too and we had a right to be upset. Many evenings were spent gathered around the dining room table while my parents lectured her, my brother and I interjecting here and there about how it was wrong to lie or how we never skipped our chores or how it wasn’t fair to hog the Nintendo. It had gotten so bad that my mother had started calling my brother and I “W” as an insult when we got into trouble, sometimes even when my sister could hear.

That night, when we assembled around the dining room table to discuss the letters I had found, I assumed it would be no different. I was feeling smug and proud. I looked at my sister and she looked back at me, her eyes burning with anger. I knew she would yell at me later for going into her room without permission, but right now my parents were sitting beside me and there was nothing she could do. I noticed something seemed different as my dad pulled the letters out and laid them on the table. His hand was shaking a little. He was more angry than usual. She had edited report cards before, this was nothing new. Something was wrong that I couldn’t quite place.

My sister had already started apologizing, explaining that she had been afraid to tell them about her grades and had just started taking anything the school sent home. She had gotten two C’s, which she had changed to B’s. She had also never switched the jewelry making class that she had signed up for to something more productive like they had requested. She was crying. She knew she would be grounded for a long time. My parents were silent for awhile. This was new. I was confused. Where was the lecture? Why weren’t they telling her she should have gotten all A’s? Why were they just sitting there?

Slowly, my dad pulled one letter out from the stack. He looked at my sister for a long time before he said anything. “W” He stated, calmly. “This one was never opened. Did you ever think to open them all before you hid them?” She just looked at him. None of us understood.

“I wanted to wait to tell you all this once we had more details,” he began “But now I feel as though I have to. Last week, I accepted a teaching position in Dexter and signed the contract. Your mom and I have put an offer in on a house there in a subdivision. It’s only a year old and is right near the high school. With your mom and I both working out there, it only makes sense to move closer to town. We’ve put this house and the new property both up for sale and the realtor expects them to move quickly.” My heart was racing. I wasn’t going to get a horse anymore. I’d be starting seventh grade in a new school. I looked at my brother. Fear was written all over his face. He was a shy kid and it always took him a long time to make friends. I didn’t even want to look at my sister. She was about to start her senior year.

Before any of us could even start to protest, my dad opened up the letter he had previously been holding. He looked at my sister as he started to read it. “Daniel Kapela,” he stated, calmly, “We would like to offer you a position at Farley Hill Elementary School…” I didn’t even listen to the rest. It was a job offer from Pinckney. Had he gotten it, none of us would be moving. That was his first choice – the position he had been depending on. That was the reason we hadn’t considered moving closer to Ann Arbor in the first place.

I felt so guilty for revealing her secret yet resentful that we were all suffering because of it. I never wanted her to get into this much trouble, just enough to keep my status as the “good kid.” The rest of the evening my parents fought back and forth with her. My brother and I left the conversation, not wanting to be a part of it anymore. I remember them yelling, her crying, finally storming downstairs into her room and slamming the door.

As we all prepared for the move, the relationship between my sister and my parents only deteriorated. By now, my brother and I had accepted that we were transferring, even started to look forward to it. My sister wanted nothing to do with it. She begged for them to let her stay at Pinckney. It was only 30 minutes from our new house. They refused.

As my sister became more angry, my mother started criticizing her constantly, always keeping me in the loop in secret so I wouldn’t act out like her. She hated the color she’d dyed her hair, didn’t like the clothes she wore, and thought her biggest passion – acting – was a complete waste of time. I remember us going to see my sister star in a play and my mom telling me how awful it was. We left before it ended. My mother considered me her ally, and it felt good.

Shortly before the move, my sister confessed, crying, that she had become bulimic and had been throwing up after every meal. My mother accused her of lying. Later that day, she sat me down and vented about how much she couldn’t handle the lying anymore. “W isn’t bulimic,” she stated. “She isn’t skinny enough to be bulimic.”

I remember feeling so grown up that my mother was talking to me about her stresses, even though I was only 11 years old.

We finally made the move to Dexter that summer. We didn’t know anyone yet so we just pretty much hung around the house. My brother and I would walk into town – go to Dairy Queen, or the gift shops. One day, I walked to the barber shop by myself and had all my hair cut off into a short blonde bob. It was a little shorter than I liked, but far better than the horrible perm my mother let me get the year before. My nickname, though affectionate, was “The Fro.” I didn’t want to start at a new school with my hair like that.

It was fun being at the new house. My parents had a pool put in that was bigger than the one at the old house. We spent a lot of time out there, swimming and playing. In August we would be heading on vacation to Traverse City like we did every year. My brother and I were counting off the days, immersed in trying to remember every water park, every miniature golf place and arcade we had visited the year before.

My sister was starting to get her college acceptance letters. It had become a major point of conflict between her and my parents. She had been accepted to Evansville University in Indiana, a private school, and wanted to pursue theater. My parents wanted nothing to do with out-of-state private schools, theater, or anything other than exactly what they wanted her to do. “Two years at community college,” They offered. “Then we’ll pay for two at university. But you have to get all A’s.”

Money had nothing to do with it, they constantly reminded us. They felt that her B/C average in high school wasn’t a strong enough track record to support. If she could do better in Community College then they would reconsider. This was the conversation she was having with my dad as Alex and I came in from the pool. My dad was lecturing and I could tell from the look on her face that she had been there awhile. The tear stains were almost dry.

My brother was going to go play Final Fantasy in his room and I was going to get dressed and call my friend. I walked into W’s room to see if I could find a cute tank-top to steal while she wasn’t paying attention. As I was pulling the shirt out of the drawer, she exploded in the room behind me, seething. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened the last time she had caught me in her room and she wasn’t going to let me get away with it again. She started screaming at me to get out of her room. She told me she hated me, that I was a spoiled brat who did whatever I wanted and never got in trouble for it. I yelled back, arguing furiously that I was really only borrowing a shirt this time, and she shouldn’t say things like “hate” to her sister. My father heard us and stormed in, immediately on my side.

She couldn’t take it. Moments before, she had been told again that they would not support her at U of E and if she went there, she was on her own. Now my dad was taking my side in an argument where I was obviously at fault. She blew up. “You don’t let me do anything!” She screamed, “I hate it here! I am moving back to mom’s.”

I expected my father to freak out, to try to stop her, but his face just hardened and he returned her cry with muted emotion.“Fine. Go ahead.” He said, “Tell her to pick you up right now. Go live there. But you’re not going to come back.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was even more stunned when my sister ran into the kitchen, grabbed the phone and really did it. She was sobbing into the phone, telling her mom to come and get her right now. She hung up and stormed past me, an angry glare catching me as she hurried by. She started throwing her clothes into bags, grabbing her make-up, CDs, books. I just stood there staring.

My brother came out of his room and started to cry. They had always been close. He was her Nintendo buddy, or at least that’s what they called each other. He was the youngest and didn’t have to rat anyone else out to maintain his status. He was every one’s favorite.

Within the hour, her mom was there to pick her up. I had aways envisioned her mother as evil and mean. That’s the way my parents had always made her seem. While they criticised W constantly, all faults were attributed to her mother. I couldn’t comprehend why she would even go back there, if it was so bad, if it made her into such a bad person. But she did.

W walked out the door that day with everything she could carry. I wouldn’t see her again for several years and after that brief visit, several more. My parents would later refuse to attend her high school graduation. Had I known how long it would be before I heard her voice or saw her face, I probably would have tried harder to stop her. Instead, I stood stoically beside my father, gave her a quick hug and said a short good bye. Like my parents, I believed she deserted us and would do nothing to try and win her back.

…

I was so excited for seventh grade. I knew it would be fun and I would succeed. I envisioned all the classes I would finally get to take — robotics, creative writing, choir. I had never failed a class, never gotten below a B in my whole life. I prided myself on my academic success and always expected every door to be open for me.

Instead of choosing classes, however, they were already chosen for me before I even began. Dexter operated on a “team” system. All students took the same core classes – English, Science, Math, and Social Studies – and traveled in the same group to each class. There were few electives and no advanced classes available. Had I stayed at Pinckney my options would have been limitless. I had been on an advanced track there since elementary school and was about to start taking high school level courses.

My 6th grade math teacher wrote a petition to the school requesting that they let me take a higher level course based on the work I had done that year and on my aptitude for learning. She stated that it would be an insult to me if I was forced to retake coursework I had done years ago and was likely to cause more harm than good to my overall academic career. After receiving the letter, the school issued me a test on algebra, which was to be taught the year following. I remember being so determined as I took that test. I wanted to prove myself. Though I had only taken pre-algebra previously, I still scored an 87%. While it wasn’t the perfect score I had desired, I was proud of the results. Unfortunately, the school denied the petition as I would have to walk to another location for the upper-level classes and they did not have security procedures in place to accommodate. I felt like I had wasted hours of my time on a test that didn’t even matter.

I was offered the option to skip two grades but I was too afraid of being out of my peer group. I didn’t want to feel any more out of place than I already did. It was scary enough to be starting middle school in a brand new district, but to be moved to high school at twelve years old was an even scarier thought. I refused the offer, begging my parents to instead let me go back to Pinckney. They refused, stating that it would be illegal for them to let me use someone else’s address and that they couldn’t handle the transportation back and forth anyhow.

As compensation, they coordinated with my new teachers to come up with a plan to keep me from getting bored and losing focus. It was decided that on top of the regular coursework, I would be given additional assignments on a more advanced level. Though they wouldn’t count toward my overall grade, they were intended to ensure I was learning at the appropriate level. I certainly didn’t want more homework but I didn’t have a choice.

I was so nervous on the first day of school. I had grown up with the same kids since Kindergarten, had been student council president, had always felt popular and well-liked. I had never been the new kid before and had no idea what to expect. At least the middle school itself was also brand new. Like me, everyone was wandering around disoriented and asking for directions.

Standing in the line for lunch, I was terrified. I had no idea where to sit. It was obvious that there were groups and cliques. Some kids sat alone. Some sat outside. Others had groups so large they had to pull multiple tables together to sit. I felt so out of place. I could feel the knot growing in my stomach, the excitement I had built up over the summer starting to fade. I had imagined myself walking into school, immediately making friends, laughing and having a great time. Instead, I was clutching a lunch tray and speaking to no one.

Someone started tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was Rachel, a girl I had met once through a friend in Pinckney. She too was starting at Dexter! I felt immediate relief. Even though I hardly even knew her, it was great to see a recognizable face. “C’mon,” she said, excitedly, “I already found us a table and I’m pretty sure it’s a good one.”

I wasn’t used to cliques. My school had always been large enough that everyone had their own group and even the kids who weren’t considered “popular” were able to find somewhere to fit in. Here, everyone looked the same. Even though Pinckney was an all-white country school too, the population was large enough that it supported differences. Dexter was just too small and secluded. I looked down at my outfit – shiny black pants, Converse sneakers, and a long-sleeve black tee with a spider on it. No one else was dressed like me.

We sat down at the table. All the girls were so pretty but I couldn’t help notice how they all dressed the same. Rachel looked at me and smiled. I could tell she was excited. Around me, I saw other kids staring. It felt like a spectacle. I realized immediately that this was the “popular” table. The girls started talking immediately, asking me questions about where I was from and did I like it here and what sorts of things I was into. They mostly played volleyball, had already started partying, and couldn’t wait to show me around. As long as I stuck with them, they stated, I was going to be just fine.

The knot in my stomach was growing bigger by the moment. I hated volleyball. My parents would never let me go to a party. I wasn’t even allowed to go to a friend’s house without their parents being home. I noticed they all had fake tans and were wearing short skirts with shaved legs. My mom despised tanning booths and I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs. She thought it was stupid and she didn’t shave hers so there was no reason for me to shave mine.

The questions stopped and I stayed quiet the rest of lunch, taking in what was happening around me. I wouldn’t have had a chance to speak even if I had wanted to. The girls were too busy talking about everyone else and sharing stories about their summer. As people walked by, their voices would drop and they’d tell Rachel and I who the person was and where they stood on the social ladder. The criticisms were endless. I felt completely out of place. Half of the comments they were making about outfits and activities could have been applied directly to me. Instead, they kept telling me how pretty I was and how they couldn’t wait to have me over and we would all do makeovers. It didn’t go unnoticed that they looked down at my clothes while they said it.

They asked Rachel and I if we wanted to walk home with them after school. They were going to a guys house, they said, and he had a built-in basketball court in his barn and a huge pool. His parents weren’t going to be home, so we would be able to do whatever we wanted. Someone had an extra bikini I could borrow for the pool. Rachel immediately accepted. I could tell she wanted desperately to fit in, to find the right group and be done with it. I accepted too but was a bit more hesitant. I would have to call my parents and get permission, which I knew they’d never give. I never lied to them and I knew they’d ask if his parents would be there. I was already dreading it.

After class, I dialed my mom from the payphone. No one else had to call their parents and they looked at me impatiently. My mom picked up and started asking me questions about my day. I was embarrassed, I didn’t want to stay on the phone for longer than necessary, not with so many eyes staring at me. I finally asked her. As expected, she started the usual questions. Where did he live? Were his parents going to be home? What would we be doing? I quickly answered – just swimming and playing basketball, his parents wouldn’t be home until later. Immediately she said no. I was too embarrassed to argue. I just told her I’d see her later and hung up the phone.

When I told the group that I couldn’t go, they just looked at me and shrugged. Rachel grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, whispering that I had to go, that this was important. She told me I should have never told my parents that his parents weren’t going to be there. She wanted me to call them back and tell them there had been a change in plans, but I refused. I had never lied to them before and I wasn’t going to start now. I wasn’t going to be like my sister. Finally, she gave up, joined the group, and they all left.

Sitting with the popular girls only lasted a few months. Rachel kept pushing me to go to parties, telling me stories of how they drank champagne and how all the boys wanted to go out with her. I wasn’t ready for this nor would I have ever gotten away with it so I kept refusing the invites. Slowly, they stopped asking me. The conversations at lunch stopped including me. It was like I wasn’t even there.

Then, one day, my usual seat was gone. They had actually removed the chair from the table. I didn’t even try to join them. The point was obvious. Instead I sat outside by myself, barely touching my lunch. I wanted to cry but I didn’t want to let on that I was hurt. I had never felt like such an outcast in my entire life.

That night, I begged my parents to let me go back to my old school. I told them how much I hated it here, how I wasn’t making friends, how no one really liked me. I despised all the extra homework, which consumed most of my free time. I will never forget my mom’s advice as she calmly explained that everyone goes through this in middle school. “Just smile more,” she said, “Say hi to everyone!” It seemed ridiculous to me. How was greeting the people that hated me on a daily basis going to help with anything?

The year dragged on so slowly. No one talked to me. I mostly sat by myself. I started to hate the way I looked and the way that others looked at me. I was getting teased relentlessly by the same people who had originally included me. They critiqued my clothes, my hair, my unshaven legs, my weight, everything. I had been given the nickname “Pimple Back Whale.”

Academically, I was excelling. The classes were the easiest I had ever taken so it wasn’t hard to stay on top of my work. I poured my whole self into studying and achieving. It was the only thing I had left. I started competing in essay and speaking competitions, entering art shows, and joined a writers club. My teachers all commended my efforts.

My peers, however, were not so accepting. I became the girl who everyone asked for test answers, sometimes getting threatened when I refused. I was the “goody-goody” who never did anything wrong. I was the “teacher’s pet.” When the awards ceremony came around at the end of the year, all I heard was the occasional snicker as I accepted the litany of awards I had received. Instead of feeling proud, I felt humiliated.

Every night, I cried and begged my parents to let me go back to my old school or to transfer me somewhere else. I couldn’t take it anymore. I would plead and plead but to no avail. Sometimes they would consider putting me into a private school but it always fell through. I had never been so unhappy in my whole life. I felt trapped in a world filled with people who hated me. My parent’s advice never wavered – just be friendly, smile, be yourself. I started to resent them for not understanding. I begged them to let me shave my legs or get different clothes but they refused. It was repeated constantly that everyone has a hard time in middle school, that it was no different. They had no idea how bad it had gotten – the taunting, the name calling. Nothing I could say or do would convince them I wasn’t just experiencing the normal roughness of burgeoning adolescence.

Shortly before my 12th birthday, I wrote a suicide note in my diary. I apologized to my family for what I was about to do. I laid down in my bed and started sobbing uncontrollably. I held a pillow over my face and tried to smother myself. Naturally, it didn’t work. I tied a piece of rope to the ceiling fan, but I couldn’t figure out how to tie a noose. Finally, I just gave up. Though unsuccessful the feeling of hopelessness stuck with me. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a pariah, an outcast.

Just before the summer, my MEAP scores qualified me for entry into a statewide gifted & talented program. As part of the program, I took my ACT test. I was so confident as I took that test, grateful to be in a room filled with high schoolers who had no idea who I was, finally feeling as though something good was happening to me. When the scores came back, I had gotten a 23 – high enough for entry into most state schools.

I received a scholarship to attend Math, Science & Technology camp at Michigan State University over the summer. It was two week program. We studied DNA, learned about genetics, worked with computer software I had hardly even heard of. I got to live in the dorms and eat in the cafeteria. I had never felt so grown up. It was a completely new experience and for the first time in nearly a year, I was making friends. I loved it. The instructors were supportive and challenging and it revived my confidence.

Summer faded quickly though, and before I knew it I was back in school. 8th grade dragged by no different than 7th, slowly leading into high school. I maintained my grades, continued to excel in writing and math, but the rift between my parents and I was widening my the moment. The less understood I felt, the more angry I became.

…

I was fifteen years old the day that it happened. I remember standing in the living room, calm but furious. My mom was upset because of the tone of voice I had used with her earlier that evening. She had taken to calling me “witch” whenever I was angry, accusing me of being cruel and hateful. My father had just gotten home and although he hadn’t been a part of the night’s previous argument, he immediately sided with my mother and both began to lecture me on my behavior.

Something snapped inside of me. It was like a flash bulb went off in my brain. Every day, I was facing endless criticism from my peers for being such a “goody-goody” and then coming home to arguments with my parents over facial gestures, the tone of my voice, my suspected “crimes.” I remembered everything my sister had endured. Earlier that afternoon, I had heard my mom make a comment to my brother about how he didn’t want to be like “Chelsea.” It was as though I had suddenly filled the vacuum of the bad child that my sister had left behind. I had never smoked a cigarette, never kissed a boy, never tried any drugs, never skipped class, never gotten below a B on a single report card, and never lied about what I was doing, yet despite all of that – I was still not good enough.

In that moment, I made the choice to stop slaving towards perfection. I wasn’t going to be the goody-goody anymore, not if I was still going to be treated like the bad kid at home. It was enough to face the torture of my peers, but to also face it at home was unbearable. From that moment on, I was going to do what I wanted to do.

I started hanging out with a new group of kids at school, most of which were labeled as the “sluts” and the “stoners.” I didn’t care. I was happy to have friends, happy to feel like a part of a group again. I tried my first cigarette a week later and within a few months was smoking fairly regularly. My parents were both smokers so it wasn’t hard to get cigarettes. At night, after they would go to bed, I would sneak into the kitchen and steal as many as I wanted. I didn’t even care if I got caught.

I started my first “real” job at McDonald’s, working part-time as the drive-through cashier. I loved it. I was able to get out of the house, make my own money, and hang out with a new crowd who didn’t go to my school at all. I had a huge crush on the kid who worked in the grill. He had orange-ish hair, faded from a previous dye job, played hockey, went to a different school, and was a champion flirt. I would work extra hours just on the off chance that we would be scheduled together. I still hadn’t had a real boyfriend, or really even kissed anyone, but I was hopeful that this would be the one.

In a moment of insecurity before going to work, I remember asking my mother if she thought I looked fat. I wasn’t playing basketball anymore and was clearly about to grow at least a foot. I knew I had gained some weight, but I was hopeful that it was just “baby fat” that would go away as I got taller. I will never forget the way my mother looked me over when I asked her that, casually replying that, “If you want me to be honest, you should probably cut back on the fries.” She asked me how much I weighed and then gave me a shocked glance. I weighed 145lbs. She had never – in her life – weighed above 130 and was 5’8″. I remember her attempting to console me with the fact that I didn’t look like I weighed that much, but that I definitely needed to do something about it.

After that conversation, I remember talking to my friend Sarah at school. She was much thinner than me, constantly obsessed with the latest diet or weight loss tip. Upon her urging, we stopped eating altogether. Within two weeks, I lost over fifteen pounds. I tried to keep it somewhat hidden, occasionally eating a bagel or drinking a diet coke in front of my friends and family. One day in the hallway at school, I passed out from being so light headed. She brought me some orange juice and I felt a bit better, but it didn’t stop me from continuing my plan to lose weight.

Eventually, I really did get to date my work crush. We started hanging out constantly. I enjoyed my first real make-out session. He called me every night. Though we didn’t stay together for long – only a brief two months – we stayed close after. The break-up was hard on me. I had never been through that before and desperately wanted someone to turn to outside of my friends. I tried to talk to my mother about it, but she wasn’t particularly supportive. She didn’t believe in getting “serious” before marriage. Not in the sexual sense, but in the emotional sense. I remember her always saying, “You’re single until the day you’re married.” I was more of the romantic type, inclined to dream of torrid love affairs and endless passion. I didn’t understand her point of view and so I stopped talking about it.

I became morosely depressed.

I don’t know what triggered it and I can’t remember exactly why, but one day while at lunch, I decided I couldn’t take my life anymore. I had a bottle of caffeine pills in my purse to help me lose weight. I took the two remaining pills. I then went around from person to person and asked if anyone had anything for a headache. I ended up with a bottle of Asprin from a friend. I sat down and took twelve pills. Looking back, it was hardly enough to be fatal, but it was certainly a cry for help.

By the end of the school day, my ears were ringing so bad I could hardly make out what the teachers were saying. I was tired and hopeless. I went home and immediately locked myself in my bedroom to go to sleep. I prayed that I wouldn’t wake up. I had only told one person of my plans, my best friend Emily, and I was awoken by her frantically calling me on my bedroom line. When I answered, she was crying. She had told her mother what I had done. I was gripped with fear. She told me that her mother was about to call my parents and that she was sorry. I knew she didn’t do it to cause me harm. I knew she did it because she cared. In a weird way, it felt good.

I heard the kitchen phone ring and pressed my ear to my bedroom door. I could hear my mother answer and I knew she was speaking to Emily’s mom. She sounded concerned. The phone clicked as she hung it up and I held my breath, waiting for my bedroom door to swing open. I expected my parents to come rushing in, afraid of what they might find. I crawled back into bed and prepared myself for a trip to the hospital. I laid there and waited….and waited….and waited. No one came.

I watched the alarm clock as the minutes passed and finally, after an agonizing twenty minutes of waiting, I stormed into the living room. My parents were both seated in their respective recliner chairs, watching a show on T.V. They looked up at me as I came out. I started crying immediately, demanding to know why they hadn’t come to check on me. My mother responded calmly, stating that she didn’t think it was “that serious” and that she wanted to wait until my brother had gone to bed so as not to embarrass me. I demanded that my father take me to the hospital, no longer wanting to die. I was so angry and hurt that no one had responded to my call for help.

When we made it to the hospital, the doctor’s informed me that although I hadn’t taken what seemed like a large dose, there was enough in my system that it could have led to death. Asprin overdoses come in two waves – the first causing ringing of the ears and sleepiness, the second wave causing death. I had to drink liquid charcoal to flush it from my system. I was admitted into the child psychiatry unit for a five day observation treatment. I spent those five days making friends with my fellow ward mates. One girl had carved her name into her arm. Another was seemingly fine unless you upset her, at which point she would explode into a tearful rage. A small kid, perhaps around eight or nine, decided I was his girlfriend. When I told him I was too old for him, he told me that he would stab me. He was quickly whisked back to his room.

For treatment, we watched Degrassi Junior High on a television in the back room. We then discussed in group how each episode related to our lives. We had regular class time and ate lunches in a large cafeteria that overlooked the helicopter landing pad. That was my favorite part. I had never been institutionalized before and it wasn’t that bad. I knew I would be released soon. The staff enjoyed my writing a great deal and supported me in taking extra time to work on essays and journal entries. They praised me on being intelligent and I remember one woman in particular asking if she could keep a copy of a story I was working on. I felt proud.

When I was released, my parents immediately started attending family counseling with me. We would try to work through our issues, each of us explaining how we felt wronged by the other. I didn’t trust them anymore and had built up so much hatred for them not having rescued me when I needed them. Our sessions quickly dissolved into fighting and eventually my parents gave up on family counseling. None of the tools we learned were ever put into place. Both my parents felt that the problem lay with me, and that I was the one who needed to change. I was then assigned the first psychiatrist of many that I would see throughout my adolescence.

Outside of the home, I had stopped caring about anything. I started hanging out with a new crowd. We attended all-night raves in Detroit, often taking copious amounts of Ecstacy. I tried acid, mushrooms, special K – anything I could sample that wasn’t as hard as “coke” or “heroin.” I had decided long ago that I would never touch those drugs, knowing how addictive they were and never wanting my life to become consumed. My weight loss continued. I now weighed 103 lbs and my friends and teachers were all concerned. I didn’t care. I no longer planned to graduate high school. I wouldn’t come home at night. When I did come home, my father and I would fight constantly. Sometimes, it would get so bad that he would call the police on me. No charges were ever filed and things never got physical enough to actually hurt anyone, but I resented him more and more for the way he handled my emotions. I felt misunderstood, unappreciated, and wholly unloved.

The string of psychiatrists continued. I was given so many different diagnosises I had lost track. I was given medication after medication, always on the very first visit. My parents believed it every time and I was forced to adhere to whatever treatment my current doctor prescribed until it didn’t “solve things” and I was brought to another. First, it was impulse control disorder. Then, oppositional defiance disorder. Briefly, I was diagnosed as rapid-cycling bi-polar. The final diagnosis before I was sent away was simple depression & anxiety.

Then it happened.

My father was driving me to work, we were arguing the whole way. I had refused to complete the required hours of driver’s ed training with my parents, so I didn’t have my license. I could see my job two blocks up the road. I demanded he let me out of the car but he refused. Without thinking, I declared I would jump out if he didn’t pull over. He never pulled over and I never jumped out. Within a few minutes, I was at work, throwing him the bird over my shoulder and storming inside.

Three hours later, two police officers arrived at the hostess stand specifically requesting to see me. I dropped off my tray in the kitchen, confused and unprepared. Why were they there? I stepped outside and they immediately had me in handcuffs, shoving me toward the car. I asked for my rights, asked what I was being arrested for. They didn’t say anything until I was in the car. My father had called in a suicide attempt. He had requested a police escort. I was livid.

I spent a week in the psychiatric hospital. When I returned to school the halls were buzzing with gossip and every teacher looked at me quietly with pity. My father taught in the district. He had spread his story to every teacher and PTA member, who spread it to their children, who spread it to through the halls of my high school. I felt like a pariah and I vowed I would never forgive him.

After that last trip to the hospital with my father, when I was put on another new medication and it started making me feel like a zombie, I stopped taking any of it and started selling it. If I was going to be forced to live with every diagnosis, I was going to benefit from it somehow. My downward spiral continued. I was sleeping around, taking more drugs, engaging in anything that would help me to forget the hell I was experiencing every single day.

I was stunned as one day my dad called me into the study, teary eyed, and told me he was going to get his own apartment. Things had become too hard at our home and he felt it was best for all of us if he moved out. It seemed surreal. My parents rarely argued. My mom pulled me aside, sobbing hysterically, grabbing me by the shoulders and shouting “This is your fault! You’ve been so nasty to us all, now he’s leaving!” I went outside and laid in the snow, eyes closed, letting the cold surround me until I stopped thinking about it. My dad never moved out. Instead, it was determined that I was the problem and the one who should leave.

My mom had recently left her job at Pfizer, claiming that I had caused her to be so depressed that she could no longer work. It was as if no one remembered she had been sick all along. I hadn’t forgotten. How could I? I remembered being a small child, running to the window with her to look at every plane passing overhead – they were always too low, always about to crash. I remembered her cowering under the table at my grandmother’s house, hyperventilating. I remembered every thunderstorm at the lake house, running outside towards the basement, my little brother screaming, leaves and rain swirling around me. We’d huddle there in the musty unfinished basement for hours until the storm passed. This was before the medication, before we had the stairs built inside, before we moved. But it hadn’t ever really gone away. She still woke up every night. She still took days off work, sleeping on the couch, too tired to do anything. Years ago she had stopped participating with us. No more trips to the movies, no more going out to eat. I wasn’t surprised when she quit her job, but I was surprised and angry my that family supported her blaming me for her condition.

Now that she was home permanently she stayed on the couch all day, watching talk shows and napping. Every time I was around her, she’d threaten to send me on Maury or Montel. When that stopped scaring me, she switched tactics. She had seen “dark spirits” in the house and wondered if I was possessed. She considered an exorcism. Thankfully, that never happened.

The question of removing me permanently to “help” me was left unsettled. One night, over family dinner, my parents told me they were looking at apartments for me. They figured it would be easier for me if I was on my own. I had already been kicked out for the summer previous and had lived with my friend and her drug-addict father. I was fairly confident I could survive a private apartment and secretly wished they’d do it. Unfortunately, this never panned out.

A few weeks later, over another family dinner, they told me that they were considering giving me up as a ward of the state. They told me, calmly, that I would be under the state’s care until I was 21. They said they had exhausted every option, that no rehabilitation center could take me because I was 17 and could just walk out. This was the only option. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be given up for adoption at 17, nor could I imagine a large supply of parents just waiting to adopt “troubled” teenagers who were about to be adults. I was terrified and furious.

After that, I stopped listening to anything they say. I rarely came home, preferring the comfort of a stranger’s couch over the chaos of my own home. They stopped trying to enforce the rules. I could smoke at home, in the house. I didn’t have a curfew. I could sleep over at my boyfriend’s house. Nothing mattered anymore. I hated them, they wanted me gone, and we all knew it.

Little did I know, the week leading up to my arrival in Tranquility Bay would be one of the worst weeks of my life.

It started as a typical Saturday. We were all crammed in N’s basement. It was the usual folks sitting around listening to Radiohead, lounging on over-stuffed sofas, smoking weed and burning incense. N’s father was a Vietnam Vet who never quite got past it. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted and he sold us weed for good prices that he grew in the backyard. It was fairly peaceful. This is where we all stayed – the runaways, the kids whose parents were never home, the ones who had already gotten into trouble and were no longer welcome. We traded commodities, couches, food, drugs, and affection. Essentially, we were a family.

I had Klonopin, my most recent prescription. This time, I had planned. I knew what to say, how to act. I was done with taking medications that made me feel awful. I wanted something easy to trade, fun to use, and quick to get rid of. I mimicked my mother who never went without it and just like that, it was mine. I worked at the pharmacy so refills were quick. Things were ideal as far as trading went.

That evening I had taken three pills and sold half a dozen. Someone had brought Jack Daniels and we had our usual supply of weed and hash. We rarely drank, always preferring things “natural” so it was a special occasion, though I don’t remember why. By midnight, I could barely stand. I remember trying to make it to the toilet to puke but missing and hitting the floor instead. It was stuck in my hair, on my clothes. It was everywhere.

M was my neighbor and a year up in school. Every morning, he picked me up for school even though we both could have walked there in half the time. We had made out once, but nothing serious. We never dated and it all eventually faded into the past as I moved on in life and fell in love elsewhere. We shared the same friends. At least once a week he would sneak through my backyard to bang on my bedroom window and we’d share a smoke, which I’d get caught for in the morning, and talk about our lives. I’d stayed at his house more times than I could count, often sharing a bed, feeling more like brother and sister than anything close to boyfriend and girlfriend.

He arrived at N’s as I was stumbling out of the bathroom. I was panicking about my parents, hating to come home in any state that could give them further reason to send me packing. I phoned my parents and told them I’d be at M’s and I would see them in the morning. We left immediately. They were probably relieved to know where I was. Twice on the drive he had to pull over so I could vomit out of the car. I vaguely remember him helping me down the stairs and into his bed. Within moments I was out, drifting off into total darkness.

I awoke briefly, still hardly able to focus. His hand was under my shirt, feeling my breasts. It moved down, unbuttoning my jeans. I hadn’t even changed out of the clothes I wore to N’s. I rolled away from him, on my side, and things were dark again. When I came to he was fucking me hard from behind. I was still on my side. My pants weren’t even off, just down around my ankles. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I didn’t say anything. Within a few minutes, it was over.

He got up and dressed himself. I stayed still, eyes closed, not moving. I heard him light a cigarette. A few minutes later, he came back to the bed and pulled my pants back up. He didn’t say a word and neither did I. I never opened my eyes or twitched a muscle. It felt surreal. I had been in situations like this before but never so severe. I was lucky to have so many male friends. I remember them once chasing a guy out of a party with a baseball bat because he snuck into the room where I was sleeping. I had been lucky.

When I finally awoke in the morning he had already left for work and I was alone. My mind was racing, replaying the night’s events. I had no idea how to react, how I felt, what I had done specifically to cause this. I ran along the fence that divided our houses. I remember storming into the house, barely making eye contact with my father. He asked me what was wrong, I murmured nothing, stormed into my room and slammed the door.

I dialed N, told him to come and get me. We had to talk, I said, something had happened. I needed his help. I remember walking towards the front door, passing my dad like he wasn’t even there. He asked me where I was going. I didn’t say anything, just walked outside and got into the car. The next few hours were a blur. Everyone from the night before was still there. I told my story. Everyone was shocked. M hadn’t drank anything, he hadn’t smoked. There was no way he would have done that. I must have forgotten something.

N dialed his number. It was on speaker phone. I remember being angry that we were even calling, already wanting to forget it and write it off. Should this become an issue, it would affect us all. We were all friends. As he was making the call, a friend I slept with earlier that year asked me if I thought he had raped me too, because I wasn’t sober then. I wanted to punch him.

M answered. N took it off speaker phone, asked him what had happened. They laughed like usual. Inside, I wondered if I was truly crazy and had imagined it all. Suddenly, N handed me the phone. M wanted to talk to me, to make sure I was “okay.” I could barely hide my anger. He was so calm, telling me softly how nothing had happened and I had just been dreaming. He sounded so sure of himself that I almost bought it, but then I couldn’t keep quiet.

“I know what happened last night, M.” I snarled. “I remember. I don’t remember everything, but I know.”

He stopped for a moment. The line was silent. Then, like a switch, the story changed. This would become the defense I would battle for the next few years.“Chelsea, you were awake.” He said. “I thought you were awake, that you wanted it. Chelsea, you did want it.”

Gone were the “it never happened” or the “dreams.” It was all clear. I hung the phone up and it was over. No more doubts or guessing. I knew, he knew, we all knew, what had happened.

Someone suggested breaking his windshield. No one would call the cops. This was our home. To bring the police in would put an end to N’s. I had already spent two nights the year before sleeping in a truck stop Arby’s where my friend worked, showering in the pay showers, hanging out in his car for hours to avoid going home. We had all been there. None of us wanted to go back.

I called my parents from the front porch, mechanically telling them what had happened. I didn’t want them to know, but I didn’t know what else to do. They were the closest thing I had to a real support system. They took me to the hospital where they took specimens and ran for diseases. I was put on the morning after pill immediately. A team of students who worked for a rape intervention center came to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I regretted calling them, I hated the further humiliation, I hated the staff. Through blood tests, the doctors confirmed there were narcotics in my system and notified my parents. I had to speak to the police about what happened. I tried to get out of pressing charges but was too young to make that decision.

That night, I left for my boyfriend’s house and told them I’d see them at counseling. I was seeing a social worker in Ann Arbor. They came in occasionally for progress updates. That Tuesday, we met with the social worker. L dropped me off and waited outside. The days before had been a mess. I hadn’t been to school. I hadn’t been home. I had taken more drugs than usual and was running solely off Ritalin. I couldn’t sleep.

When I arrived, instead of my typical private session, my parents were both there. The social worker shut the door. Everyone was crying. I knew what was happening, what was next. They wanted me to talk about my rape. I refused. The counselor pulled out a brochure, one that I had never noticed in her pamphlets before, and told my parents that I needed a change. I was using drugs, and skipping school, and out of control. I needed behavior modification before things got worse.

I stormed out of the office and sprinted towards L’s car. I was in a panic. My parents were chasing me and screaming at him to leave. They hated him. He drove off, yelling out the window that he would get me later. He didn’t know what was happening. I threw up in the grass by my parent’s minivan, both from stress and from the pills I was taking from my examination.

When we got home, I snuck the brochure from my parent’s room. I slipped into the office and dialed the 1-800 number printed on the front. I asked what it was like in Jamaica. I said I was a parent. They told me it would be tough but that I would get my child back without the attitude. I asked how long it would take and they said most likely around 10 months to a year, but some kids take longer. When I started crying, they started asking for my name. They knew then that I wasn’t a parent, but rather someone soon to be sent who now knew more than they were supposed to. I hung up immediately.

I told my parents I was going to L’s. I left that night. They said not to go far, that I couldn’t get away from this. We spent the night together holding each other, planning and plotting our escape. We could fix up the minibus his sister had left in the back yard. We could sell everything we own and run to Canada. Our brains were churning, desperately seeking a way to make everything okay.

We made a plan to buy a vial of LSD and sell it for quick money to get away. We had a contact from a long time ago. We were to meet him in the Olive Garden parking lot the next evening. In the meantime, we called everyone we knew who owed us anything. We collected $5 here, $10 there. We barely had enough to make out purchase but somehow we came up with it.

We met our contact in the parking lot as planned. It was dark and no one was around. He slipped into the backseat with bad news. He couldn’t get the vial. He couldn’t get us enough of anything to sell. He did, however, have a substantial amount of ecstacy he wanted to get rid of for cheap – enough to keep a few of us going for the rest of the week. We counted our losses and made our purchase. If these were going to be my last days home, I wanted to at least enjoy them.

The night started off fine and normal. We sat with our closest friends, laughing and enjoying our time together. I forgot about all the sadness, all the pain. For those few hours, everything was okay. We were going to be fine, I was going to be fine. If only we could have stayed like that forever.

On the way back to his house, L got pulled over. He was on probation, out past curfew and obviously on drugs. He was taken into custody immediately. I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, so an officer had to give me a ride to the station. Thankfully, I wasn’t in any trouble and they didn’t even seem to notice that I too was on drugs. I didn’t know what was going to happen to L. They told me he would be released that evening but would have to go back to court – and possibly to jail – for violating his probation. I felt horribly guilty.

My friend J arrived shortly and we waited outside until L was released. I still had the remainder of our supply and we planned to take it once we made it back to L’s. I had stashed it safely in my purse, which the police never searched, and was looking forward to another escape from all of the bad feelings that were welling up inside of me.

When we made it to L’s, his mom was standing in the kitchen, already upset and angry over what had happened. L was acting so strange – nothing he said made any sense and he was starting to stumble around. We rushed him into his room and tried to figure out what was happening. I reached into my purse and realized he had taken every pill we had left – which was more than enough for the three of us – along with half my bottle of Klonopin. I started to panic.

When he grabbed his bottle of Ritalin and started taking them all, J and I wrestled it away from him. J got punched in the process, pills spilling everywhere. I remember crawling along the floor, grabbing them out of the carpet, L screaming at me to give them back. He was in his bed now, his lips were turning blue. He forgot about the pills and told us he was going to sleep. J stayed with him, desperately trying to keep him awake as I ran to his mom to tell her what was happening. By the time we started the drive, he had no idea where he was or where he was going. Even as we walked into the hospital, as the nurses took him to the back, he had no comprehension of what was happening.

It would be hours before I could visit him. I sat in the lobby for what seemed like forever, waiting for the chance to go and see him. I could still feel the drugs pumping through my system. Everything seemed like a dream. When they finally called my name, I was so tired that I hardly even knew what was happening.

We walked through the hallway towards his room, the fumes of bleach and chemical sanitizer hanging in the air. I knew what they were hiding. Behind the mask of cleanliness lingered the stench of sickness. The white soles of the woman’s “Keds” slapped against the tile floor. My eyes burned from the glowing neon lights above me. All sound seemed to be muted. Her mouth formed shapes, her lips slowly melting into thin lines and round “Os.” My eyes fluttered, rolling gently back into my skull. I knew she was talking but I heard nothing. I caught her last three words, “He’s in here.”Blue sheets fell thinly over his bony form. He was barely recognizable.

I took two steps towards the bed. I could see the outline of his face jutting out from the darkness, his features illuminated by the blue screen that sat beside him. His arms and legs jutted from the tight leather bands that held him in place. His chest rose and fell, an angry wheezing escaping his nostrils. My breath caught in my throat. His eyes were open, black pupils fixed on me with the intensity of a cat waiting to pounce.“This is all your fault!” He screamed, his voice hoarse and trembling with anger.“I’m sorry…” I uttered the words, my voice sounding more hollow and distant than his. My mind was replaying my own words over and over again. Just one more, it said, and then I’ll be higher than ever before.

I was sobbing as he kept screaming, his gaze still fixed on me. I felt violated by those eyes. I had never seen him so angry. His voice was strained and I could hear the pain behind his words. Suddenly, his body rise up in a convulsion. A thin line of black liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth. I stepped closer and a grin spread across his face. His arms and legs flung wildly against the wires and restraints that contained him. I was by the side of the bed now, looking down at him, closer than I had been since I deposited him in the hospital’s care.

“Please don’t leave me.” His voice was barely audible now.His pupils seemed to vibrate as they stared at me, growing larger and then shrinking down to tiny pinpoints. I ran out of the room and down the hallway, a part of me dying with every step.

The next day we all waited at N’s for word on his condition or release. He was finally lucid, we were told, and should be out by evening. I was desperate to see him, to make up for all of the pain I had brought upon him. I couldn’t imagine him hating me for the rest of my life, as he had sworn he would. I loved him so much. I wasn’t prepared to lose him, not yet, not now.

I had forgotten all about everything else, my mind was so focused on L and his condition. When my parents called to let me know they were coming to get me, I begged them to wait, to let me see him, but they refused. They told me not to run, that there was nowhere to go. Before I knew it, they were there and I was in the van, heading home for the first night in almost a week.

It would be my last night at home. The next morning we would be flying to Jamaica.

Sharing Through Survivor Blogs

Sharing Stories through Blogs, Forums & Pages Helps Bring Awareness!

I have been receiving a lot of great feedback on my blog and I wanted to share some other great survivor pages with all of you as well. The more people who share their experiences, the more exposure we will receive.  Further, it provides a way for recent program attendees to reach out and feel less disconnected from the rest of the world.  The loneliness we experienced when first returning home is fairly universal.  Helping to show kids that what was done to them is abusive and that they are not alone is such an important part of the healing process.

If you haven’t already, please visit the following blogs:

Phase 6 – A Voice for Thousands

Phase 6 offers a voice for anyone from any program who has survived through the troubled teen industry.  It is a great place to share and find a sense of community, as well as to locate great resources for networking, education, and advocacy.

Tales from the Black School

Multi-program blog featuring stories specific to folks who have attended a residential treatment facility, as well as great informational articles.

Just Another Hike

Stories from therapeutic wilderness programs.

Being Transported

Stories primarily focused around kids who were taken to facilities through hired “escort” services.

Survivors of New Bethany School

Blog specific to survivors of New Bethany School.

Psych Crime Reporter

Great site not only covering teen abuse, but abuse in psychiatric centers as a whole.

Surviving Straight Inc

Excellent resource not only for survivors of the infamous “Straight” program, but also other programs as well.

Straight Inc – My Brother’s Story

Heart-wrenching story and lots of resources from the sibling of a Straight survivor.

The Captive Teen

A blog dedicating to exposing those who are capitalizing off of institutional child abuse, as well as a look into teen’s experiences in these programs.

The Real Casa

Heart wrenching story of one girl’s experiences in Casa By the Sea

Straight Inc. Survivors

Excellent site with great resources for Straight survivors as well as articles/news relating to the troubled teen industry as a whole.

Nunya.com

Comprehensive site covering news and information relating to the troubled teen industry.

National Youth Rights Association

Great organization that not only focuses on the troubled teen industry (definitely visit the forums!) but also youth rights as a whole.

Paradise Cove Victims

Site focusing on survivors of WWASP’s Paradise Cove facility.

Asylum Horrible

Comprehensive site covering all teens/youth who have been impacted by residential treatment facilities.

Would you like to see your blog or story featured on WWASPDiaries?  If so, please e-mail wwaspdiaries(at)gmail.com or comment to this post with a link!

STARP, Formerly H.R. 911 – Stop Child Abuse in Residential Centers for Teens Act

Representative Miller is Reintroducing H.R. 911

In 2009, H.R. 911 – The Stop Child Abuse in Residential Center for Teens Act – was introduced.  It passed the House but died in the Senate.  On September 28th, 2011, Representative Miller announced that he would be reintroducing the bill following urging from survivor’s organizations and grassroots efforts.  While this bill does not address many of the issues that we survivors would like to see changed, it is a great start.  Having Federal involvement will not only help to bring awareness, but also help to fill oversight gaps in some of the states with the least licensing requirements for these facilities. It is extremely important that we all come together to support this bill and lobby our representatives to support it.

The full text of the original bill can be viewed here and previous votes from 2009 are available here.

Please reach out to your representative and submit the following in support of this bill:

Dear Representative,

I write to you as a voting member of your district who is deeply concerned about the child abuse that is occurring in residential treatment facilities across the United States.

On February 23, 2009 the House of Representatives passed the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs bill H.R. 911.  H.R. 911 stalled before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions  We call upon you to act and  urge you to support the re-introduction of the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2009.

This bill was introduced following a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found that many residential programs, include therapeutic boarding schools, boot camps, wilderness programs and behavior modification facilities, do not offer anything remotely related to therapy, and in fact the office found thousands of cases and allegations of child abuse and neglect since the early 1990’s.   

It is currently the state’s authority to regulate these programs, but a separate GAO report found major gaps in their licensing and oversight, so that they have been able to operate virtually unregulated. To help fix this major failure, H.R. 911 proposes that these programs fall under federal regulations.  While some states may have relatively high standards, it is critical that other states, where there’s virtually no (or poor) regulation, are held accountable. (eg. Montana, Utah)

Far too many youth are being maltreated in the name of treatment and institutionalized unnecessarily as a result of lack of access to community based care. The majority of our members have witnessed first hand that harm that may come from a poorly regulated or monitored residential program.  It is incumbent upon us to protect our most vulnerable citizens, youth experiencing behavioral, emotional or mental health challenges.

Please help ensure youth safety by supporting the re-introduction of Stop Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Programs Act.  Please confirm what measures you plan to take to ensure no other youth in America are harmed in the name of treatment.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

ADDRESS

AGE

CAFETY (Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth) offers a great resource page, as well as options to support this bill, on their PopVox site.

Story Submission by J.S

Three WWASP Programs in Two Years at 15 Years Old

J.S wrote the following journal entry during a harsh flashback.  Over two years, she was sent to three different WWASP facilities for smoking pot twice and getting caught drinking alcohol.  J.S is a program graduate, graduated from high school with honors, and is now attending college.   She is dedicated to creating awareness of the child abuse and horror that is occurring right in America’s backyard, to American teens.  As quoted in her original submission, “These schools need regulation and oversight, and a great number of them need to be shut down for GOOD.”  I have nothing but immense respect for survivors like J.S who are willing to share their stories with the world.  For many of us, there were no resources to help us when we returned home.  We were completely alone.  By sharing our stories, we can offer a sense of community and solace to those just released from a WWASP institution or other “troubled teen” facility.

If you have a story that you would like to share, please submit to wwaspdiaries@gmail.com.

….

That one thing made me lose trust for everyone, but for good reason. There’s no reason to trust anyone because whether you trust them or not, they’re gonna fuck you over. My mom didn’t want me and shipped me to my dad’s, and two months later my dad shipped me off too. They promised it would only be for three months and that I could come home right afterwards. They said it was a nice place. Those two years were the worst experience of my fucking life. It’s so hard to think back on those two years, and no one gets it. I mean some other people who went to those places get it. It doesn’t affect me as much as it affects some other people. A girl I knew slept with a gun under her pillow after she got out just in case the escorts tried to come get her again. She said she would rather go to jail than back to a WWASP school. But no one I KNOW knows what it’s like. After I got out I didn’t talk to many people
from the program because I wanted to forget I was ever there, that it ever happened. No one I talk to knows what it’s like to not even be allowed to make eye contact with people, NO COMMUNICATION, even nonverbal , ALL DAY. I felt like I was living the same day over and over again every day, in complete silence.

In the first place, my letters were monitored, so I tried so hard to get my thoughts through to my parents without being blatant. Every letter was thoroughly read to make sure no one talked negatively about the “program”. Talking bad about the program in a letter would get you major consequences, and you would get complete SHIT for it. I mean the whole room would go around in a circle and tell you everything you have been doing wrong. Talking bad about the program was one of the worst types of wrong. One of my emails home (my first WWASP school emailed our letters for us since we weren’t allowed on the internet, the other schools only let us write handwritten letters) got “deleted”, and to this day I think they deleted it because I said something about the rat the girls kept seeing or the run attempt that a bunch of girls tried to make before I got there. Letters were the only way we could talk to our parents (no talking to anyone else, even grandparents/aunts) and phone calls were a while away if you were new. I was average and it took me six months to get my first phone call. And once I got that phone call I got one once a month for fifteen minutes ( it was monitored of course, it would end if I said anything I wasn’t supposed to).

In the first place, we weren’t even allowed to write in a journal. We could only write for school, and EVERY page we wrote had to be checked and signed off on to make sure it wasn’t a journal or note. I was so confused about what was happening to me that I honestly don’t know how I made sense of it. Sometimes I pretended like I was locked in a teen war camp or being tested on obedience and conformity by scientists. My mind was so blank, I became so unstimulated. I had to try and think of things to fill my mind in the seemingly neverending silence. My life seemed so unreal. I had to stare at the back of girl’s heads for a large portion of my day. Not even a glance from the back of the girl’s head in front of you was allowed, glance from the back of the head and the upper level or staff watching the line would get you. Same happened if you pivoted with the wrong foot when making a corner in line.  And then staff would forget to take you off line structure, no moving any part of your body, even your eyeballs. You were stuck like that until they remembered to take you off, they forgot a lot because they got caught up in talking and we had to be in line structure anytime we went from room to room.

I was always mad I couldn’t see out the gates. I felt like the outside world didn’t even exist to me. I existed nowhere, time unmoving, while the whole world continued on for two years. After I got out of a week-long teen intervention program at a hospital I didn’t think anywhere could restrict your freedoms more, I had absolutely NO IDEA what life could get like, none. The whole time I was in the three WWASP schools I felt like what they were doing was wrong, but everyone else seemed to believe in these practices so much. I always heard “trust the program”. It was hard not to believe what everyone around me was saying all the time. I had to keep my disbelief in the program a secret, or else I would NEVER get out. I had just turned fifteen when I got into the program, and my parents told me every letter they sent me that they were “committed”, I would be there until my eighteenth birthday if I didn’t “graduate” the program. (Get through all six levels of the program.) Generally, eighteen year olds who left when they turned eighteen (the day where they were allowed to leave by their own volition, therefore not graduating the program and “walking” from it) weren’t allowed home. They were given a bus ticket to an unknown and far from home city, given usually between five and twenty-five bucks, and a not fully guaranteed bed in a homeless shelter. My parents, like most parents, were “program parents”, they believed in everything the program did and let their kids know that this is what would happen to them if they chose to leave when they turned eighteen.

If you said something bad about the program in a letter home, you would not get ANYWHERE close to graduating from the program. If you kept “manipulating”, your ass would end up in an orange shirt all the time. In an orange shirt (people on “staff buddy” had to wear orange shirts constantly to be watched more closely), you had to stay arms length from a staff member at all times, you weren’t allowed to talk to anyone at all throughout the day, and you had to strip down in front of staff before you took your nightly staff supervised shower. I never felt like I was being sexually looked at by the staff, it was just procedure for us to have to strip, turn around in a circle in front of the staff, and take a shower in a partly clear but blurry shower in front of them. During the weekends, “staff buddies” had to spend all day in a room where tapes played constantly, and you just mindlessly filled out these tests on the tapes. All day. When I was on staff buddy I somewhat looked forward to the weekend (even though I wanted to shoot myself a hundred million times from listening to so many damn tapes and filling out so many damn tests) because for like thirty minutes we actually got to talk. We were only allowed to talk to one person, and that one person had to be an “upper level”, someone who had been in the program a long amount of time and who was well trusted to be a proud supporter of the program. This was the only time during the whole week where we were allowed to talk, and it felt good to just be able to SPEAK. Everyone else got to speak a couple times a day at least. You were put on staff buddy for anything from manipulating, from breaking rules and not being “accountable” (not taking full responsibility for breaking a rule, even if you didn’t do it and someone just thought you did it), not doing something you were told to do like getting out of bed or eating all your food at meals, not telling enough of your “issues” from your past life, and all new girls were put on staff buddy. Staff buddy lasted until you decided to “comply” with the program.

See the thing is, the whole idea of the program was renouncing your previous life. I didn’t see a need to renounce my previous life. I felt as if I was normal. I knew that I wasn’t going to go home and be perfect. I admitted I made mistakes that I didn’t want to make again (I took ecstasy once). I knew that I would drink occasionally after I left, or have a hook up with a guy every once in a blue moon (not sex or anything even), and even smoke weed (I still don’t see anything wrong with smoking pot and I will always be pro legalization). My thoughts weren’t allowed. I couldn’t speak them and I wasn’t supposed to even think them. After you start to renounce your previous life COMPLETELY, I mean you need to be crying that you would be dead if you wouldn’t have been lucky enough to be sent across the country to an isolated prison-school, you can start to comply with the program. You see, it wouldn’t be so bad for everyone to have to renounce their old lives if everyone there NEEDED to renounce their old lives. Some people definitely needed a change in their life, although I still don’t think anyone needs an environment as extreme as a WWASP school. Some were there for prostitution, drug dealing, living on the streets, or heroine addiction. You definitely hear every type of horror story imaginable, many girls who went there had REALLY hard lives. But a lot of people were there for getting caught drinking once or twice, or trying pot, or smoking cigarettes, or things that a lot of normal teens try. Some were there for things as simple as talking back to their parents too often. I felt so bad for those girls because usually they were like thirteen and could be stuck there until they were eighteen and they really didn’t need these harsh methods at ALL. I even met many teens who were sent to the program just for being gay. No teen was “too good of a kid” to get sent to the program. If they could take every teen in America into their gates, they would. During my time in the program I never understood why I thought this was so wrong, but now I know it’s because generally there is a rule in psychology that you put someone in the least intrusive and shortest inpatient treatment possible, if they even need inpatient treatment at all. WWASP was putting any kid in the most intrusive, longest term treatment available. *Brightway Adolescent Hospital, a WWASP run intake center in Utah, shut down for allegations of abuse and for having identical
action plans for everyone- send them to a WWASP school.

Every night in bed I would wish and even sometimes pray (I’m atheist so this was praying was completely out of character for me) that my dad would end up deciding to honor his ‘I’ll only be there for three months” promise to me. I knew I could handle three months of that place… and then I would tell him how insane the place was.

When I first got to the program, I thought I could reason with the people who worked there and tell them I didn’t need a long term program. I figured that there were some sort of standards that showed that someone needed to be locked up and gated in and put in this kind of environment. After I got many letters telling me that I would be there until I “graduated the program”, no matter what,
(graduating the program took a drastic minimum of 12 months, and a maximum of five years), I kind of freaked out. I had a panic attack and I was crying a lot and I was threatened to be put in isolation.

After a few months, I was still feeling the same way. I was more used to the way of life but I still thought it was straight up WRONG. I distinctly remember one day when I was in the shower, I was just staring blankly at the shower wall. (Showers were another aspect of the completely structured days of my life: we had seven minutes to get out of line, get undressed, shower, get dressed, and get back in line. If we were a second over seven minutes, you got consequenced. Anyway, I was just staring at this shower and I started crying, I couldn’t believe what my life was like. I didn’t want to conform and be like everyone else, because they sounded crazy to me, but if I didn’t I would be there for 3 years, until I was eighteen. (The thing is you couldn’t just pretend to change, you couldn’t just follow all the dumb rules and get out. If people thought you were “faking” your change, they would tell you in front of all your peers and staff members, and you WOULD be there longer. If a lot of people thought you were faking it, you would probably have to go back to level one, where you began, and in essence start your minimum time of twelve months over again. ) I couldn’t imagine being there for even a year, let alone three. 365 of those days seemed IMPOSSIBLE to me. (I thought of things in numbers of days a lot because all days were the same.) After I cried over all this for a little bit I got mad at myself. I told myself to tough up, I was left there and no one was going to come “save” me. I realized what I had to do if I was going to get out. My
full self had to believe in the program. I had to hide my thoughts, beliefs, and my personality. I even had to hide this from myself. If I let myself think too much, people would start to know that I was “faking” my program. I couldn’t be myself again until I got out of the program.

In the second place I went to, I remember hearing about a riot that the boys had. I wondered why we couldn’t do that, too. Everyone was too scared to come together and riot because all we could think about were ourselves. We had to get OUT, and the only way out was to be what the program wanted us to be. I have to say, whoever thought of WWASP is really smart because I have no idea in hell how someone can deny you such basic freedoms as speech and movement to the point that no one even has the ability to QUESTION these restrictions. Most didn’t even question these restrictions in their own mind.. “trust the program.”

One of the hardest things I had to watch was in my second facility, where I continually saw many girls get really sick and not cared for. They would get bitched at for being sick. Instead of being taken to the doctor, they were yelled at for being “liars” and “overdramatic”. OF COURSE they were faking their illnesses for a chance to go to the doctor and get out of the facility for an hour, so they weren’t taken to the doctor. One girl fainted on a daily basis, she injured herself greatly because she didn’t know when she was going to faint. She complained that there was something wrong with her, this had never happened to her before. She was yelled at for “faking it”. Another girl had some weird eating thing, she was supposed to be on a strict diet but they weren’t giving her the right food. She got peanut butter and jelly for every meal (we all stared at her in jealousy, we would KILL to have peanut butter and jelly…), they weren’t giving her the right food that she was supposed to be eating, and she kept fainting. It got to the point that she had to stay in bed all day, every day. She could barely talk and couldn’t walk at all. To let us know that she had to go to the restroom, she would roll off her bed and onto the floor. If we didn’t hear her hit the hard floor we at least saw her after a little while. Two students would pick her up and carry her to the bathroom. I carried her sometimes, and I was carrying dead weight. She couldn’t hold herself up at all. They stopped giving another girl the Paxil she had been on for a matter of years. I’m pretty sure she was going through withdrawals because she was shaking and shaking and constantly dry heaving. She was crying and couldn’t speak. The whole facility was sitting in the same room as her (we all slept in the same room.. bunk beds all lined up next to each other, and this room was also where we did most of our daily activities) because we were having a quiet time and all were sitting at the end of our bunk beds. I was in the bunk next to her, and it was hard for me to hear her loud crying and dry heaving right next to me while no one was doing a thing to help her. The room was silent because no one was allowed to communicate, and all anyone could hear was the girl. Me and a few other girls got her a wet towel to try and soothe her a little bit and we were trying to help her sit up just in case she ended up throwing up. The staff got mad at us for trying to help her and made us stop. When we left for
dinner, I was the last one in line. I put myself last in line because the woman who ran the program came to talk to the girl who was so sick. Her dry heaving and inability to speak had gone on for two hours. I wanted to make sure that the woman would help her, maybe take her to the doctor or SOMETHING. I heard her yell at the girl. She kept yelling for the girl to speak, even though the girl couldn’t speak at the moment. She yelled that she knew the girl could talk and that she was faking it. I was so angry, but this
was the lady who ran EVERYTHING, there wasn’t anyone to talk to that had authority over her, at least no one that I had the ability to talk to.

While I was there, one girl claimed to have been molested by a staff. The day that she arrived at the facility she seemed so normal. I mean sure she was completely freaked out by the way she was going to have to live from that point on, but I was able to hold a normal conversation with her about how she was a cheerleader back home. After she claimed that she was molested, she started acting crazy. She would talk and mutter to herself all day. The program taught that you HAD to talk about all your problems to recover, but they put a complete silence on talking about this event. NO ONE, not even her, was allowed to so much as mention the event. If you did you would get a cat 4, when you get a cat four you go to isolation, and in essence you start your minimum time of twelve months all over again. In one of the few times where we could talk, I asked her about it (this was a pretty ballsy move for program life) and she told me what happened and that they told her parents she was just making it up to try and go home without graduating. She told me that it was especially hard for her to make it through the days because she felt like she was constantly stuck in the place that she was attacked, and she couldn’t leave. She wanted to be sent to the school in Jamaica (known as the worst WWASP school) just to get away from the place where it happened. The only way to get out of a WWASP school was to get sent to
Jamaica, that’s where they sent the kids who wouldn’t follow rules. The staff always told us to be good so that we didn’t get sent to Jamaica, because they could beat us there. It felt so weird giving a girl advice to get sent to Jamaica where they could beat her, but I couldn’t imagine being stuck in a place where I had been sexually abused, she seemed so scared. The teens were so mean to her, too. Many people ignored her and someone threw a rock at her head one time. She seemed so alone and I risked being caught and having to go into the isolation room because it really seemed like she needed someone to talk to. To this day, I don’t know whether she was really abused or not. She definitely BELIEVED she was abused, that’s for certain.

In my third facility take downs and restraints were how order was kept;. You expected to hear someone scream bloody murder a couple times a day because you could hear them getting restrained. You weren’t allowed to see it, but you could definitely hear it. One girl told me she got restrained for talking during a meal. She tried to tell the staff member that she would stop talking and comply and take her consequence but they restrained her anyway. The worst injury I ever saw was a cast on a a girl’s wrist, but I wasn’t around all that long. The whole time that girl was being restrained she was screaming “STOP, your hurting me, please STOP.” They didn’t. After they restrained her two staff carried her by her arms and legs to isolation. I was an upper level at the time and was trusted enough to be in the hall that the isolation rooms were in, I saw them carrying her in and it was a sad sight. I’ve heard of people in isolation peeing or shitting on the floor because they weren’t allowed to use the bathroom. The isolation room was a small cell looking room with concrete floors and walls.

I knew I couldn’t trust a soul in the program, if I told a peer that I didn’t think the program was humane, they would tell staff what I had said. Everyone seemed to believe in the program besides me. I mean, really new girls were against it because they had never seen anything like it, but after a month they would start thinking like everyone else. It always happened, and I always wished that I could tell someone how I really thought of the program. On the outside though, I seemed completely different. I was a completely “changed” person, and would never go back to my old “patterns” such as trying to manipulate my parents or be disrespectful or smoking cigarettes. The few times I let myself openly think (as weird as it sounds I controlled my thoughts so that I wouldn’t let my real thoughts be noticed by anyone) I knew that I was still strong in what I thought. It WASN’T right that I was sent away for as long as someone wanted to make me stay with no type of unbiased judgments made as to whether that was an appropriate punishment.

That’s how it was. No unbiased judgment at all. No one cared that my dad and stepmom, the two parents who had sent me to away, were both using drug addicts/alcoholics. No one cared that this WASN’T my parents last resort, that they in fact sent me to the FIRST place their google search took them. I got caught skipping study hall, and in anger my dad googled “troubled teen”, he called the first phone number on the list, and took me an hour later to the first place the lady recommended. His only question was “will they take her immediately?”. He didn’t so much as look for a review on the school.

After he sent me to the school on a promise that he and my stepmom would come and get me in three months, he not only told me I would “stay until the staff decide I was ready to leave”, I would not ever be allowed to live with him again. I felt like I was losing so much at one time.

Things just got harder after I got out of the program. For two years everyone had moved on with life while I felt like I was in a time cocoon. A week before I graduated, my dad told me on a phone call that he divorced my stepmom of 12 years. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her or my two stepbrothers. They had been family to me for as long as I could remember. I didn’t find out that my mom and stepdad of fourteen years were getting divorced until my mom showed up for graduation without my stepdad. These divorces were such a shock to me because all I had was letters, where my parents made their life out to be just fine, it was all about ME, and what I was doing to do better in my life. You can’t see divorce coming if your not there for the warning signs, I hadn’t been able to emotionally prepare myself to lose four family members within a week because I hadn’t seen it coming WHATSOEVER. It was hard
to get out of the program with all their teachings that didn’t even fit into real life’s problems, on top of dealing with things that I had never had to deal with in my life.

Going back to a regular high school was the hardest thing. I hadn’t so much as talked to a boy in two years, I hadn’t even been allowed to look at boys. I hadn’t been allowed to talk freely, now I was listening to people talk CONSTANTLY. I could take Advil without opening my mouth to show someone I swallowed it, I could walk places by myself, look out windows, touch money, there were no more gates. I felt so dumb in school because school hadn’t been a priority in the program. We taught ourselves from old textbooks and took a test over the chapter after we read it. It was easy for me to get used to this kind of school, I blew through it making all A’s. They had to make me stop taking classes because I was moving too fast. At one point I was a teachers assistant and basically had the same responsibilities of the teacher. I graded and passed out tests and books, just like the teachers did. There were no projects, no papers, no homework, and no real teaching. I missed sitting in classes listening to teachers tell me about
things. I could have graduated four years of high school in under two years there, but they deleted classes that I took so that I could come home and be in my same graduating year, as by my mothers requests.

After I got home I lived in fear of getting sent back. My mom would try to use all the program’s teaching on me, and I would freak out every time she said anything that I had heard while I was in the program. I couldn’t even bear to think about it. If I had been in any trouble I would sleep with a knife under my bed because I knew my parents would call the escorts if they wanted to send me back. There was NO WAY IN HELL I would have gone voluntarily like I had the first time around. The escorts came and “kidnapped” kids in the middle of the night. They took them from their bed, handcuffed them, and took them to the school, all at the high price paid by the parents. After I turned eighteen and I couldn’t get sent back anymore, I started messing up. I skipped a lot of school and started getting messed up a lot. My mom constantly threatened to kick me out, but nothing worried me anymore because I was free of my fear of the program. Acting out was my way of finally feeling free of the program. I ended up learning my lesson and cleaning my act up and I learned my lesson ON MY OWN, like I would have learned my lesson if I wasn’t sent away for two years. I had never been given the chance to learn my lesson through experience, I got sent away the same month that I first experimented with cigarettes and pot and being a high school student.

I am now going to college in the fall, and many people ask me how I can manage to leave my family and go all the way across the country to go to college. I only answer in my head, and that answer is easy. My parents took me all the way across the country and left me for years, shuffling me from state to state, WWASP facility to WWASP facility, in my eyes they left me the moment they left me in my first facility and wouldn’t listen to any of my pleas for help. I pleaded in my letters even to be sent to juvie, I said please you can keep me punished, but please send me somewhere else to punish me, just send me to juvie. I don’t try to tell them how I feel about the program anymore because I tried so hard while I was there and they wouldn’t listen, and its too late for them to help me now, I’m already out.

Memoir Excerpt – Part 5

Memoir Excerpt – C. Kapela ©

It would take me a full ten days before I became somewhat “adjusted” to the program.  Within my first week, I was sent to study hall two more times, once for accidentally speaking to another Level One when I asked through the bathroom door if there was anyone inside and another for accidentally carrying my pencil out of the meal hall.  While I was still angry that one of the punishments had lasted over six hours as I wrote 10,000 words because I was seventeen words short on my first essay, I took solace in the fact that I had managed to avoid OP.

About a week into my stay, someone tried to run away.  It was long after shut down and our room was dark, everyone sleeping.  I remember awakening from a nightmare to the sound of loud Jamaican voices shouting from a distance.  As I struggled to make out what they were saying or at least to determine a general location of the noise, it stopped suddenly.  The remainder of the night was filled with desperate screaming from the boy’s side of the facility.  Only the next afternoon did the story reach our family, somehow passed through whispers from one side of the facility to the other.  A boy had apparently tried to run in the night.  He’d made it to the beach and was trying to swim along the coast but the waves were too big and he had to go back to running.  He was promptly caught and returned to the facility.  For over a week I had trouble sleeping, his voice crying out in pain every night.

I was slowly learning to adjust to the daily routine.  I learned how to do laundry in buckets of cold water outside.  We used stiff brushes and powdered soap to clean our uniforms, letting them air dry on the line.  I learned that before one was granted permission to use the restroom, you had to announce to the staff and the other students around you whether it was #1 or a #2 and then go to the front of the room to receive the appropriate number of toilet paper squares.  I learned that at least once a week, someone from our family would be sent to OP.  I became even more determined to never go there.

Group therapy wasn’t getting any easier but I was slowly starting to accept it as a necessary part of my day.  I still didn’t feel comfortable standing in front of twenty girls, a few staff members, and a family representative to share the innermost details of my life.  My parents had sent a lengthy document of my past transgressions and issues so in the end it didn’t matter if I wanted to share or not.  I was still bombarded daily with negative feedback for not being open enough about what I felt but I was starting to be able to block it out.  The initial shell-shock of arriving was wearing off and I was gaining my strength back day by day.

I had made my first friend.

Kari was a Level Two and I was a Level One.  She slept on the top bunk across from mine and would be turning 18 shortly before I did.  We all knew that she wouldn’t be staying and most of her group therapy sessions were spent receiving feedback about her decision.  Her parents were completely non-supportive of her leaving the program and had only committed to providing her a bus ticket home and $25 in spending cash if she didn’t remain until graduation.  She had made the choice to leave anyway and I respected her deeply for it.  She gave me hope that no matter what my parents decided, I would still somehow be able to leave this place one day.

Our friendship began one evening just before shut down.  She had received a lot of rough feedback in group and was really struggling with her parent’s refusal to let her have any contact with her siblings should she decide to leave without graduating.  I could hear her crying from her bunk.  No one was comforting her.  I wanted to run over and leap up and just hold her.  I knew what her fear felt like as I was feeling the same.  Just the day before I had received my first set of letters in response to my begging to be pulled and was given a similar rhetoric.  My parents were fully committed to my graduating the program despite the intricate details I had revealed about what Tranquility Bay was really like.

I laid in bed for a few minutes, struggling between receiving an automatic consequence for speaking to her or just letting her cry in silence.  Suddenly, I remembered a game my childhood friend Winnie and I had played.  We used to make hilarious sheep sounds whenever we were riding in the backseat of her father’s car.  For some reason, it always made us laugh.  If either one of us was ever down, we’d break out the animal sounds and it would always help the other to feel better.  I didn’t know if I would get in trouble or not, but I decided to give it a shot.

“Baaaaaaaa-aaaah” I bleated loudly from my bed.  I looked over at Kari quickly to see if she heard.  A couple of the other girls had laughed, but I could see she was still crying.  I did it again.  This time, she rolled over and looked at me.  Staff wasn’t paying attention, so I quickly winked at her and bleated again.  Her eyes were puffy from crying and her blond hair was stuck to her cheeks, but I saw a slight smile start to form.  I made the sound again, this time a little quieter.  Suddenly, she started to laugh and made the sound too.  In that moment, even without using real words, we both knew we had found a friend and an ally amidst all of the heartache.

From that day on, we spent as much time together as we could.  During field time, we would hold hands as we walked the track, always careful to never speak.  We sat next to each other whenever possible and occasionally communicated through select Level 3 students.  We had more in common than we realized.   We both came from conservative families who didn’t appreciate our liberal lifestyles.  We had similar taste in music, activities, and future plans.  She looked a bit like me, thin and pretty, and the connection that we felt to each other was one of the only things that got me through my time in the program.  Though we were never allowed to speak directly to each other, we still made plans about meeting up in pre-determined locations after we were out.  It was strictly forbidden to share addresses or contact information, but we knew we would find a way.

A few weeks into my stay, I received my first letter from my 13-year-old brother, Aiden.  Of all the letters that I received from my family during my stay, his was the only one that acknowledged that something seemed amiss in the program.  He had been sent to fat camp when he was eleven and it was an experience that had both terrified him and deeply wounded his self-esteem.  We used to talk about it a lot – how much he had hated the drill-sergeant like director, how homesick he had been, and how it had taken multiple phone calls begging my parents to come and get him before he was allowed to finally come home.  I would read it again and again during my stay.

He wrote:

Hey Chelsea,  It’s me, Aiden.  Long time no see.  I miss you.  How are things?  I’m pretty sure I know what you’re feeling.  I’m sure it’s different but when I went away I was scared too.  Are we allowed to send you candy and stuff like that?  I hope you are starting to adjust to where you live now.  I read your letter – pretty scary sounding.  Do they read your mail?  Do they read what you get in the mail?  I don’t know what I should say but I do miss you. Mom and dad got me a counselor. He’s kinda weird but I like talking to him.  If you want me to get you anything and mail it to you, like some comics out of a book, I’d be glad to (if it’s allowed).  Well, I’ll see you soon I hope. Love, Aiden

Around the same time that I received my brother’s letter, my parents sent notification that I was to be pulled from the vegetarian meal plan and placed on a non-restricted diet.  My family representative had notified them that I wasn’t gaining enough weight on the vegetarian plan and that the plan wasn’t nutritionally balanced enough.  Instead of cabbage three times a day, I now had to struggle through unidentifiable portions of meat, some with the skin and hair still on them.  We had spam sandwiches once a week, fried fish on Fridays, and a cold watery version of ox-tail soup frequently for lunch.  I was devastated to lose one of the last bits of freedom that I still held onto but – as was expected of me – complied to avoid being sent to OP.

As my one-month date approached, I felt my health slowly declining.  I was constantly starving, the meager portions hardly enough to sustain me.  At least once a week, the entire family would find itself in line for the bathroom, sick from something we had eaten.  The plumbing in our room would typically back up when this occurred and we would all have to sleep with the stench of sewage surrounding us. Sometimes it would be days before it was repaired.  It was hard to identify what made us sick as most of the food preparation and storage methods would never have been allowed in the US.  All of the food was cooked outside and we would often pass the next day’s meat or fish sitting outside in the sun.  Powdered milk was served more frequently than juice and was never kept cold.  I was so hungry all the time that I actually looked forward to drinking the warm “Peanut Butter Flavor” milk that was served only on Saturdays.  Staff never acknowledged our illnesses, occasionally issuing consequences to girls who spent too much time in the bathroom.

I had started seeing blood in my stool every time I went and asked to see the nurse.  The staff refused, stating that it was “normal” and that all of the girls had that because we just weren’t used to the Jamaican food.  I had severe abdominal cramping every day but struggled through it as I knew that nothing was going to happen unless I was literally laying on the floor in agony.  One girl in my family had gotten such severe food poisoning that she had to be taken to the hospital.  Despite the fact that she had been vomiting constantly and had been unable to make it to the bathroom multiple times, they still waited several days before taking her.  I remember them taking her in the middle of the night, her moaning in pain.  She wouldn’t return for several days.  It was a lesson we all learned.  Unless we were under the immediate threat of death, nothing was going to get us out of those gates.

My parents had enrolled me in a special class within the program called “Rape & Molest.”  It was held downstairs in the large open seminar room as it had so many attendees. The director of the group was the assigned school psychologist.  During my first meeting, I remember staring out at the tear-stained faces of at least fifty girls and realizing that nearly everyone on the girl’s side of the facility had been a victim of sexual violence.  Though he would never outright state “this was your fault,” we all were expected to take responsibility for what he saw as the “non-working choices” that helped to create the situation.  Feeling traumatized or victimized was something that the program looked at as a choice.  Not only did we choose to dress or act in inappropriate ways that had encouraged sexual violence but we also chose to hold onto the aftermath emotions of these events.  For those who had been there longer, this philosophy was preached as empowering, as something that enabled them to let go of their pain and choose to move on.  Being so new, I saw it in a different light.

We were constantly asked to look at the fundamental decisions that had led to our situations.  Drugs, alcohol, inappropriate clothing, inappropriate flirtation, being alone with a boy, not telling someone about a molestation – all of these were choices that we had made that were important to acknowledge before we could “choose” to move on and make “working decisions” in the future.  There were a lot of girls who had been molested by their parents or step-parents and of those, most were sent to the program by the very people who had molested them.  I never saw or overheard legal action encouraged.  Rather, the goal was often to encourage girls to forgive their molesters and choose to have “appropriate” relationships with their caretakers in the future.  Our pain and sadness was looked at as unnecessary, as though we were just acting out.

There was something so incredibly sad about hearing the stories – some from girls as young as twelve – and realizing that the treatment that they were receiving was focused more on a reteaching of fundamental right-wing values than it was on healing their wounded selves.  Though guilt was another emotion that was taught to be “non-working” and “victim based,” I never left those sessions without it.  By the time I left, I truly believed that I had chosen to be raped.  When I returned home, I wouldn’t fight it as the investigation fizzled.  It would be over ten years before I would finally realize that what happened to me was not my fault and that no one, under any circumstances, has the right to victimize another person.

I would like to include a quote from Decca Aitkenhead’s “The Last Resort” published in the June 2003 issue of The Observer.  Included in this article is a rare interview with Dr. Chappuis, the psychologist who led this group.   Dr. Chappuis was quoted as, “’One of the groups I do here, it’s called Rape And Molest. They struggle with a lot of guilt in that group. You know, a lot of these girls dress and act provocative. They get involved in substance abuse. They place themselves at risk and then they get taken advantage of. Now, we always say no means no. We’re real clear about that. But then we say, you know, you’ve got to look at how you market yourself. Girls can be hard work to help,” he chuckles. ‘They are so much more dramatic than boys!”

Common Questions and Assumptions about the Troubled Teen Industry

Questions & Answers

When attempting to explain the “Troubled Teen Industry” and the widespread child abuse that occurs within it, I am often met with several common questions and incorrect assumptions. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of this industry, how it operates, and what has been researched and proven in regards to child abuse.

Q. What is the “Troubled Teen Industry”?

A. Across the United States (and in remote countries, operated by US corporations) there is a burgeoning industry of for-profit specialty boarding schools, behavior modification facilities, emotional growth schools, and wilderness education programs that all focus on “rehabilitating” or “treating” struggling youth. A simple internet search for “troubled teen” will reveal 100’s of different facilities, each utilizing different modes of treatment. Unlike jail or juvenile hall, the youth sent to these facilities do not have to commit a crime. There are no specific enrollment requirements for most of these facilities, so youth are admitted solely at their parent’s discretion. The length of stay for the majority of these programs is 12-18 months, with many kids staying for multiple years. The typical age range treated is 12-17, however some facilities accept youth both younger and older.

Q. But how many parents would really send their kids off to a private facility?

A. As many states do not require private specialty schools of this type to register or apply for licensing, there is little statistical data available as to the total number of children enrolled in a private facility at any given time. In a report sponsored by the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment, the Department of Child & Family Studies at the University of South Florida, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, it is noted that, “The issue is that we don’t even know how many youngsters are living in these programs, or how many have died in them. In fact we don’t have a shred of legitimate data on the overall short-term and long-term effects of these programs on the youth that they serve.” A further study by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, details that, “The number of children placed in residential treatment centers (or RTCs) is growing exponentially. These modern-day orphanages now house more than 50,000 children nationwide.” While official statistics are difficult to assertain, it is clear that this is a widespread issue affecting many families across the United States.

What is Child Abuse?

Federal Legislation as defined by the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) defines child abuse and neglect as, at minimum:

Any recent act or failure on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm

The Federal legislation above is only the minimum definition. Most states have expanded upon this law to better specify the specifics associated with the different types of abuse that can be inflicted upon children.

Overall, most states recognize the following as forms of child abuse:

Abandonment, wherein the child is found to be abandoned when the parent’s identity or whereabouts are unknown, the child has been left alone in circumstances where the child suffers serious harm, or the parent has failed to maintain contact with the child or provide reasonable support for a specified period of time

Emotional and Psychological Abuse, where the child is subjected to a pattern of behaviors that impair their emotional development or sense of self-worth. This includes constant criticism, threats, rejection, or withholding love, support, or guidance.

Physical Abuse, when non-accidental physical injury is inflicted by a parent, caregiver, or person held responsible for the care of the child. Physical injury is considered abuse regardless of whether the caregiver intended to hurt the child, with the exception of physical discipline, providing it is reasonable and causes no bodily injury to the child.

Neglect, where the child is denied basic needs in regards to physical safety and protection, medical attention, educational access, and emotional care.

For the purposes of this paper, “child abuse” in residential programs and institutions shall be defined using the same guidelines outlined above.

Q. Child abuse is illegal, so it must be illegal to abuse children in these facilities, right?

A. In theory, yes. In practice, no. The majority of programs limit or monitor communication between youth and their families. Most programs will only allow a monitored phone call after the student has been at the facility for a minimum of 30-45 days, or has reached a specific level or number of points within the program. Typically, all mail is monitored and students are provided no access to any communication with the outside world, including law enforcement. Parents are typically warned that their child will likely use “manipulation tactics” to have themselves removed from the facility. This often leads to claims of abuse or mistreatment being ignored by parents and caregivers. Further, as most facilities are exempt from any Federal or State oversight, regular inspections of the facilities or their practices are typically not performed. This loophole allows for a variety of tactics including restraint, isolation, and unique therapy techniques to be utilized by often untrained staff with little to no background in juvenile justice, child care, or psychology. Without proper training, many of these tactics can be abusive in and of themselves as they are often overused or incorrectly implemented. Overall, the environment is condusive to abuse as it places teens in an isolated environment without specific requirements or standards for the care they are provided, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and neglect.

An important point to recognize is that most Federal and State child protection laws primarily refer to cases of harm to a child caused by parents or other caregivers; they do not generally include harm caused by other people, such as acquaintances or strangers.

As described in testimony and documentation from the United States Government Accountability Office, “States are primarily responsibly for ensuring the well-being of youth in facilities and other settings, and do so by setting their own standards of care certain facilities must meet to obtain and maintain an operating license.” While Federal laws do exist to protect the civil rights of students residing in programs primarily funded by state or local governments, “Federal oversight authority does not extend to private facilities that serve only youth placed and funded by parents or by private entities. In some states, safeguarding youth in these facilities is the primary responsibility of the parents and facility staff.”

This report goes on further to explain that, “All states have processes in place to license and monitor certain residential facilities, but states reported oversight gaps that may place youth in some facilities at higher risk for maltreatment and death. Most notably, state agencies exempted some types of government and private facilities from licensing requirements altogether, primarily juvenile justice facilities and private schools and academies. In addition, licensing standards do not always address suicide and other common risks to youth well-being. Although monitoring is key to ensuring facility compliance with standards, agencies in states we visited reported an inability to conduct yearly on-site reviews of conditions at each facility, because of fluctuating levels of staff resources committed by the state. Similarly, although information sharing can strengthen oversight for facilities shared by multiple agencies, many state agencies reported that they did not routinely share information with other state agencies about negative findings or when facility licenses were suspended or revoked. HHS, DOJ, and Education all have processes to hold states accountable for the well-being of youth, but federal efforts are hindered by the scope of the agencies’ oversight authority and monitoring practices. Most notably, these agencies do not have the authority to hold states accountable for youth well-being in private residential facilities unless they serve youth in state programs that receive federal funds. For facilities under federal purview, federal requirements did not always address the primary risks to youth well-being, such as suicide, and requirements were inconsistent among programs. In monitoring state compliance, federal agencies did not always include residential facilities in their oversight reviews.”

This creates an enormous loophole within the child abuse laws, essentially allowing parents (and in some cases state and federal authorities) to place children in unlicensed, non-regulated facilities, placing them at risk for abuse, neglect, and death.

Q. How Big of an Issue Is This?

A. According to the GAO report referenced above, investigators found that “Survey respondents from 49 states reported investigating complaints of youth maltreatment in residential facilities in 2006, including physical abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse, and 28 states reported deaths.”

The GAO report also stated that “State-reported data collected by HHS in 2005 showed 1,503 incidents of maltreatment by facility staff in 34 states, including physical abuse, neglect or deprivation of necessities, and sexual abuse. Moreover, 28 states responding to our survey reported at least one death in residential facilities in 2006, with accidents and suicides among the most common types of fatalities. These reported data, however, did not captureinformation from all facilities. Many states lack authority under state law to collect data on exclusively private facilities, and data that states did report were often incomplete. As a result, the number of adverse incidents was likely more numerous and widespread than reported.”

Teen Advocates USA, an advocacy group for survivors of institutionalized child abuse, offers a memorial page on their website that pays tribute to some of the youth who have died within a residential treatment facility, listing their cause of death and the facility at which they were held. This site reports a total of 115 deaths ranging in cause from suicide, accidental death, restraint related death, drowning, neglect, suicide, and cases still under investigation. While this is not a comprehensive number of all children who have ever died as a result of abuse within an institutionalized treatment center, is still represents an alarmingly high number of preventable deaths of youth.

A second GAO report, titled “SECLUSIONSANDRESTRAINTS: Selected Cases of Death and Abuse at Public and Private Schools and Treatment Centers” released in 2009 goes into greater detail on the types of abuse and causes of death they found during their investigation of the troubled teen industry. Seclusion and Restraint are two forms of punishment that are widely used within troubled teen facilities. As released in the report, “GAO found no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level. Although GAO could not determine whether allegations were widespread, GAO did find hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades.” Noting that there is little to no oversight on the use of these methods in both public and private facilities, it is not surprising that these tactics have been abused and in some cases, have led to severe abuse, neglect, and death.

The study notes that, “Of the hundreds of allegations we identified, at least 20 involved restraints that resulted in death. Of the 10 closed cases we examined, 4 involved children who died as a result of being restrained. In all 4 cases, staff members used restraint techniques that restricted the flow of air to the child’s lungs. In one of these cases, an aide sat on top of a child to prevent him from being disruptive and ultimately smothered him. The other cases related to the use of different types of prone restraints, a technique that typically involves one or more staff members holding a child face down on the floor. Currently, eight states specifically prohibit the use of prone restraints or restraints that impede a child’s ability to breathe.”

Three specific cases are noted in the study that directly relate to the death of teens in private institutions for troubled youth.

“Case 1: The victim was a 15-year-old male who died while being restrained by two counselors. According to the victim’s mother, in 2000 she enrolled her son in a wilderness program in Oregon to build his confidence and develop self-esteem in the wake of a childhood car accident. The accident had resulted in her son sustaining a severe head injury, among other injuries. According to her lawsuit, her son left the program headquarters on a group hike with three counselors and three other students. Several days into the multiday hike, the victim refused to return to the campsite after being escorted by a counselor about 200 yards to relieve himself. Two counselors then attempted to lead him back to the campsite. According to an account of the incident, when he continued to refuse, they tried to force him to return and they all fell to the ground together. The two counselors subsequently held the victim face down in the dirt until he stopped struggling; by one account a counselor sat on the victim for almost 45 minutes. When the counselors realized the victim was no longer breathing, they telephoned for help and requested a 911 operator’s advice on administering CPR. While the mother was driving to the hospital, her son’s doctor called, advised her to pull to the side of the road, and informed her that her son had died. The victim’s mother told us that she was informed, after the autopsy, that the main artery in her son’s neck had been torn. The cause of death was listed as a homicide. In September 2000, after the boy’s death, one of the counselors was charged with criminally negligent homicide. A grand jury subsequently declined to indict him. In early 2001, the mother of the victim filed a $1.5 million wrongful death lawsuit against the program, its parent company, and its president. The lawsuit was settled in 2002 for an undisclosed amount”

“Case 2: The victim, who died in 2005, was a 12-year-old male. Documents obtained from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services indicate that the victim had a troubled family background. He was taken into state care along with his siblings at the age of 6. As a ward of the state, the victim spent several years in various foster placements and youth programs before being placed in a private residential treatment center in August 2005. The program advertised itself as a “unique facility” that specialized in services for boys with learning disabilities and behavioral or emotional issues. The victim’s caretakers chose to place him in this program because he was emotionally disturbed. Records indicate that he was covered by Medicaid. On the evening of his death, the victim refused to take a shower and was ordered to sit on an outside porch. According to police reports, the victim began to bang his head repeatedly against the concrete floor of the porch, leading a staff member to drag him away from the porch and place him in a “lying basket restraint” for his own protection. During this restraint, the 4 feet 9½ inch tall, 87-pound boy was forced to lie on his stomach with his arms crossed under him as the staff member, a muscular male 5 feet 10 inches tall, held him still. Some of the children who witnessed the restraint said they saw the staff member lying across the victim’s back. During the restraint, the victim fought against the staff member and yelled at him to stop. The staff member told police that the victim complained that he could not breathe, but added that children “always say that they cannot breathe during a restraint.” According to police reports, after about 10 minutes of forced restraint, the staff member observed that the victim had calmed down and was no longer fighting back. The staff member slowly released the restraint and asked the victim if he wanted a jacket. The victim did not respond. The staff member told police he interpreted the victim’s silence as an unwillingness to talk because of anger about the restraint. He said he waited for a minute while the victim lay silently on the ground. When the victim did not respond to his question a second time, he tapped the victim on the shoulder and rolled him over. The staff member observed that the victim was pale and could not detect a pulse. All efforts to revive the victim failed, and he was declared dead at a nearby hospital. Although the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services alleged that the victim’s death was because of physical abuse, the official certificate of death stated that it was an accident and a grand jury declined to press charges against the staff member performing the restraint. However, the victim’s siblings obtained a civil settlement against the program and the staff member for an undisclosed amount.”

“Case 3: The victim was 16 years old when he died, in February 2006, at a private psychiatric residential treatment facility in Pennsylvania for boys with behavioral or emotional problems. He was a large boy—6 feet 1 inch in height and weighing about 250 pounds—and suffered from bipolar disorder and asthma. The cost for placement in this facility was primarily paid for by Medicaid. According to state investigative documents we obtained, the victim was placed in intensive observation after he attempted to run away. As part of the intensive observation, he was forced to sit in a chair in the hallway of the facility and was restricted from participating in some activities with other residents. On the day of his death, staff allowed the victim to participate in arts, crafts, and games with the other youth, but would not let him leave the living area to attend other recreational activities. Instead, staff told the victim that he would have to return to his chair in the hallway. In addition, staff told him that he would have to move his chair so that he could not see the television in another room. The victim complied, moving his chair out of view of the television, but put up the hood of his sweatshirt and turned his back toward the staff. The staff ordered him to take down his hood, but he refused. When one of the staff walked up to him and pulled his hood down, the victim jumped out of his chair and made a threatening posture with his fists, saying he did not want to be touched. The staff member and two coworkers then brought the victim to another room and held him facedown on the floor with his arms pulled up behind his back. The victim struggled against the restraint, yelling and trying to kick the three staff members holding him down. After about 10 minutes, the victim became limp and started breathing heavily. He complained that he was having difficulties breathing. One staff member unzipped his sweatshirt and loosened the collar of his shirt, but rather than improve, the victim became unresponsive. The staff called emergency services and began CPR. The victim was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died a little more than 3 hours later. In the victim’s autopsy report his death was ruled accidental, as caused by asphyxia and an abnormal heartbeat (cardiac dysrhythmia). No criminal charges were filed in regard to the victim’s death. The victim’s mother filed a civil suit over her son’s death against the facility. The suit was pending at the time we completed our investigation.”

Currently, there is no comprehensive data available on the specific licensing requirements by state. It is important to note, however, that most programs operate without any state or federal oversight whatsoever and there are no specific requirements as to the types of therapy and curriculum they provide, nor are staff and facilitators required to meet any specific training or education requirements. In the same report provided by A Start, a letter to Congress notes, “The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and our 900 member child-caring, public and private agencies nationwidehave serious concerns about the growing number of unlicensed residential programs and camps for troubled children and youth, often referred to as therapeutic boarding schools or boot camps….These programs are often unregulated by an appropriate state agency or held accountable to any recognized accrediting organization. Allegations of neglect and abuse at many of these programs include the inappropriate use of medications, the employment of vigorous physical means of restraint, or individual seclusion or isolation. Questions are often raised about the credentials of the employees who staff these programs.”

Q. Why isn’t Everyone Involved?

A. Due to lack of comprehensive statistical data and the avoidance of elected officials to get involved in regulating this industry, the issue remains largely at the grassroots level. Some legislation has been previously introduced, such as H.R. 911, however it did not pass through the Senate. Although there is yet to be any formal legislation passed, several advocacy groups have formed and are becoming stronger and louder voices. Abuse in institutions and residential treatment center will only be stopped through education, awareness, and advocacy. We must all work hard to spread as much news as possible, form united lobbying groups to work towards political change, and help to engage the public with our stories and calls to action.

To get involved, the following are excellent resources:

Teen Advocates USA

CAFETY (Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth)

TroubledTeenIndustry.com

Restoring Dignity

Survivors of Institutionalized Abuse

In addition to the links above, several excellent articles and television news pieces are available online:

Montana PBS Aired “Who’s Watching the Kids” in 2007

Maia Szalavitz published “The Trouble with Troubled Teen Programs” in the January ’07 issue of Reason.com

Joanne Green published “Rough Love” in the Miami New Times in 2006

Lou Kilzer released highly regarded “Desperate Measures” in the Rocky Mountain News in 1999

Tim Weiner released “Parents Divided Over Jamaica Disciplinary Academy” in the New York Times on June 17, 2003

Mark Levine released two three-hour segments on the “Abuse of Teenagers in Drug Programs” on September 15th and 16th 2011 and his radio show.

In 2006, a French documentary titled “Tranquility Bay: Les Enfants Perdus De Tranquility Bay” was released that focuses specifically on WWASP (World Wide Association of Specialty Schools) facility Tranquility Bay in rural Jamaica

“Over the GW” and “Aaron Bacon” are two feature films released by award-winning director Nick Gaglia that focus on true stories of children sent to residential treatment facilities.

The BBC released “Teen Rendition” in 2009

In summary, it is important to note that you – as a reader – are an important asset in bringing attention to this issue. Share this blog & the referenced links with as many people as possible. Contact your state and Federal representatives and demand action. Research what programs are currently operating in your state and share any news articles found about allegations of abuse, neglect, or fraud. If you or someone you know have been a victim of institutionalized child abuse, are a former staff member of one of these facilities with stories to tell, or have your own blog or website that you would like referenced on WWASPDiaries, please e-mail wwaspdiaries@gmail.com.

Interesting Quote

Judge Rotenberg Center Former Staff Quote:

I have participated as required in following student plans to shock multiple students, including when they reacted to watching a fellow classmate tied up in a restraint chair getting attacked by a staffer with a plastic knife (being held) to the student’s throat. This was a judge-approved Clockwork-Orange-type “treatment” for a student who swallowed a small X-Acto knife blade. A staffer, according to the plan, would run up to the student who had all four limbs tied all day long to a restraint chair, and pretend to force a plastic knife down the student’s mouth while another staff pressed the remote control to give a shock to the student. The staff would repeatedly yell in a gruff voice, “Do you want to swallow a knife?” Sometimes a number of students watching this would act out in fear and receive shocks for jumping out of their seat, crying out, or dumping their task in reaction to the violence. I highly doubt that the judge ordered all 40 plus other students in the same classroom to have to watch this violent “treatment” of their classmate with his arms and legs tied to a chair. This took place day after day for weeks, with their classmate unable to defend himself in any kind of way. I felt nauseated just being in the room during those treatments, and I was not one of the humans with electric shock devices strapped to my body, so I could only imagine what the students were going through.

The Original Quote Can be Found Here:  www.schizophrenic.com

 

Additional Information on Abuse at this Facility:

End The Abuses at Judge Rotenberg Center Blog

Seeking Love & Acceptance on a Path of Adversity

Mary J O’Brien submitted the following:

I grew up in an adopted home. I was raised by a childless middle aged Catholic couple. After being abused by my mother and pretty much ignored by my father, I was in and out of special schools. I started running away and acting up. Because I’m legally blind RI became desperate to put me in a school that promised to keep run aways. They sent me to Elan when I was 12. I was there five years before finally winding up at Perkins School for the Blind.

During my five years at Elan I was abused for acting up, being socially immature and living in a fantasy world. When I was 15 I was placed in a foster home where I was sexually abused. I also got into trouble for stealing cigarettes at school.

So I was pulled back in to Elan for another two years while they argued with my parents about where I was to go next.

I wrote a book about my life under the pen name Susan Kelly. The book is called “Seeking Love and Acceptance on a Path of Adversity”. However I called Elan “Edenwood” and put it in Vermont. I regret this.

This amazing story can be found through Amazon:

Seeking Love and Acceptance on a Path of Adversity by Susan Kelly

Press, News & More

Thank You to All of the Survivors Who Spoke Out!

We had a great turnout on the Mark Levine radio show last week. For those who missed it, both the original show and the follow-up show can be found by visiting Mark Levine’s Website.

There are six hours of radio available featuring interviews with survivors, authors, government officials, and experts in the field of child abuse and institutionalized treatment. Amazing to listen to and offers great resources on getting involved!

H.R 911 – Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act

Based on governmental findings found in the Hearing on Child Deaths Due to Mistreatment in Residential Institutions, a bill was drafted called H.R. 911. The purpose of this bill is to pass legislation that would regulate residential treatment facilities (which are currently completely unregulated on a Federal level, allowing them to move from state to state) and help to prevent further abuse from occurring. The United States is currently the only other country besides Somalia to not have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, though we had a significant role in drafting it.

Currently, private residential facilities operating within the U.S are not regulated, nor are parents regulated in any way from sending their children abroad to overseas institutions. Though many centers have been closed across the United States and in other countries, these children are often shuttled from one program to another when the closings occur. Noting that there is no Federal regulation in place, all parents need to do is to send their child across state lines if one state decides abuse is occurring in a facility.

H.R 911 was passed by the House but never made it through the Senate. With the upcoming elections, it is extremely important to contact your representatives to make sure that not only does this bill get passed, but also that it receives the media attention it desires. Visit this website to see who voted for and against the bill.

To help push this bill forward, please sign the petition here asking Congress & The President to Ensure H.R. 911 Passes.

Additional Resources

As pointed out by Mark Levine, the survivor groups are becoming larger, more unified, and more active. It is extremely important that we come together as one voice and begin speaking out about what we experienced. As we all know, there are numerous political connections between current political figures – Mitt Romney, to name one – and even more involvement throughout the legal system. Noting this, it is important that we reach as many people as possible to ensure that the folks who are protecting these abusive programs are not allowed to obtain more power without first distancing themselves from these figures and publicly denouncing the programs.

Visit this link for an extremely informative article on Mitt Romney’s involvement with WWASP and troubled teen facilities.

Mark Levine also offers some great articles here as well that I encourage you all to spread to as many interested parties as possible.

Memoir Excerpt – Part Four

C. Kapela © – Memoir Excerpt

Study hall was held in a small room towards the back of the complex.  It appeared to have at one time been a small one bedroom suite when the facility was still a hotel.  Now, its linoleum floor was aged and dirty.  Through a crack in the door, I could make out a tiny bathroom in the back corner.  There was one large window in the front of the room and two staff members to monitor.  One sat near the bathroom, quietly reading the local newspaper.  The other stood to guard the entrance.  There were already seven girls seated in lawn chairs writing feverishly on makeshift desks made out of a stack of textbooks on their laps.
As I walked in, the heat was overwhelming.  The room smelled like sweat and old food.  On the floor near the window, a girl was laying on a stained old mattress, gripping her stomach.  The staff saw me look at her and murmerred, “sick bed.”  I nodded, not wanting to go near her, realizing that the smell of old food was actually the smell of vomit.  There was a pan sitting next to the mattress in case she threw up again and couldn’t make it to the toilet.

I grabbed a lawn chair from the stack near the front of the room and was told to be seated.  A staff member brought me three thick textbooks, a pile of lined paper, and a pen.  “You have three hours,” she stated calmly, “You must write 5000 words before you can leave.  If you are even one word short, you have to start again.  Lunch will be served in study hall today and you will take your afternoon shower here as well.  Please begin.”  At that, she walked back to the front of the room and sat down.  The room was completely silent.

I raised my hand for permission to speak.  The staff nodded at me.  “Maam,” I started quietly, “What are we supposed to write about?”  She looked at me sternly and told me that it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that we wrote enough words and filled the paper from edge to edge.

I began writing as quickly as I could.  I could feel the anger inside of me start to bubble to the surface and I desperately tried to channel it into my essay.  At first, it didn’t seem like much of a punishment but after an hour of writing, my hand was cramping so badly that I didn’t know how I would possibly be able to finish.  My clothing was soaked through with sweat and my back was sore from being hunched over the tiny stack of books.  I struggled to continue, occasionally glancing up at the large clock that hung on the wall.  It seemed like time was moving so slowly.  I was barely over 1200 words.  My handwriting had become slanted and nearly illegible, my sentences practically incoherent.

As I was starting a new line, the staff who had been guarding the door commanded us to all put our pencils down.  Lunch had arrived.  I was starving and exhausted, eagerly looking forward to a break from the writing.  She passed each of us a foam carryout box and a small cup of the same juice from breakfast.  I noticed the other girls opening their boxes and tearing the corner off of the lid to use as a makeshift spoon. We weren’t allowed to have silverware while in study hall so I did the same.  I had a large helping of cold boiled cabbage and two small dumplings.  The juice was warmer than my food.  I struggled through my meal, slurping the cabbage from the box corner.  The dumplings weren’t terrible, so I finished them completely.  Even though the cabbage made me gag with every bite, I managed to finish most of it.  I was so hungry that I probably would have eaten my pencil would I not have received a consequence for doing so.

Lunch was over before we knew it and we were back to writing.  I felt slightly renewed after eating and tried even harder to write faster.  My mind was flooded with statistics as to how quickly I would need to write and how many words per minute it would take to hit my goal.  What had begun as an essay describing my lament and anger over my circumstances had quickly become a string of nonsense babbling, none of which made any sense.  All that mattered to me was finishing.

One of the other girls in the room had finished her essay and brought it to the staff member at the front to count.  We were to write the total number of words for each side of the paper at the top.  She glanced it over, counted a few of the lines to ensure she wasn’t getting scammed, and then nodded in approval.  It was so disheartening as she took the essay and tossed it immediately into the trash.  As the girl was escorted back to her family, I longed to be finished.  Even though our work was pointless and would never be read by another living soul, I still had to complete it and the clock on the wall was a constant reminder that I still had much time left to go.

After two more girls left, those of us remaining were asked to again put down our pencils.  The staff explained that we would be taking our afternoon shower in the study hall bathroom as we were not allowed to return to the group until we had completely finished our essays.  I was selected to go first.  As the bathroom was inside, I prayed desperately that it would have hot water.  Naively, I was actually looking forward to both the break from the writing and the chance to finally feel clean and shower alone.

As I undressed, a giant cockroach scampered along the edge of the tub from behind the flimsy curtain.  Being from Michigan, I had never seen one before in my life and had to stifle a scream.  I turned the knob and was met with a slow trickle of icy water.  We didn’t have our shampoo or shower essentials, just a towel, so the shower was short.  On the wall across from me, the cockroach just sat there, as though it was watching me.  As I was turning off the water, feeling as though it couldn’t get worse, a large brown worm slid up from the drain and dragged itself against my foot.  I will never forget that feeling – the cold slime, my heart racing, the sense that there were creatures in every nook and cranny of my new home.  I was so glad when the shower was over and actually looked forward to returning to my makeshift desk.

Somehow, when my three hours were up, I had managed to finish my essay.  I was tired and defeated as I brought it to the front.  Just like before, the staff looked it over quickly and threw it in the trash.  I wanted to grab it, to save the souvenir of my endless effort, but instead I compliantly followed the staff as she escorted me back to my family.  My body was aching from being seated for so long and my stomach was churning with hunger and anxiety.

I was brought to the meal hall for the very end of dinner.  I quickly grabbed my plate and sat down.  Again, I had boiled cabbage and a small portion of dumplings, though this time they were fried.  As I was one of the last to arrive, I quickly shoveled down my food.  I had never liked cabbage before arriving at Tranquility Bay and the cold, stringy, unseasoned blob that appeared on every plate I ate was even worse.  The heat and the constant stress and activity left me starving constantly, so the meager portions – no matter how unappetizing – had already become one of the only things I looked forward to.  Though my hand was still in pain from writing for so long in study hall, I managed to take a few notes on the audio tape – this one, ironically, about how your food choices influenced your mental health – and was finished at the same time as the rest of my group.

The next few hours were a blur.  We went back to school to continue our classwork.  Martha and I again focused on the rules and consequences.  She explained that if I wanted to get ahead, I was going to have to start “sharing” in group.  If we didn’t talk about our deepest issues, we would never move up levels and subsequently never go home.  She seemed to have softened a bit since the last time we had talked and she actually apologized for having gotten me into trouble.  I knew that, had we been on the outside, she’d never have treated me like this.  Six months into the program, however, most kids started doing what they were expected to, even at the expense of their peers.  I forgave her and I could tell she felt relieved.

We were given an hour to read quietly or write letters home.  I began a long letter to my parents begging them to pull me from the program.  I explained that nothing was how any of us expected it to be.  I wrote about the screaming I had heard, the horrible food, study hall, and all of the strict rules.  I fought back tears as I wrote, some from sadness and most from anger.  I couldn’t comprehend how my parents could leave me in such a place.  I begged them to send me to rehab or to prison, knowing either option would at least allow me some human dignity.  None of what we were experiencing here was allowed in jail.  I threatened that I would never speak to them again unless they pulled me, desperately hoping that my letter would somehow get through to them and they would see what was really happening.  I kept thinking about the things my parents had told me about the program before we left, how I would be swimming in the pool and lounging at the beach, how we’d have real therapy, and how they taught us about Jamaican culture.  It was all a lie.  Before I knew it, the hour was up.  I hadn’t yet finished my letter, so I tucked it inside my journal and prepared for our next activity.

Our next class was called “Music.”  We weren’t allowed to listen to any real music until we were on the upper levels, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  We all gathered in the classroom, joining with another family of girls.  Everyone pulled pages out of their notebooks and journals.  One by one, girls started singing.  They sang the only songs they could remember from home.  Some had beautiful voices and other girls begged them to sing again.  Others did not, but all were welcome.  It was our only chance for normalcy throughout the day, to feel connected with each other and our homes.  You could tell who had been there the longest because they didn’t recognize the songs that some of the new girls were singing.  I felt so sad realizing that I too was missing out on so much by being here.  I didn’t sing with the group, just listened.  The entire time I fought back tears, longing to be back in my home town, listening to real music with my friends.

After music hour, we again took our seats at our desks.  As one of our components of “therapy” we were required to watch Emotional Growth videos.  Like the audio tapes, we were supposed to take notes during each tape.  The staff pulled out a faded VHS tape and put it in the VCR.  The TV flickered as it started, immediately showing the age of the tape.  It was an anti-smoking video that appeared to be from the late 80’s or early 90’s, judging by the side ponytails and pinned pants of the main characters.  I tried to pay attention and take notes, but there didn’t seem to be anything of real value.  I had already started smoking years ago, and now that I was here, I certainly couldn’t continue to do so.  It didn’t offer any tips on quitting, just advice on how to turn down peer pressure and never get started in the first place.  Had I seen the same tape back at home, I knew my friends and I would be laughing the entire time.  Just thinking of it made me sad.

After the video, we had a half hour to write about what we had learned from the audio tapes and the videos.  We had to describe in detail what specifically applied to our issues and how these tools were helping us to grow and get past them.  I didn’t know what to write as I didn’t feel that I had learned anything.  I had no products to sell, no cigarettes to smoke, and no choice in what I ate.  I tried to find some meaning in all of it.  I remember writing that I learned that smoking was something I needed to give up once I got out, that I needed to learn to promote the things I was passionate about, and that eating healthily would help me to be stronger mentally.  Inside, I wanted to scream that all of this was bullshit, that I wasn’t learning anything, that no stupid audio tape or vintage video was going to solve the years of emotional abuse I had endured in my life.  Instead, I quietly completed the assignment.

After this, we were assembled outside for another headcount and then quickly brought upstairs for bed.  I finally had a “bed” of my own.  I pulled the plywood board out of the wall and scrambled on top of it.  We were required to change into our pajamas under the blanket.  We couldn’t walk around without a bra on even if we wearing clothes, so once that was off we had to stay in bed.  We had a few brief minutes to write in our journals before they shut off the lights.

That night, I drifted off into slumber with tears in my eyes, struggling to imagine how I would make it through such a long program.  I didn’t want to think about turning eighteen even though it was so close.  I was terrified that they would make me stay, somehow deny my right to leave.  The thought of remaining here until I was 21 was too much for me.  I slept restlessly, nightmares of being sent to OP or being beaten constantly waking me up.  Somehow, I had survived my first day at Tranquility Bay, but I knew I had many, many more to go.

Story Submission

The following story was submitted anonymously.  Feel free to submit your own stories for publication by e-mailing wwaspdiaries@gmail.com, or through the submit a story function.

On a rainy Saturday in June 2002, I arrived with my father at Carolina Springs Academy in Due West South Carolina.  I had agreed to come voluntarily, though I was unsure what to expect.  I didn’t know then that this decision would be one that would change my life forever.

My father and I were immediately separated as we entered the facility.  As he was whisked away on a brief tour of the school, I was sat down by a staff member, Mr. K, and two upper level students to learn the rundown of the program.  As my father left, my belongings were taken from me and replaced with program-issued uniforms and necessities. It all happened so fast that I hardly had time to comprehend that anything was wrong.

My new bedroom was filled with ten bunk beds, two kids assigned to a bunk.  Off to the side, there was a special needs child lying on what was called “sick bed.”  I had a horrible feeling of being alone and unguarded as I watched the other kids taking food off of his plate and putting it onto their own. I could see the cruelty in their eyes as they did it.  This was one of the first signs that I was in a place where I would truly be on my own, without anyone to protect me.  I had never felt so afraid in my life.

I was assigned a buddy, Jason, who would be my mentor in the program and help to integrate me into the rules and responsibilities expected of us.  The first thing he said was, “If you try to run, I will chase you.”  Our first task was to go to the dining hall for dinner.  Jason explained that we were having hamburgers, which was a special treat.  As we walked through the line to pick up our plates, Jason explained that as a “Level One” I was not allowed to have ketchup, Kool-Aid, or condiments of any kind.  As though offering me an immense favor, he granted me permission to have them this time, since it was my first day in the program.  I didn’t know if I should feel thankful or sad.

Immediately following dinner, we were sent upstairs to go to bed.  I was in complete shock as I was assigned a bed and told to lay down and be quiet.  There was still daylight streaming in through the windows.  I wasn’t allowed to ask any questions.  Even though I couldn’t comprehend why we were going to sleep so early, I had no choice but to accept it.

Two night staff members entered the room.  One was Mr. T, the husband of the school director.  He spoke openly of being a former military member and almost seemed proud of his lack of formal education.  The other staff was Mr. A, a very large and religious man.  As I tried to sleep, I watched Mr. A walking back and forth in the room, surveying us all as we slept.  He seemed to have a pattern to his movements, always taking the same path and ending up in the bathroom.  I couldn’t sleep and just kept still, watching him for hours.  Suddenly, I sneezed and he spun around to look at me.  His eyes met mine with a cold, hard stare.  That was the last thing I remembered as I drifted off in uneasy sleep.

At 6:00 am, we received our wake-up call from staff.  We all made our beds and cleaned out our baskets.  Everyone had a room job.  Jason assigned me to clean the shower.  I tried my hardest to get it clean, but all I had was a face towel.  Despite the limited materials, Jason came and complimented me, telling me I had done a “damn good job” on the shower.  As we waited for the other kids to finish their tasks, we formed a circle in the center of the room, forbidden to talk.  My mind was consumed with trying to comprehend the many rules the program required.  It seemed crazy to me and I didn’t know how I could possibly follow them all.

As we entered the dining room for breakfast, I was told to stand at the table with my hand behind my back.  We were not allowed to speak.  The room was completely silent.  As we moved through the line, I listened the man in charge of the kitchen as he determined what we were allowed to take.  Breakfast consisted of cereal and a desert, something like a Pop-Tart or a brownie.  Depending on the mood of the kitchen staff the latter was often taken away to punish students who were not performing to the program’s satisfaction.  As a Level One, I was not allowed any seconds and was only given one cup of juice instead of the standard two glasses that everyone else received.

Following breakfast we were immediately ushered to school.  The method of teaching was called a self-paced plan.  We had text books from which we were expected to teach ourselves on a variety of subjects.  As it was my first day, I was assigned “Study Skills” as my first course.  The purpose of Study Skills was to teach us how to integrate into the self-paced environment.  School was very serious and was run by Mr. B.  Tests in each subject were repeated until the student received a minimum score of 80%.   At this point, I was too shocked to focus so instead of completing the questions, I just sat there and read what I had been given.  Because of this, I received my first consequence from an upper level student for non-participation in school.

I hardly remember my first group therapy session, only the disappointment that I was not going to be in Ms. S’ group.  She had seemed kind and someone that I wanted to be around.  Unfortunately, I was assigned to a different group, headed by Mr. K.  I had only met him briefly, but I immediately disliked him and knew he felt the same way about me.

The rest of my week was a repetitive blur.  I remember going to the library where we were allowed to read or write a letter home to our parents.  Phone calls weren’t allowed for Level One students.  During meals, we listened to motivational audio tapes by Zig Zigler or Les Brown and were required to take notes on what we heard.  We watched “Emotional Growth” videos daily.  There were very limited tapes so we often watched the same ones over and over again.  Everything was the same, every day.  I could feel myself becoming more and more angry and beginning to realize that nothing the program was offering me could possibly help me to be a better person.

Something snapped inside of me as I walked up to a staff member after lunch and shouted “What the fuck kind of place is this?”  He just looked at me coldly and replied, “With language like that, you probably belong here.”  I mumbled for him to fuck off and walked away.  For the first time, I was given a consequence called “Worksheets.”  We were sent to a separate room and required to write for hours.  I sat down and told the staff that I wasn’t going to write shit.  A large man was brought in to discipline me.  He grabbed me by the arm and took me out of the room, whispering into my ear that he was going to show me what happens to people who don’t conform.  I was escorted to a room called OP, or “Observation Placement.”  He told me to lie down on the floor.  Naively I did as I was told, thinking that there wasn’t much he could do.  As I did, he sat on top of me with his knee pressing deep into my back until I couldn’t breath.  He started asking questions as he ground his knee harder and harder into my back.  I struggled to answer, but I couldn’t speak as the pain was so intense.  Another student entered the room to monitor as staff and students were never allowed to be alone together without a witness.  It was so humiliating.  The other student did nothing to help me, just stood there watching.  The staff kept repeating that if I tried to hit him or defend myself, he would put me in the hospital and then in jail.  He kept screaming that he worked in the legal system in South Carolina and would deny anything that he had done.  I was outraged.

I begged to speak to the director and he seemed puzzled as to why I would need to talk to her at all.  I explained that I wanted to tell her what had been done to me.  Instead of allowing me to go see her, he just told me to sit back down.  I felt powerless.

The next day I was back in worksheets.  Mr. K came to meet me and took me to the administration office.  He asked me several questions that seemed meaningless to me.  My answers didn’t satisfy him, either.  He told me that I was just telling him what he wanted to hear and sent me back to worksheets.

I never knew I would spend so much time in the worksheets building.  Anyone who received a Category 2 correction was required to write 3000 words in three hours.  Due to my continued bad behavior, I had amassed 80,000 words.  I wrote word after word on no subject in particular until my writing was so feverish that it made absolutely no sense.  One of my corrections had been given for telling a staff member that my parents paid $3500 a month for me to be here and I wasn’t even allowed a packet of ketchup.

Every day before being sent to worksheets, I went to group.  We sat in a circle and Mr. K would start each meeting with a song.  We then each took a turn to tell the rest of the group what we had learned from the audio tapes that were played during meal times and from the emotional growth videos. We were supposed to end our statements with, “This demonstrates that I am making major progress.”  Each time it came to me, I would state “pass” as I didn’t feel that I was learning anything from the tapes or the videos.  The rest of the group was spent explaining what we were learning from the program or how we were changing.  If we weren’t participating enough, we were often told to stand in the center of the circle and have the rest of the group describe us in one word.  When I was instructed to do this, the other students described me with words such as “failure” or “resistant.”  I tried my hardest not to let it bother me.

Mr. K kept asking me when I was going to start “working the program.”  I told him that I would never participate in this shit.  He then explained that there was a place for people like me in Costa Rica.  I told him to send me there, but he said nothing.  Instead, I found out that he was trying to convince my parents to send me to Jamaica instead.  Tranquility Bay was considered one of the harshest programs and was often where kids were sent who refused to conform.

I was finally allowed to see the psychiatrist due to my continued resistance.  I was excited because I thought that I would finally meet with someone who would understand my feelings and want to help me get out of the program.  I couldn’t imagine a psychiatrist advocating the abuse I was experiencing.  Instead, the doctor was someone who was exclusively hired by WWASP schools.  She did nothing.  I felt so disappointed as I left the meeting, immediately being sent back to worksheets for more writing.

I had been in worksheets every day for over a month when I was told I would be attending my first seminar, “Discovery.”  The seminars were a requirement of the program in order to graduate.  Both the students and the parents had to attend them, though in different locations.  As I entered the hall, I was met by a very large, tall woman named Jan.  She was the facilitator of the seminar and I immediately sensed that she enjoyed the power too much for my liking.

During Discovery, we participated in a variety of different activities designed to help us get more in touch with our inner selves.  We were taught that we all had an “image” that kept us from being our true selves.  I had to stand in front of the entire group – nearly fifty kids – and explain why I had been brought to the program.  I tried to make up stories in order to succeed.  We were all forced to form small groups and share our darkest secrets with one another.  I wasn’t prepared to share these things with complete strangers, so I lied to get ahead.

During one activity, we had to go from group to group and tell people a story that started with, “What I don’t want you to know about me is…”  We then had to explain what our experience was of the person who told us the story.  I remember one upper level girl telling me that her experience of me was that she wanted to kill me because I didn’t care what other people thought of me and I thought I would be able to weasel my way out of the program by the end of the summer.  I pretended like I was listening to her, but really I was just blocking out the words.

The seminar ended with an activity designed to let us release our anger about our parents and our own choices.  We were given rolled up towels to bang on the floor.  All of the lights were off and we had to kneel on the floor.  It lasted for over three hours, kids screaming and yelling all around me.  When it was over, we were told how to reconnect with our magical child.  I left the seminar with bruised knees and a vague feeling of being a better person, however the high wore off in less than a week and everything returned to the normal routine.

By October, after four months, I had made no progress and was still in worksheets every day at Level One.  It hadn’t really hit me until someone brought it up in group.  The realization that four months of my life had been taken from me already and that I had gained nothing from it made me incredibly angry.  I began to think about the plans I had made for school and what I was missing out on.  I had planned on playing football that season and instead I was sitting in bed at 8:30 pm every night, locked away in a facility without education or sports.

I wrote my father a letter begging him to let me come home so that I could play sports.  They were so important to me and had always been a major part of my life and happiness.  He wrote me back saying that if I had graduated the program by next year, I could play.  This statement has always stood out in my mind, even years later.  With one line, my father was able to change the entire way I looked at him forever. I suddenly realized that he had never supported me in the things that were important to me.  Because of the decision to keep me here, I would miss out on all of the things a normal teenager was able to experience – dances, sports, a real education.  I couldn’t bring these feelings up in group because I knew Mr. K would show no compassion or remorse.  Instead, I thought about them every night as I sat in my bunk, dreaming of everything that was happening out in the real world.

By December, I had reached the highest level and points that I would ever reach in Carolina Springs Academy.  I was a Level Two, with 800 points.  I was secluded to a group of other students who were on academic probation.  School had always been hard for me and it was even more difficult in a self-paced program as we didn’t have any teachers to help us with the assignments.  I knew I would remain on probation indefinitely as school certainly wasn’t going to change or get any easier.

As Christmas approached, it felt nothing like any Christmas I had ever had at home.  The staff brought in a small Christmas tree to try to make us feel some normalcy but I felt nothing.  The only excitement I had was that I would be allowed my first phone call home.  Mr. K was allowing us each a 15-minute call if we earned enough points, otherwise our phone call would be limited to a brief greeting.  I was well on my way and felt that nothing could stop me.  I hadn’t spoken to my family in over six months and wanted it desperately.  Looking forward to it was the only thing that got me through the cold, emotionless days leading up to the holiday.  For the first time during my stay, I was actually motivated to try to succeed.

That’s when it happened.

I was in line for lunch when I asked for a glass of milk.  Immediately, an upper level student issued me a Category 3 correction for talking in the meal room.  He was trying to look good and gain points as issuing corrections was one of the easiest ways to move up in the program.  As he called out my correction, something died inside of me. I would lose all of my points and the chance for my phone call.  I would never forgive him.  I hadn’t wanted anything more in the last six months and in one brief moment it was taken away from me.  Though I would still get to hear my parent’s voices, the chance for a real conversation was gone.  Inside, I felt the anger turn to coldness.

When I finally got the chance to speak to my parents, it was over before I knew it.  I sat in the Family Rep Office, the walls covered in religious statues and scriptures.  I spoke to my mother and father as they gave me hints that they would be coming to see me for Parent-Child Seminar.  I cannot remember a single thing that we spoke about except for me begging them to send me to Costa Rica.  I thought it would be different there, better maybe.  As I hung up the phone, I thought about all the things I should have said but didn’t.  It had all happened so fast.

On Christmas day, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  Inside, all I could think about was how I should be at home, opening presents with my family.  I wanted to scream for someone to come and help me, to get me out of here.  I knew that no one would so I tried to make the best of the holiday instead.  I received a large box from my mother filled with candy and a radio.  We weren’t allowed to listen to music so the radio was a special treat.  I was allowed to eat my candy and use the radio for two days before I had to surrender it to staff.

I kept the radio longer than I should have.  It reminded me of home and I didn’t want to give it up.  It helped me to feel like somehow I was back home with my friends and family, enjoying life with them.  I was sitting on my bed listening to the radio when a staff came in to seize my now illegal item.  I never saw it again.  I can remember the last song I listened to, “Bother” by Stone Sour.  For some reason, this song will always have a special meaning for me, reminding me of both the pain of the program and that brief moment of feeling connected with home.

As January rolled in, I was even more defeated than before.  I had stopped participating in school, could no longer focus on the audio tapes, and had made no more progress in points or levels.  I was so angry and I didn’t want to see my parents, despite the fact that Parent-Child Seminar was set to happen any day.  I didn’t want to participate in any of this with them.  When they announced that the seminar was that afternoon and began to call the names of those invited to attend, I desperately wished for my name to be skipped over.  I wasn’t so lucky, cringing as I heard them shout my name.  As I was put in my best uniform and marched towards the seminar hall, I begged staff to stop.  They just ignored me.  As usual, I had no choice.  I would see my family whether I wanted to or not.

As we entered the hall, slow music was playing loudly and I saw my parents standing together with their eyes closed.  We were all brought over to our families. The seminar director announced that all the parents could now open their eyes and mine lunged towards me to hug me.  I pushed my father away.  I didn’t want to see him, remembering everything he had said in his letters.

We were then told to be seated and the director explained to the parents that they shouldn’t let us use their cell phones or manipulate them into removing us from the program.  Most parents had brought sodas and snacks for their children but the director explained that caffeine was not allowed.  My parents had only brought caffeinated sodas, so they quickly put those away.  The family next to ours offered me one of theirs and I was grateful for the kindness.

Mr. K walked over from across the room and asked my father to tell me why they had come to the seminar today.  He looked at me and said, “We are here to work on some of the issues we have.”  I told him that I didn’t care and asked if he was going to be taking me home.  When he told me no, I was brought outside with the seminar director, Mr. K, and the psychiatrist.  My parents joined us.

I told my father that I did not want any kind of relationship with him and that this was a waste of time.  After hugging my mother briefly, I was dragged away by Mr. K.  I kept screaming how much I hated him all the way to OP.  As I laid on my face, I thought about how my family had driven 6 hours to come to see me for 15 minutes and wasted money on a hotel room that they never even got to use.  It seemed maddening, the waste of time and money that the program was slowly sucking from my family.

The next day I was pulled from OP to see the psychiatrist.  She explained how angry my father was over what I had said to him.  I hated going to see her.  Every time I left one of her sessions, I came back feeling worse than when I initially entered her office.  She rarely spoke of anything positive, instead constantly focusing on my lack of willingness to work with the program and how I was going to end up in either Jamaica or prison before I knew it.  As she spoke, I usually just sat there silently staring at the quotes on her walls and eating the stale candy that sat on her desk.  I learned more from the quotes than I did from her words.

Something seemed off as I left that afternoon’s session.  One of the staff members pulled me aside to ask me how my relationship was with the psychiatrist.  I told him that I didn’t feel like it helped me at all and that meeting with her felt like someone was repeatedly kicking me while I was already down.  He just looked at me.  I didn’t understand at first why he had asked me those questions, but a few days later it became clear.  The psychiatrist had decided that she was unable to help me.

The months kept dragging on, each day exactly the same as the last.  As new faces started replacing the ones that had been there when I arrived, I started sinking deeper and deeper into depression.  With each new arrival, I would try to determine why they had been sent here.  It was obvious that many of them needed real help.  One boy was so disconnected from reality that he never seemed to know was happening around him.  It was so saddening to watch.  He was constantly in trouble, constantly being restrained.  You could sense a feeling of happiness from the staff as they inflicted the same pain upon him as they had upon me when I first arrived.  I wondered if he was coherent enough to even realize that what they were doing to him was abuse.

The more they hurt the new students, the more determined I became to leave.  I started begging to be sent to Costa Rica.  Mr. K kept refusing, offering me the option of staying or going to Jamaica.  I finally gave in, recognizing that Mr. K held every chance of my success in his two large hands.  As I told him that I was ready to go to Jamaica, he stated flatly that he, “hoped I realized what I was saying.”  I wasn’t sure if I did or not, but I tried to reassure him anyway.  I started preparing myself mentally for me eventual departure, blocking out the stories the other kids told of how hard it would be there.  I just wanted to get out, even if it wasn’t home.

I had been in the program for eight months when they called me to the office.  I was sure it was the day I would be leaving for Jamaica, but instead the staff asked me if I still wanted to go to Costa Rica.  I was both relieved and excited.

My morale was boosted even higher as one of the kinder staff members, Mr. B, took me offsite to get my passport ready.  It was my first time stepping outside of the complex since I had arrived and I marveled at the beauty of the surrounding area.  I remember seeing a girl and it seemed so strange.  I hadn’t seen a girl in almost a year and I suddenly realized how much I had missed out on.  I spoke to Mr. B about all of the emotions I was feeling and I’ll never forget his response, that I could have been home already.   He was right.  I had wasted so much time fighting the program that I had spent nearly the same amount of time there that it took most kids to graduate.  I was still a Level One and prayed that Costa Rica would be different and that I would somehow get a second chance at succeeding.  I was 17 years old and ready to start living a real life again, outside of the program.

The day before I left for Costa Rica, I spent my last day in OP.  My. K issued me a Level 4 consequence for group removal and non-participation.  We had been given a personal evaluation to be filled out that asked a series of questions about the progress we had made towards working on our issues.  For each question, I had written the same answer, “Not very good, because this program is not about issues, it is about making money.”

The whole group was angry with Mr. K for his decision.  It was obvious that he was punishing me so severely because I was leaving and for the first time since my arrival, I actually felt comraderie with my fellow students.  One boy wrote him a letter expressing how much he didn’t agree with Mr. K’s decision.

I took my punishment calmly and without protest, content in the knowledge that I had finally gotten something I wanted.  It felt so freeing to be able to choose something – even if it was only the choice to go to another program – that I didn’t care what any of the staff did or said to me.  I was leaving and that was all that mattered.

It seemed surreal as I strode through the Atlanta airport on my way to Costa Rica.  For a short amount of time, I felt like I was a normal person in the real world again.  The feeling quickly faded as I sat on the plane and was asked by the passenger next to me why I was going to Costa Rica.  I could tell that everyone else was excited for family vacations and luxury honeymoons and they expected the same from me.  Instead, I told her bluntly that I was going to a high-impact behavior modification program.  She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the flight.

We were given the choice of steak or chicken for our in-flight meal.  I hadn’t had steak or soda in so long and even though it was airplane food, it tasted amazing.  I marveled in the feeling of being “normal.”  I watched the in-flight movie – the first real film I had watched in months – and felt so free.  For those few hours, I was able to be myself.  I listened to the radio, hearing new music for the first time.  Though I knew Costa Rica was probably going to be no different than Carolina Springs, I was so happy for the brief respite of happiness that nothing else in the world mattered to me.

As we landed, I realized that this would be the first time in my life I had ever been to another country.  My happiness faded as I realized it was a country I was never going to get to really see or enjoy.  I was met by Mrs. F, the wife of the owner of the program, and she quickly escorted me to the van that would take me to my new home.  We arrived at Dundee Ranch in Orotina an hour later.  It reminded my of my first day at Carolina Springs.  I was given a drug test, stripped of my belongings, and assigned a new buddy.  Once again, I was taken to my new bedroom and assigned a bunk.  This time, though, the bunks were stacked three high and had thin, small mattresses.  Despite knowing that this was going to be a difficult program, I slept soundly that night knowing that I was at least where I wanted to be.

We were awoken early the next morning by a staff member shouting for everyone to get up.  My new bed was on the top bunk and I was waiting for people to get out of my way so that I could jump down when I received my first consequence.  It was a “Slow to Act.” The morning started with headcount outside, then we returned to our room to do our room chores.  It all felt a bit familiar to me, though I was a bit in shock to see female students alongside the male students.  My first bit of happiness, though, came from the fact that I was finally allowed to have laces in my shoes again.

My buddy explained to me that we had beans and rice as a side with each meal, unless we were in worksheets and that was all we were allowed.  I realized that the staff barely spoke English and started to question whether I had made the right decision.  Group here was called “progress” and I felt a bit of deadness inside me as I recognized that I would likely make no more progress at Dundee Ranch than I had at Carolina Springs.  Each day was exactly the same in Costa Rica, just as it had been in South Carolina.  I took some comfort in the knowledge that I was at least used to being on Level One, so even if I never made a bit of progress, I would at least know what to expect.  My new family rep, Mr. A, was a kind American man and made me feel more comfortable than Mr. K had and I was happy for that.

School was much different at Dundee Ranch, which made it even harder for me to make academic progress.  Instead of the text books we had had at Carolina Springs, we had black and white photocopied versions of the same books.  There were no copyright laws in Costa Rica, so the program didn’t bother to purchase the real books.  It was so hard for me to focus on the tiny print.  We sat in class for five hours a day, six days a week.  If we didn’t keep out eyes focused on our “book” for the entire time, we received a consequence.  We were given a five minute break every hour to rest our eyes.  It was incredibly difficult for me and I continually received consequences, once just for glancing to my right.

Though there were similarities, Dundee Ranch was a lot different than Carolina Springs.  Here, the staff didn’t seem to have control of anything.  The Upper Level students ran the facility, constantly making new rules.  Instead of sending mail home, we were allowed to write our parents an e-mail once a day due to the delay in mail service.  I still spent most of my time in worksheets, but here it seemed I was always able to complete my punishment the same day and return back to my group.

Two weeks after I arrived, the rainy season began.  It would rain every at exactly 2:00pm.  I remember sitting in school and just watching the rain.  It had seemed so long since I had seen real rain like this and it was one of the only beautiful things I had witnessed in nearly a year.  The sound was calming and made me feel somehow closer to the outside world.

One vivid afternoon will always stand out in my mind.  Ken Kay, the president of WWASP, came to Dundee Ranch to visit.  We were all instructed to put on our very best uniforms and were marched into the cafeteria.  All of the tables had been removed and a large couch had been brought in for him to sit on.  We were each instructed to introduce ourselves, announce our levels, and pose for pictures.  It seemed like a circus, everyone trying their hardest to look happy and successful in front of Mr. Kay.  As I introduced himself to him, he just looked at me calmly and stated, “My name is Ken Kay and I am not on any level.”

The staff were all brought to the front of the room to pose with Ken Kay.  Narvin Lichfield, the owner of Dundee Ranch, came out to pose with them.  I remember Narvin shouting, “Say Money!” as the camera flashed.  It seemed so fitting and confirmed my belief that the program cared nothing about helping children, only about convincing parents that it was their only option and making huge profits at all of our expense.

Each of the families was then assembled for our “family portraits.”  I was in the Rennaisance family, which is where all of the so-called refusers and kids who didn’t care were placed.  As we stood there together, I realized it was exactly where I belonged.  One of the boys in my family held up his next tie like it was a noose, whispering that it reflected how he felt at the time.  I felt exactly the same way.  It seemed like I had been in a program forever.  The days just kept winding on and time had lost its meaning for me.  I knew that I would never graduate, not because I wasn’t capable, but because I wasn’t willing to give in to what they wanted from me.  Things had never come easy for me in my life and that certainly hadn’t changed since I had been sent away.

Before I knew it, it was seminar week again.  I was eligible to return to Parent-Child again and this time, I really did want to go.  I told Mr. A that I was ready, but as the date approached, I retracted my statement and decided that I didn’t want to go through it again.  I knew that I wasn’t ready to see my family and that I hadn’t yet forgiven them for taking away so much of my life.  As I wasn’t on Level 3, I wasn’t eligible to take any of the other seminars and was instead sent to a one-day seminar called “Breakpoint.”  I thought it was ironic that it was led again by Ms. Jan, the same woman who had led the seminars back at Carolina Springs.

As we sat in the seminar, I kept thinking about how much I didn’t care anymore.  I would be turning 18 soon and had no intention of staying.  Ms. Jan seemed to sense this, quickly calling me out for my “I don’t give a fuck” attitude.  I was asked to leave the seminar and forced to sit in silence with the other “choose outs” in the back of the room and do nothing. I actually longed for OP, feeling it would at least be a break compared to this.

Two days later, everything would change for me.

The day started off like any other, sweeping leaves off of the front driveway while on work detail.  I remember whispering to another student that I hoped they would shut this place down.  I was so tired of the endless repetitiveness of the program, constantly working in the blistering heat.

As I left work detail and started heading towards the classroom, I saw two police officers and a man carrying a video camera walking towards the facility.  It seemed strange as I had never seen outside inspectors on the property, but I quickly forgot and went on with my day.  I couldn’t comprehend the idea that anything would ever change inside the program.  As I entered the classroom, however, we were met by two upper level students who instructed us to immediately head down to the cafeteria.

As we walked inside, the man with the camera and the two police officers were standing inside.  No staff were allowed to enter with us, so only the students were sitting inside.  The man stood and started speaking.  He told us that we had the right to make phone calls whenever we wanted, that we had the right to use the bathroom without asking permission, and finally that we had the right to leave the facility whenever we wanted.

As soon as he said this, students started leaping up and heading towards the door.  Mrs. F, the owner’s wife, tried to deny his claims but finally admitted that we were allowed to leave the program, but that she would not give anyone their passports.

Chaos started to break loose all around me.  Some of the kids had broken into the supply room and everyone was quickly scrambling to find their belongings and change back into their street clothes.  Other students started running around wildly, breaking objects and throwing things.  Boys were talking to girls, which had been strictly forbidden up until this point.  I started wandering around desperately asking staff for a cigarette but came up empty handed.   Another girl joined me in my search and for the first time in so long I actually felt like someone understood what I was feeling.

As I headed towards the fence, prepared to leave, I was met by a group of Upper Level students who warned me that everyone who ran away would end up in jail.  As I was unable to get my passport anyway, I decided to stay at the facility and see what would happen next.

The following day, the staff brought out agreements for us all to sign that stated that we were there voluntarily and wanted to be there.  If we refused to sign, we were sent to the high impact structure.  At first, no one did, including myself.  Instead of being sent immediately to high impact, we were brought to the office for a phone call from our parents, apparently designed to help motivate us to stay.

I was shocked as I head my mother’s voice.  It was only the second time I had spoken to her in an entire year.  Then, she said the words I had been waiting to hear for so long.  “You can come home.”

After my phone call, I refused again to sign the document, knowing that I would be going home.  They locked me outside in the high impact structure.  As I knew I was leaving, I didn’t even let it bother me.  I remember swimming in the fountain, imagining what it would be like to finally see my family again.

It didn’t take long before we were brought back into the general population.  I returned to my room while everyone was asleep.  It would be the last night I would spend at Dundee Ranch.  I remember telling the Upper Level who was on night watch that I was going to be leaving this shit hole the next day.  He politely asked me not to give him any trouble.  I could understand where he was coming from and since I was leaving anyway, I let all of my built up anger go and left him alone.

In the morning, no one would tell me what time I was being picked up.  They were desperately afraid that it would create an issue for the other students.  When the moment finally came, I only had a few minutes to quickly change and pack up my belongings.  I could hardly comprehend that it was really happening.  I knew the day that stepped through the doors into Carolina Springs I would one day be leaving to go home.  I had never imagined it would be a year later, or that I would be coming home to my family from somewhere so far away in Costa Rica.   As I left to get into my cab, I kicked my basket over and spilled uniforms all over the floor, yelling “FREE SHIT!” to the other students in my family.  My only regret was not making my good-byes longer.  I would never see any of the other kids from the program ever again.

My driver hardly spoke any English but I was able to convince him to give me a cigarette after asking several times.  I hadn’t smoked in nearly a year at it felt like such a relief.  I was high off the sense of freedom and the excitement of finally going home.  We reached the airport and he dropped me off to catch my flight.  I didn’t have any cash but I didn’t mind.  I was going home.  I called my mother collect from a payphone at the Houston airport during my layover.  I couldn’t contain my excitement over the simple pleasure of using a phone.

Late in the evening on May 23rd, 2003, I saw my mother for the first time since the seminar at Carolina Springs Academy.  She had one of my favorite shirts with her for me to wear and as I put it on, I felt like a normal person again for the first time in a year.  We went to Wendy’s and I will never forget how delicious the cheeseburger and soda tasted.  All I could focus on was the fact that I was finally free.

As we drove through my home town, I realized how much had changed since I left.  Places I had visited just weeks before I left had closed.  When I awoke the next morning, I looked outside and saw the woods behind my house had been bulldozed to make way for a new development of homes.

As I struggled to adjust to my new life, I realized that I had changed as well.  I could barely make eye contact with women as it had been forbidden to me for so long.  I couldn’t sleep with the light on.  I could still feel the pain in my back from being restrained.  I struggled to tell anyone my story, unable to find the right words to describe it.  Later, I would be diagnosed with PTSD, something I would struggle with for years.

Today, I know that I am a strong person for what I have experienced and am dedicated to bringing awareness to the public about WWASP and other abusive programs for teens.  I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to save a few teenagers from being sent away to programs like the one I attended and am now able to openly share my stories and experiences with others.  It is my hope that one day WWASP will be recognized for what it truly is: an abusive, corrupt organization that robs teenagers of their freedom, dignity and opportunities while convincing vulnerable parents to fork over thousands of dollars in exchange.

Recommended Reading

American Child, Mexican Prisoner:  Casa By the Sea

http://www.therealcasa.blogspot.com

This is an excellent survivor blog with real journal entries and letters home.  Beautifully written, this blog offers a unique look into the mind of a teenager struggling to come to terms with their imprisonment in a Mexican WWASP facility.

A Life Gone Awry

http://www.alifegoneawry.com/

Free e-book (also available through Amazon.com in print format) detailing one man’s struggle within the Elan School.  Though not WWASP affiliated, many of the methods used are similar and this story is one of few well-written memoirs that I have come across that truly make you feel as though you are there.

Facebook Survivor Groups

If you haven’t already, joining a survivor group on Facebook is an excellent way to meet other survivors and find ways to get involved in the fight against WWASP.  I highly recommend joining one (or all!) and using our stories and experiences to help bring awareness to this horrible industry.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/cafety/ (CAFETY)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/168122273247965/ (ELAN after the years)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/ifbcultsurvivorshelp/ (IFB & SRA Cult Survivors Speak Up and Fight Back!!!)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/NBGAsurvivors/ (NBGA: Proactive Survivors of New Beginnings Girls Academy)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/paradisecovesamoa/ (Paradise Cove Western Samoa)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/185627381482928/ (Reddit troubled teens)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/180232375369302/ (Survivors Against WWASP)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/2206196427/ (Stop WWASP)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/IFBhomesurvivors/ (Survivors of Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult CHILDRENS HOMES)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/215415838484780/ (Survivors of Straight Inc.)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/35429320847/ (Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Cult Survivors (and their Supporters))

http://www.facebook.com/groups/keepaneye/ (Keep An Eye on PSI! (and UHS!))

http://www.facebook.com/groups/5879127059/ (Massachusetts Students United Against The Judge Rotenberg Center)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/129332803797885/ (The TRUTHS about the IFB CULT, as told by the survivors..)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/227353480612736/ (Boarding School Awareness Program)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/ivyairheads/ (I went to Ivy Ridge)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/67367255929/ (STOP AARC)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/249506381732909/ (LGBT Re-Education and Trouble Teen Industry Survivors)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/215750691806785/ (Midwest Academy Survivors)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/175234339183952/ (Survivors of IFB Narcissitic Families, and their supporters)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/59229784340/ (Rancho Valmora Survivors)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/ifbsurvivors/ (EXFUNDIES R US)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/171520549553697/ (You know you’re an IFB Cult Survivor when…)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Chimneys-Survivors/127380260646456 (Green Chimneys Survivors)

Memoir Excerpt – Part Three

Memoir Excerpt – C. Kapela ©

We had another half-hour on the field before group therapy.  As we walked our laps silently, I thought about what treatment had meant to me before Tranquility Bay.  My father used to work in the juvenile justice system and my mother suffered from severe mood disorders and anxiety.  They believed fervently in psychiatry and had me in therapy by the time I reached middle school.  I had seen so many doctors, taken so many medications, and seen the inside of the psychiatric ward more than once that now I wasn’t even sure what diagnosis I still carried.

I had always felt that my parents wanted me to be crazy.  When my mom stopped working because of her depression, it was my fault.  When my parents almost split up, that was my fault too.  As long as everyone could keep their focus on me – the problem child – no one had to take responsibility for the emotional abuse that ran rampant in our home.  For years, I had stuffed my anger and hatred down, accepting my role as pliantly as I could.  With my eighteenth birthday looming on the horizon, I was suddenly unable to accept it any longer.  I wanted nothing more than to break free of my home and find a better life.  Instead, I found myself on the other side of the world, more confined and isolated than I had ever felt before.

The foreboding in the air was almost tangible as we finished our laps.  No one spoke or broke out of line.  The staff were even silent.  The lack of consequences was almost more ominous than the fear that surrounded me.  I was shaking so bad as I struggled to change out of my sneakers and back into my flip-flops that I could barely keep up with the other girls.  The line seemed to move so slowly as we crossed the courtyard and headed upstairs to our room.  Everyone sat in a circle on the cold hard floor, legs crossed awkwardly.  “Indian sitting” wasn’t allowed. It was immodest.

My mind was racing, feverishly trying to figure out what was coming.  I honestly thought that if I explained why I was there and what had happened to me that they would understand and let me leave.  It didn’t seem feasible to me that there was no way out.  I remembered M’s words, telling me that my parents knew everything and that I couldn’t leave until I graduated but I refused to accept it.  How could my parents choose this for me?  I didn’t belong here, this I knew.  Even if my parents believed I did, surely the counselor would see the abuse I had experienced and help me.

It felt like the air was drawn out of the room as an older woman entered, her hair in a tight bun.  She was dressed in a cheap business suit that hardly fit her thin frame.  Her face was covered in dark freckles, her brown eyes a little too far apart.  I could sense that the girls were afraid of her.  No one made eye contact, each seeming to shrink back into the wall in an effort to become invisible.  She had cold eyes that made me want to do the same.  I watched her as she surveyed the room, her mouth making tiny frowns as she caught the glances of some of my fellow family members.

Her gaze stopped suddenly as she reached me.  She gestured for me to come over to her.  I stood quickly and did as I was told.  “I’m Ms. S,” she stated calmy, “I’m your case manager.  Welcome to Tranquility Bay.  Your parents are fully committed to you being here until you graduate, Chelsea, and I hope you are too.”  She reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.  “They wanted to be sure you got this e-mail right away so there was no confusion.  Go ahead and sit down with the group to read it.  We can talk about it when group starts.”  She shoved the paper into my hand and watched me as I returned to the group.

My hands were still trembling as I unfolded it, unsure what to expect.  I desperately wanted the letter to tell me that my parents felt horrible for what they had done, that they knew I didn’t belong here, that they were coming to save me.  Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t.

All e-mail addresses had been blackened out from the header of the message.  In red, all-capital text, there was a short message from my parents.  “We are committed to you graduating the program, Chelsea.  We understand it may be difficult for you but this is your only option.  If you choose not to graduate, you will not be welcome home.  We love you.  Mom & Dad”

The words stung me like a knife.  I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, my cheeks growing hot.  I was as angry as I was sad, enraged at their callous indifference to my plight, incredibly saddened and scared that I would be forced to remain here or become homeless.  I folded the paper back up and shoved it under my leg, not wanting to look at it.  If the eyes of the staff weren’t all fixed upon me, I probably would have crumpled it up or ripped it into a thousand pieces, screaming my hatred as I did it.  Instead, I took a deep breath and tried to recompose myself.  It obviously didn’t work.

Ms. S pulled a chair in from the veranda and sat at the edge of the circle.  “We have a new member of the Integrity family.”  She said, calmly.  “Her name is Chelsea.”  Everyone looked at me.  I could feel a sense of anticipation, almost an electric charge, run through the room.  “Chelsea,” She asked sweetly, “Why don’t you share with the group why you are here?  Go ahead, it’s okay.  Just stand in the center of the circle and tell us what brought you to Tranquility Bay.”

I stood slowly and walked to the center of the circle.  I felt naked, every one’s eyes boring into me.  The eyes weren’t friendly.  They looked at me with judgement and hatred, ready to pounce on me at any moment.  I started crying without even meaning to.  I didn’t want to speak.  I didn’t even know what to say.

“Go on.” Ms. S commanded, her voice less friendly.  “Tell them why you’re here.”

I tried to explain, everything coming out in jumbled bursts between sobs.  “I…my parents, they hate me.  I hate them.  My dad…he was a counselor for a long time, and my mom…she’s crazy now.  They blame me for everything.  They don’t understand….I…”

Ms. S cut me off in mid-sentence.  “Now, Chelsea.  Are you trying to say that you’re here because your parents just decided to send you here, through no actions of your own? “  She looked at me, waiting for an answer.

“I…I guess so, yeah.”  I stammered.  “I mean, I’ve done some things but I was angry and scared.  I just want them to leave me alone.  I don’t belong here.  I’ve never been in trouble with the law, I’ve never been arrested.  I can’t stay here.”  I was sobbing uncontrollably.  “I just want to go home, not even to my parents, but just back to my friends.  I want to get out of here.  My dad has told me about the places he used to work…how he tried to help the kids, but it was so hard…I know how this stuff works.  I can’t do this.  I’m not a bad kid.”

Ms. S started to laugh.  It was a cold, sadistic laugh that sent a chill through my body.  “Ladies,” she started, “Do you want to give Chelsea any feedback on her story?”

Nearly every hand shot up in the room.  There was a ferocity brewing around me, every one desperately wanting a chance to speak.  I didn’t know what feedback was.  I looked around frantically trying to find a set of sympathetic eyes but was met with nothing but coldness.

Martha was called first.  She stood and joined me in the center of the circle, her face only a few inches from my own.  “I think you’re manipulating.”  She said angrily, a tiny blast of spit hitting my face as she screamed.  “You think you’re better than everyone else, that you’re going to get to go home.  Well, you’re not.  You belong here just as much as the rest of us do.  If you keep pulling your crap, you’re going to end up dead or in jail.”

The girls came up one by one, some more angry than others.

One girl was nearly shaking she was so upset, shoving her finger into my chest.  “Look at you!” She screamed, “You look like you could break if someone touched you.  You’re anorexic!  Admit it!!  And I bet you’ve slept with a lot of guys, too.  You look like the type.  Did you?  Are you a slut too?”

Another was quieter, but equally as harsh.  “Do you think that because your daddy was part of the system that you think you can figure out a way to get through this without doing the work?  We’re going to know.  We won’t let you do that.  You’ve got problems or you wouldn’t be here.  Stop whining and crying and manipulating and try to work the program so you can make it in the real world.”

Ms. S nodded with approval after each burst of feedback.  For over ten minutes I stood there, berated by each member of my family.  When it was finished, I had become an anorexic, manipulative, drug-addicted slut who blamed my parents for all of my problems and would never make it “in the real world” if I didn’t graduate.  Now, it was Ms. S’ turn to speak.  She stood up slowly and joined me in the center of the circle.

“Today, Chelsea got an e-mail from her parents telling her that they are committed to her graduating the program.  Some of you might not know this, but she will be turning 18 in only three months.”  She looked me up and down.  “I think we can all agree that she is manipulating.  I think we can all recognize her problems.  Look at the way she stands.” She gestured to my body. “Her hands covering up her stomach, barely making eye contact.  What do you weigh, Chelsea?”

It was a difficult subject for me.  When I was in early high school, I worked at a fast food restaurant near our small town.  My mother had started constantly criticizing me for gaining weight and eating too many fries.  “You better stop,” She’d remind me, “Or you’re going to end up getting fat.”  Whenever she heard my actual weight, the comments were always the same.  “Oh Chelsea,” She’d exclaim, shocked.  “You don’t look like you weight that much.  But if you do, you should probably start to diet.”  I did start to diet, only I never really stopped.  It was the first time in years that I had felt control over something in my life and I liked the attention that it brought me.

“I…weigh..103.”  I pushed the words out, dreading the onslaught of comments that were heading my way.

Ms. S smiled at my admission.  “See,” She explained to the other girls.  “She may think that there is nothing wrong, but her parents sent a letter explaining why they sent her.  Do you want to hear it?”

Everyone nodded except for me.  I just stared at the ground, trying to block out the words.

“According to Chelsea’s parents,” Ms. S continued, “She has been using drugs and lost so much weight that they’re afraid she’ll die.  She runs away from home.  She’s been dating a boy who went to jail.  She doesn’t listen to them or respect them, and she’s even tried to kill herself more than once.”

“Chelsea,”  She turned to me calmly.  “What do you think your parents have felt like this whole time?  You say that you’re scared and don’t belong here, but don’t you think that they’ve been scared?  Don’t you think that they deserve some peace and quiet without you disrupting their lives?  Don’t you think that they deserve for you to be here?  I think you are both selfish and manipulative.  For that, you’ll be spending the afternoon in study hall.  You can leave right now.  Hopefully it will help you to understand that we won’t tolerate lies and manipulation here.  We’re not like your parents.”

I didn’t know what study hall was, but I was glad to be leaving the group.  I felt like I had just been beaten down by twenty girls and didn’t have it in me to fight any harder.

Memoir Excerpt – Part Two

Memoir Excerpt – C. Kapela ©

Ms. B unlocked a white wooden shed filled with tennis shoes. Most were deteriorated and rotten from weathering too many humid summers.  I saw my own and all I could think about was home.  I rarely wore sneakers but had purchased these a month before. They were still pristine, having touched nothing but the department store floor.  It seemed so absurd, the idea of new shoes juxtaposed with the half-deflated basketball that wilted beside them and the overwhelming stench of sweat and decay that wafted from the cabinet.

I wondered how many of the other shoes had once been new like mine and how long it took them to end up in such a state.  As the girls scrambled around me excitedly to quickly change, I realized it wouldn’t take long.  The deadness of their eyes was a reminder that every moment spent here was a minute too long.  Soon I would share their faded look of compliance and defeat, overly excited by the smallest reminder of a life once lived, no matter how ugly.

For 30 minutes we walked silently around the dusty field, forbidden to speak. All I could think about was home and escape.  I wanted to break free and run at top speed across the sand toward the thick mass of trees that stood just across the barbed wire fence.  Instead, I kept my mouth closed and watched my feet as they made scuff marks in the sand.  I remembered the girl who had been dragged away during head count.  I would be eighteen in three months.  Though it seemed so far away, I was determined to make it out without ever knowing what happened down that short flight of stairs.

It seemed like hours before we made it to the dining hall for breakfast.  Again, we were forbidden to speak.  Before we entered Martha explained to me that we had to eat at least 50% of our plate or we would get a major consequence.  In addition, we had to take notes during our meal as they would be playing an educational audio tape that we would need to remember for a later assignment.

As we entered the room, we were quickly shuffled through a line to grab our meals.  I headed to the end of the table where the vegetarian meals were lined up.  I hadn’t eaten meat in nearly a year and my parents had vowed to let me remain a vegetarian during my stay.  We had boiled cabbage and a strange looking mush that I had never seen before.  Toward the front of the room, there were three large beverage dispensers.  I grabbed my plate and bowl and poured a glass of something warm and slightly orange before taking a seat next to Martha.

The dining hall was sweltering.  Within a few seconds of sitting down, the audio tape started playing.  “The secret to financial success is understanding how to sell your product,” an excited voice shouted through the speakers.  “If you understand this simple concept the possibilities are endless!  You can be a millionaire too!”  Everyone was writing feverishly and I joined them, struggling to keep up with what was being said or how it was relevant to a seventeen year old girl locked away in Jamaica.  What product did I have to sell?  Is this why I was here?  I tried to focus on the tape and ignore the overwhelming panic that was rising up inside of me.

The food was luke-warm and bland.  I shoveled down the boiled cabbage, gagging as I tried to swallow.  It felt like seaweed, slimy and cold.  I was starving but I could hardly bring myself to eat.  The mush was “cornmeal porridge.”   It tasted slightly sweet and a little salty.  It had been sitting out too long and had started to turn into thick chunks that I struggled to consume.  The orange liquid was a warm, watered down fruit punch that tasted slightly pungent and sour.  Each sip reminded me of drinking from an old cup that had been left in the car for too long.

The upper levels and staff members were circling around the tables ensuring we were eating enough food.  There was hardly enough food to satiate even a small child’s hunger, let alone a growing teenager, but I could still barely bring myself to eat half of it.  I watched as a girl raised her hand to ask if she could have another plate since there were some left over.  The main staff just snarled at her, telling her it was because of eating seconds that she was getting so fat.  She sat down, her face defeated.  An upper level laughed and grabbed the plate the other girl had been eyeing. I carefully divided half of each portion of food and forced myself to eat.  A staff stood behind me, watching each bite.

The tape kept blaring. Occasionally it would crackle and skip and I could tell it had been played so many times it had little life left.  I struggled to take notes, not knowing what I was supposed to be recording.  I wrote as much as I could, nearly every line, fighting to see some sort of purpose in what I was hearing.  It cut off suddenly in mid-sentence.  Breakfast was over.

Like a well-oiled machine, we rushed to dispose of our trash and line-up single file by the main door.  We passed our pens to the staff as they were not allowed outside of dining hall because they could be made into weapons.  I felt lightheaded and dazed.  Outside the doorway, there was a beautiful resort-style swimming pool.  It seemed so out of place, a piece of normalcy and luxury in the midst of so much suffering.  I couldn’t look at it without tears welling into my eyes so I focused on my feet instead.  My mind was blank as we started walking to our next task.  I didn’t even ask where we were going.  It took every ounce of will-power to stay in line and follow.

We walked upstairs to the very top of the building.  We entered a small classroom, each asking permission permission to cross as we passed through the door, quickly taking our seats in lawn chairs at long wooden tables.  Martha sat beside me.  One by one, the girls raised their hands for permission to stand and retrieve textbooks.  A few pulled papers from a series of crates along the right side of the room.  M raised her hand for permission to speak to me.  The teacher nodded approval.

“This is school.” Martha explained.  “You will get an ED plan soon.  It will tell you what you will need to study so that you don’t get too far behind back home.  It is a lot different than regular school. You will read a chapter at a time and then take a test.”  She gestured towards the crates where the girls had pulled papers.  “The teacher will grade them.  Sometimes you can get help, but usually the teachers and staff haven’t studied the subjects either.”  As though on cue, a girl raised her hand for help with her algebra.  Despite her stern face, I could see sadness in the eyes of the teacher as she struggled to grasp the concepts laid out in the faded textbook.  The books were all years old.  I wondered if any of it would even transfer.

Martha continued talking.  “Because it is your first day, we don’t have to do any school.  Instead, I will help you with the rules and explain what they mean.”  I pulled out my copy of the rule sheet and laid it on the desk.  “There are six levels here.  Right now, you’re a level one.  I’m a level three. You have to reach level six before you go home.  You get points for completing school work, from sharing in group, and for finishing the seminars.  When you have enough points you can request to advance to the next level and if staff and the family approve, you move up.  For each rule that you break, you lose points and your parents are fined the amount listed beside it.  If you lose enough points, you’ll lose your level or receive a consequence.”

I struggled to focus and follow what was expected of us.  It seemed so hard to gain points but so easy to lose them.  Every few seconds, someone was being reprimanded for an infraction, usually for speaking without permission or not focusing on school work.  Someone received a “rude facial gestures” for rolling her eyes when staff denied her request to stand.

Martha continued.  “The rules are broken into categories.  Category one is pretty simple.  You have to raise your hand and ask permission to speak, move, cross, stand, or sit.  As a level one, you’re only allowed to speak to levels three and above.  You can tell who is a level three because we’re allowed to wear jewelry.”  She gestured to her necklace.  “Level one rules don’t have a specific consequence unless you get too many in a day.  You just need to say “self-correct” and fill out a form explaining why you broke the rule.”  She pulled out her own self-correct from from speaking in the shower area to show me.  “If you self-correct, you lose less points and your parents are fined less money.”

“The higher level rules are different – you’ll either go to study hall or OP.”  She continued, pointing to some of the other infractions which had at first seemed straight forward.  “Don’t ever look at a boy, or you’ll receive a romantic encouragement.  Don’t bite your nails, or you’ll receive a suicide attempt.  Don’t look out the window, or you’ll receive run-away plans.  And don’t ever, ever argue back.  If you do, they’ll accuse you of being out of control and you’ll go straight to OP.”

I started to ask a question and Martha shot her hand up, shouting “Talking without permission!”

The teacher shot me a spiteful glance and jotted something in a notebook.  I was too confused to respond so the teacher called out staff correction.  I didn’t understand why Martha had gotten me into trouble or what was going to happen next.  Martha leaned over to me and told me to raise my hand and ask for permission to speak before I could ask her any questions.  I did as I was told, seething with anger, and was finally allowed to speak.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her bitterly.  “You know that I don’t even understand what is happening.”  She smiled, enraging me more.

“Chelsea,” she stated calmly, “If we don’t report each other for breaking rules, we go to Study Hall or worse.  I have to tell staff or I get in trouble and I’m not going to lose level three just because you’re new.  You don’t know how easy you’ve had it so far.  Most girls go to OP on their first day.  I fought staff during my cavity search and I had to go there.  I didn’t want to take out my tongue ring, so they stabbed my gums with a fork until I opened my mouth.  I spent three days laying on my face in OP.  I don’t ever want to go there again, and neither do you.  Just be glad all you’ve gotten so far is a TWOP and nothing worse.”

I looked at her angrily, tears welling up in my eyes.  “I don’t belong here.”  I exclaimed, “My parents are going to get me out of here.  They don’t know what’s going on here.  They’re going to help me.  I’m going to call them later and tell them everything and they’ll come and get me.  And if they don’t, I’ll never speak to them again.  I’m turning 18 in May and I’ll leave then.  I’m going to get out of here.”  I was shaking as I said it, desperation welling up inside of me.  Martha started to laugh.

“Chelsea, your parents know everything about this place and you definitely belong here.  No one is coming to rescue you.  It’s best that you realize this now.  Your parents put you here and you have to stay until you graduate.  It’s just the way it is.  You’re not allowed any phone calls until you reach level three and that took me almost six months.  You can send letters but the staff read them so be careful what you write.  If you lie about anything or make it sound bad, you’ll have to go to OP for manipulation.  And don’t think that turning 18 means you get to go home – they can make you stay here, or deny you a plane ticket home.  So don’t even talk about that. Just follow the rules and try not to get into trouble.  Everyone says they don’t belong here when they get here.  Everyone cries and feels sorry for themselves.  Just get over it.”

Girls in Line at Tranquility Bay

“I Survived the Horrors of Aspen Ranch” Facebook Group

This is utterly shameful and needs to be stopped.  It is bad enough to have endured abuse at the hands of those who should have protected you, however to have those same people entice you to share your feelings – only to cut you down – is despicable.  Most program survivors have formed groups on social media sites, post frequently in forums and share their experiences with others.  It is hard to explain what we have witnessed and experienced to those who have never been through it.  It appears that this “Aspen Ranch” survivor group is merely a ploy to attract survivors and subsequently silent them.  This is something that we can’t stand for.  Spread this link, offer help to these survivors in any way possible, and most importantly send the message that WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

“I Survived the Horrors of Aspen Ranch” Facebook Group – Reddit Post

Memoir Excerpt

© Chelsea Kapela – Excerpt from Upcoming Memoir

When I arrived, instead of my typical private session, my parents were both there.  The social worker shut the door.  Everyone was crying.  I knew what was happening, what was next.  They wanted me to talk about my rape.  I refused.  The counselor pulled out a brochure — one that I had never noticed in her pamphlets before — and told my parents that I needed a change.  I was using drugs and skipping school and out of control.  I needed behavior modification before things got worse.

When we got home, I snuck the brochure from my parent’s room.  I slipped into the office and dialed the 1-800 number printed on the front.  I asked what it was like in Jamaica.  I said I was a parent.  They told me it would be tough but that I would get my child back without the attitude.  I asked how long it would take and they said most likely around 10 months to a year, but some kids take longer.  When I started crying, they started asking for my name.  They knew then that I wasn’t a parent, but rather someone soon to be sent who now knew more than they were supposed to.  I hung up immediately.

It would be my last night at home.  The next morning we would be flying to Jamaica.  I couldn’t believe it was happening.  My dad had unplugged the phone in my room.  My bags were already packed.  I could hardly go to the bathroom without someone watching me.  They expected me to run, they knew I wouldn’t go without a fight.  They were right.

It was barely dark when Dina showed up.  I had snuck a call to her from the kitchen phone while my dad was in the bathroom.  I told her what was happening.  She said she’d be there in fifteen minutes and to be ready.  I prepared myself, trying to look nonchalant.  I sat on the couch, turned on the TV.  My dad sat in his chair, eyes still fixed on me.  I heard the crunching of the gravel driveway as she pulled up and started bolting for the garage.

I burst through the door, my father only a stride behind me.  Dina was outside.  She grabbed my hand, screaming at my father to leave me alone as we tried to run to the car.  He grabbed me by the waist and dragged me back in, slamming the door in Dina’s face.  I was kicking and punching but couldn’t make contact.  I sobbed and begged for him to let me go.  He just stood there, one hand on the door, the other on my chest pushing me back.  For almost half an hour Dina knocked and screamed, desperately trying to convince them to release me.

I hardly slept that night.  I had to sleep on the couch, so they could monitor me. I didn’t have anyone else to call, no other plans of escape.  I felt numb, resigned to my fate. I remember just staring at the ceiling, wishing that something would happen to change their mind, yet knowing nothing would.

The next morning the minister arrived from my parent’s church.  He sat at the table with my father while they drank coffee.  My mom and brother said their good-byes.  My father told me how everything was going to be alright.  He had had a vision in church, he told me.  He had seen a banner float across the stage that said “She’s going to be fine now.”  I felt like I was living in another universe.

My father and the minister escorted me to the van.  They would both be accompanying me to the airport.  I was encouraged not to run.  The child safety locks were on.  I tried once at a stoplight and everyone lunged for me.  I didn’t try again.  I screamed obscenities about God, about religion, about how much I hated my father.  I thought maybe if I made it hard enough to be around me at least one of them would leave.  They didn’t.  Instead, my father took out a video camera and started filming me.  It was to show me later, he said, after I had changed.

“Margaritaville” was playing non-stop in the Montego Bay airport.  My father was a bit more relaxed.  He knew I wouldn’t run now, not here.  I was too far from home.  I’d never been to Jamaica.  The only foreign country I had visited was Canada.  I remember how hot it was.  Everything was different – the trees, the people, the landscape.  Our cab didn’t look like a cab, just a regular car.  The driver told us we’d have about a five hour drive to reach Tranquility Bay.  We had to cross the Blue Mountains.

The drive seemed so short.  Sometimes, I would cry but mostly I just stared blankly out the window as the driver and my father discussed the native culture and the history of every landmark we passed.  The driver told me he had heard of Tranquility Bay, that it was tough, but that I would be okay.  Just try to be good, he said, and not get into trouble.

It was dark when we arrived.  My father let me smoke one last cigarette with him before we went inside.  I was sobbing.  The white hotel looked like every other plantation we had passed along the way, only this one was surrounded by barbed wire fencing and patrol guards.

We were escorted into the main office and quickly separated.  A pretty girl, hair in a ponytail, wearing regular clothes immediately escorted my father on a ten minute tour of the facility.  I was told to hand over my luggage so they could search it.  In exchange, I was given a uniform to change into.  It was a white button up shirt, a pair of blue shorts, and flip flops.  We weren’t allowed to wear any regular shoes.  It was harder to run away.  The staff took everything I owned away and put it in storage for when I reached the “upper levels.”

My dad returned with his upper level escort.  She was smiling and telling him how much the program had helped her, and how great it was.  She said it was so much fun here and that I was going to be okay.  He was crying a little as he hugged me.  “It’s going to be okay, honey.” He comforted.  “Everything looks so nice here.  You’re going to be fine.”

As he was walking out the door, the upper level turned to me and quietly whispered, “I’m  so sorry…”

It was dark and muggy as we strolled through the long hall.  I was escorted by two female Jamaican staff, one on either side of me.  I was crying quietly, silently cursing the the sound of the ocean that echoed just out of reach beyond the barbed wire fencing.  There was no breeze, just hot stagnant air.  They talked to each other in thick accents that I couldn’t understand, laughing occasionally like I wasn’t even there.  No one told me where I was going.

We reached a doorway and they led me inside.  At first I thought it was my room – there was a large double bed and nightstand in front of me.  Then I recognized other possessions – someone’s slippers, a mug of tea, an alarm clock.  Strangest of all were the medical supplies along the back wall.

A large Jamaican woman stepped out from the shadows.  She was tall and thick with wide-set eyes, a floral dress, and a scowl that silenced me before I even asked any questions.  She gestured to the medical supplies, mumbling something about being the nurse.  It seemed incomprehensible that this bedroom was her office.  There was dust on the floor and it smelled like moth balls, more like a grandmother’s bedroom than anything resembling a hospital room.

“Undress.”  She said blankly, “We’re going to do a cavity search now.”

I undressed and was led to the bed where she poked and prodded me, searching for any contraband I may have stashed before arrival.  I stayed as still as possible, my heart racing, staring uncomfortably at the floral bedspread.   The door was still open, my staff escorts occasionally peering in to ensure I wasn’t fighting or trying to escape.  I was too humiliated to even consider it.  The nurse was humming a song as she searched me, something I didn’t recognize.  I closed my eyes and let my mind go blank until it was over.

I dressed in silence, a dead sadness creeping through my body.  The nurse was laughing with my escorts now, their voices echoing through the hallway.  I wanted to take a hot shower, curl into a ball and cry but there was no time for that.  As soon as my clothes were on their hands were on my arms again, leading me away from the nurse’s room.  This time, they weren’t talking.  There was nothing but the sound of my flip flops echoing alongside the soft thud of their sneakers.

“This way,” one of the staff commanded.  “This is Integrity – your family now.”  We walked through an open doorway into a small room.  On every wall, plywood platforms had been unfolded.  On each platform was a small mattress, topped with a sleeping girl.  I looked around.  Inside the tiny space there were at least thirteen girls.  I could barely see through the darkness but could tell there were even more around the corner.  The air was stale, smelling faintly of sweat and sewage.

There wasn’t enough time to find me a platform.  Instead, they pulled a twin mattress out onto the floor near the open doorway.  A tiny fan hummed along in front of it, blowing directly on my bed.  They handed me the pajamas and blankets my parents had sent me and told me to change.  I couldn’t believe what they had sent.  It was a set of Mickey Mouse pajamas that I hadn’t worn in years.  As I put them on, I felt an overwhelming sense of being a young girl again, desperately wanting to be held by someone who loved me.  I climbed onto the bare mattress.  My parents hadn’t sent a comforter – just two sheets and a pillow.  I shivered underneath them, freezing from the ever blowing fan.

“Go to sleep.”  The staff whispered.  “Don’t try to run.  Don’t get out of bed.  If you have to go to the bathroom, wait until the night watch comes and raise your hand for an escort.  Don’t make any noise.”  I closed my eyes and waited for them to leave.  They joined the other staff out on the veranda.  Their voices were so loud and fast that I couldn’t even make out what they were saying.  Occasionally, one would walk through the room, shining a bright flash light onto every bed.  I wanted to scream at them to be quiet, that none of us could possibly sleep.  Instead, I laid there silently, staring at the blank white ceiling, my mind churning with images of safety and home. I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore, just the sound.  They flooded from my eyes, soaking my pillow.  I kept as quiet as I could, my body shaking from the sobs.

Across the facility, I heard the recognizable sound of someone screaming in deep pain.  I wiped my eyes and sat up suddenly expecting someone to rush towards the sound, to do something.  Instead, I was met by the beam of the flashlight as a staff ran inside.  “Lay down.” She barked.  “There’s nothing to see. Lay down.”  I didn’t even ask for an explanation, just did as I was told.  I could tell from the tone of her voice that this was nothing new.  I didn’t want to find out where it was coming from.  Exhausted from the weight of the day, I finally drifted off into an uneasy, dreamless slumber.

“WAKE UP TIME LADIES,” A loud voice commanded, knocking on each of the wooden platforms as she walked by.  “HURRY HURRY.”

I could barely peel my eyes open.  It was still dark out, the sun just barely beginning to rise along the horizon.  Around me, girls were quickly and mechanically rising from their beds and assembling near the doorway.  I slowly joined them, looking around at their blank faces and wondering what was next.

“No talking,” a staff commanded, looking at me, the newest of the group.  “Time for head count.”

We shuffled down the stairs into the courtyard.  There were at least seventy five of us girls, all in pajamas and flip flops.  We were lined up by family.  A woman stood at the front of the gathering with a megaphone, occasionally yelling for us to straighten up, to keep our hands at our sides, to keep our eyes down.  I followed every order, remembering the screaming from the night before.

Alongside our neat lines, a small group of girls were brought up from another part of the facility.  They looked tired, faces more deadened than the rest of ours.  One girl started wildly yelling.  It was just excited gibberish.  She jerked around like an animal.  I couldn’t tell if she was faking it, acting out of rebellion, or had a true mental problem.  She seemed autistic, though I couldn’t tell for sure.  Immediately, two staff grabbed her by her arms, threw her to the ground, and dragged her back off to the room from which she came.  I tried not to watch, not to move, as she screamed in pain.  Everyone just kept still, their eyes cast down at the pavement.

As though trying to block the sound, the woman with the megaphone started commanding us to do jumping jacks.  We all jumped wildly for what seemed like forever.  My feet ached from the hard pavement and cheap flip flops.  When we were finished, she started yelling out names.  As each name was called, the person raised their hand, shouting “Here, Maam.”  When I heard my own, I did the same.  Everyone then began chanting our “purpose.”  I didn’t know the words, but I tried to keep up.

Once we had finished with head count, we were quickly shuffled back upstairs to our room.  As we passed through the door, I heard each girl meekly ask staff if they had permission to cross.  Following suit, I did the same.  I was the last in line.

The staff who had been standing by the door pulled me aside and introduced herself.  She was one of our family mothers, Ms.B.  She explained that I was assigned a buddy for the first week of my stay, to help get me acclimated to the environment.  My buddy was to stay with me through all activities and would help teach me the rules of Tranquility Bay and explain how everything worked.

A girl around my age walked over, already in uniform.  Her reddish brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail.  She was wearing a thin silver necklace and glasses.  She looked me up and down, still in my pajamas, with a blank stare.  “Hi.” She said coldly, “I’m Martha.  I’m going to be your buddy until you learn the rules.”  She handed me a piece of paper, ignoring the tears that were building up in my eyes.

“First things first,” She continued, “You need to change into your uniform. Don’t speak to anyone but me.  Don’t leave this room until I tell you to.  Once you’re changed, you can read over the rule sheet while the rest of us complete our morning jobs. Tomorrow, we’ll have one assigned for you.”  At that she turned and walked into the other room, grabbed a broom, and began sweeping the floor.

I quickly changed into my assigned uniform, pulling my hair back into a ponytail as was required.  Around me, the other girls were all busy doing various tasks – folding the thin plywood beds back up into the wall, sweeping, mopping, dusting shelves.  No one looked at me.  I saw that most girls were in the same uniform that I wore, devoid of any jewelry or accessories.  A few wore rings and necklaces.  No one spoke to each other.

I slumped against the wall and pulled out the paper Martha had provided me.  It was a list of rules and consequences, copied so many times it was almost illegible.  I started to cry again as I realized how hard this program truly was.  Everything was against the rules, and everything had a consequence.  Speaking without permission, moving without permission, crossing without permission, rude facial gestures, rude manners, inappropriate lunch room manners — it seemed impossible to exist without somehow getting into trouble.

I sat sobbing, looking longingly at the faces that surrounded me, desperately wishing someone would come and tell me everything would be okay.  Instead of comfort, I was met with Martha’s cold stare.  “Get up.” She said, her voice lacking any sympathy or warmth.  “The faster you stop feeling sorry for yourself and start working the program, the faster you go home.”

Ms. B started calling for us to get ready for shower time.  Girls scrambled around, returning cleaning supplies and forming a straight line by the door.  Martha whispered a few brief instructions.  “Keep your eyes down while we walk.” She commanded, “If we pass the boys, you don’t want them to think you’re looking at them – it’s an automatic romantic encouragement.” She handed me a plastic water bottle.  “Always have this with you.  Consider it a part of you.  If you leave it behind, you’ll get a neglect consequence.”

We walked single file through the hallway and down the long white stairwell.  I didn’t look up, just focused on the ground and keeping pace with the moving feet in front of me.  I couldn’t wait to take a shower.  I could feel the grime on my skin from the previous day’s travel.   I was starving and dirty and exhausted, looking forward to a few brief moments of comfort.

We passed through the courtyard until we reached a wire gate.  Ms. B held it open, each of us asking again for permission to cross before we entered.  Martha walked me to the outdoor storage cubbies.  Mine was already filled with the supplies my parents had sent for me.  I had a large beach towel, basic shower items, and a toothbrush and toothpaste.  “We’ll brush our teeth first,” Martha said, “Then we’ll shower.  There are always two groups because there aren’t enough showers for us all to use at once.  You get 10 minutes to shower – not a minute more and not a minute less.”

We walked back towards a large tree.  There was a pipe jutting out of the ground.  Martha turned the handle and a slow stream of rust tinted water began to trickle out.  “This is where we brush our teeth.” She stated calmly. “Just spit on the ground.  Drink from your water bottle.”  We brushed our teeth in silence.  In the background, I could hear Ms. B yelling out to the girls in the shower.

“One more minute, ladies!”  She screamed.  “Terese – that means you too.  Hurry up, ladies!  Hurry up!”

Martha nudged me and we headed back to the cubbies to trade our toothbrushes for our shower baskets.  The shower area consisted of a long open building with separate stalls, each one blocked with a thick swinging half-door.  I stared at the bare feet and sopping wet hair of the girls inside as they tried to dry off and quickly change before their time ran out.  The floor was nothing but concrete.  As they filed out and we began to take their places, Martha started to whisper something to me.

“Martha!” Ms. B screamed. “No talking in the shower area.”. Martha looked down quickly, her face defeated.  “Self Correct.” She quickly replied. Ms. B nodded approval and we each walked into a stall.

My bare feet stepped onto the cold, wet concrete.  Cold soapy water flowed around me feet from the other stalls, swirling down into the open drain beneath me.  There was only one knob.  I turned it slowly and ice cold water came pouring down.  I jumped back from the shock, waiting for it to warm up.  It never happened.  There was no hot water.  I shoved my body underneath for as long as I could stand, shivering from the icy water and brisk morning air.  The water was so rusty my shampoo and soap wouldn’t lather.  No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t get the film off my skin.

“One more minute, Ladies!”  Ms. B yelled.  I turned the water off and scrambled to dry and dress myself.  As I looked down, I saw a worm slither past my toe and down into the drain.  I felt more filthy than I had before the shower.

We headed back to the cubbies.  I was freezing.  I tried to brush through my hair but it was so tangled and wet I could hardly get the brush through.  We weren’t allowed to use hairdryers.  Martha stood next to me, painfully trying to get her thick curly hair back into a ponytail.  “Smell this.”  She said, looking at me for the first time with anything that resembled honesty.  “My hair has mold in it. Give it a few weeks and yours will too. We shower twice a day. Your hair will never dry.”  A couple other girls nodded in agreement.  I didn’t even have to get close to notice the smell of mildew and rot.

We lined up again outside the metal gate, this time heading to the field.  I had noticed it the night before as we had pulled up outside the complex, a barren expanse of scrub brush and cracked concrete.  There were two basketball hoops and a soccer net.  As we got closer, I noticed a worn path circling the area, hundreds of footprints etched into the sand.  On the far edge, two goats stood quietly munching on the grass, barely aware of our existence.

2008 Congressional Hearing on Institutionalized Child Abuse

A Story in Video

Hackers “Anonymous” Join The Fight Against WWASP

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Reflections on Tranquility Bay

Image via Wikipedia

A Poem

Keep your eyes cast down, for there are foxes in our midst.

Dream of the future, never dwell on the past.

Line up, line up.  Eyes low, face blank.

You bought me the book on non-conformity.

How can you force me to be like everyone else?

Across a mountain, an ocean, a country, lies my home.

Settle for porridge and cabbage and the sound of waves I cannot see.

Tropical weather with freezing nights.

A young girl wakes in the night shivering beneath thin sheets.

Through the trees, a muted drone, a voice is screaming in pain.

Like the waves, a face I cannot see.  But I know.

Line up, line up.  Raise your hand. Don’t protest.

There is a room down those steps you don’t want to see.

Remember the heat.

Your hand cramped, too many sweaty bodies in one dark space.

Pencil writing feverishly, knowing you’ll never finish in time.

Cold food from a plastic box.

A worm grazes your sunburned toe, slithering from the shower drain.

A roach scatters across the wall.

So many girls, writhing, crying, cramping, screaming.

Singing together in a small classroom, remembering songs from long ago.

No music, just voices, some good, some bad.  All welcome.

A hand grasps yours, a friend who’s voice you’ve rarely heard.

Another raises their own, calling forth swift justice.

Etch off the day in your weathered pink journal.

Read your list of food you’ll have, one day, when you are home.

Your stomach aches, your body is weak.

There is mold growing in your hair.  Too many cold showers.

You rest your head upon your pillow, listen to the sounds of breathing that surround you.

Voices drift from the veranda, laughing and happy.

You fall asleep, feverish dreams of happiness and music overwhelm you.

Though lost, you will return again.