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S24 Ep12: Someone Who Believes Me - Something Was Wrong | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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S24 Ep12: Someone Who Believes Me

Something Was Wrong

Fri Sep 12 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: Something Was Wrong

Host: Broken Cycle Media
Episode: S24 Ep12: Someone Who Believes Me
Release Date: September 12, 2025

Overview

This episode of Something Was Wrong centers on Danielle, a survivor of two controversial "therapeutic" youth institutions: Second Nature Blue Ridge (now Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness) and Carlbrook School. Danielle recounts her harrowing journey through these programs in the early 2000s, exposing manipulative intake tactics, dehumanizing routines, enforced isolation, shame-based methodologies, and the lifelong trauma caused. The episode also features a critical exchange with leadership at Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness, addressing ongoing survivor allegations and the institution’s current public statement.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Institutional Response to Allegations

Host Tiffany Reiss details reaching out to Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness for comment in light of repeated survivor accounts of abuse.
- [01:30] Tiffany lists critical questions submitted to Executive Director Danielle Hava, LCSW, including:
  - How does the institution justify its practices amid allegations?
  - Are transport/strip searches performed?
  - What qualifications and oversight do staff have?
  - Is communication with parents/staff ever unsupervised?
  - Are isolation, food deprivation, and corporal punishment used?
  - What justifies profiting from a system linked to lasting trauma?
- Blue Ridge supplied a lengthy statement (read in full at [04:00–10:21]) defending their practices, denying abusive tactics, and encouraging engagement with allegedly grateful alumni.
  - "Deprivation, oppression or any form of mistreatment has no place in our work and is not tolerated under any circumstances." — Danielle Hava, LCSW ([07:51])
- Tiffany notes no alumni have actually reached out to support the program ([11:23]).

Danielle's Story: Family, Early Trauma, and Neglect

Background and Upbringing ([12:01–16:19]):
- Danielle grew up in a wealthy, image-conscious but emotionally neglectful family.
- Childhood marked by lack of affection, being scapegoated, and moves across countries.
- Repeatedly dismissed by parents when seeking help for mental health and eating disorders.
- Earliest memories involve being unloved, misunderstood, and subjected to fatphobia.
Memorable Quote:
- "I think my parents love me because they have to love me. But I never felt wanted." — Danielle ([13:44])
Adolescent Crisis and Institutionalization ([24:55–32:00]):
- After several suicide attempts and escalating teenage "trouble," Danielle’s parents consult an educational consultant and inform her of a supposed "three-week summer camp."
- She is forcibly delivered to Second Nature Blue Ridge, where the reality immediately feels dangerous and coercive.

Second Nature Blue Ridge / Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness

([32:00–42:37])

Admissions Process
- Threatened with physical force if she doesn’t exit the car.
- Undergoes strip search and is denied autonomy from the outset.
Harsh Daily Living
- Intense restriction of communication: forbidden to speak or make eye contact.
- Activities organized under "phases", each with increasing access to basic social rights.
- Assigned "impact letters", where family members detail her supposed moral failings, to be read aloud for public humiliation.
Notable Quote:
- "My 8 and 10 year old siblings had to write how I hurt them and how mad they were at me...I had to read these impact letters out to the entire group." — Danielle ([35:01])
Physical Hardships
- Long hikes (8–10 miles daily) with 80-pound backpacks.
- Food rationing, infrequent showers, and no access to mirrors.
- Group punishments and collective restriction of privileges.
Manipulation and Survival
- Learns to say and do whatever is necessary to “advance” through the program.
- Deep bonds between students, but forbidden future contact.
Therapy/Curriculum Critiques
- Therapists only seen once weekly; focus is on performative change.
- "School" is unserious; credit gained from trivial, nature-themed assignments.

Carlbrook School

([42:37–70:58])

Immediate Transfer
- Danielle is transferred directly from Blue Ridge, without returning home, into what’s sold as a prestigious college prep school.
Rules, Shame, and Isolation
- Instant strip searches and exhaustive rules about appearance and conduct.
- Public shaming for all infractions; certain students forbidden to speak or socialize ("on bands").
- Strict dress code down to the type of underwear; body policing.
- All packages, letters, and calls monitored or censored.
Educational and Therapeutic Realities
- Academic rigor is superficial; age-inappropriate classes.
- Therapy groups are more punitive and performative than helpful — "railing" sessions where staff/students berate others into confessions, often inventing or exaggerating wrongdoing under pressure.
- Multi-day "workshops" involve cult-like activities, forced emotional confessions, role-played shaming, physical exertion (e.g., digging stumps, pounding fists until bloody), exposure to scare tactics and traumatic film clips.
Memorable Quote:
- "If you didn't have something awful to confess, you truly had to make it up or else you'd be called out for it and yelled at." — Danielle ([53:00])
- "Amongst all this stuff, they had put a picture of me as a little kid. That was such a mindfuck." — Danielle ([61:40])
Extended, Arbitrary Punishments
- Danielle describes six weeks of enforced isolation from peers and dependency on untrained student "support", plus nightly physical labor as discipline.
- Other students subjected to stints of extreme labor or food deprivation.

Aftermath: Reunion, Lasting Trauma, and Recovery

([70:58–81:04])

Difficult Homecoming
- Upon “graduation,” Danielle returns home programmed for hyper-compliance, unable to relate to peers with normal high school experiences.
- Family remains judgmental and emotionally absent:
  - "If you and a skinny person apply to the exact same job...she would get it, not you." — Danielle’s father ([66:12])
Ongoing Challenges
- Struggles with assimilation, relationships, and trust into adulthood.
- Finds eventual peace and self-forgiveness as a parent herself, gaining perspective on her parents’ failures.
Relationship with Siblings
- Close bond formed in adulthood, based on shared institutional trauma.
- "None of those things have been as traumatic for me as surviving the woods and surviving Carlbrook." — Danielle ([77:24])
Perspective and Hope
- Danielle stresses that survivors were brainwashed and acting under duress, expressing empathy and forgiveness for her peers, and encourages parents to find ways to help their children without institutionalizing them.
- "These experiences bring a lot of trauma in my life...Up until this point, I have not had somebody...willing to listen, wanting to understand, to empathize, to believe me...Just the acknowledgment has truly been healing for me." — Danielle ([80:22])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"My parents, before they had kids, they needed to do some work on themselves." ([75:56])
"What I want my peers to keep in mind is that we were brainwashed. The person I was there is not who I really am." ([78:16])
Host Tiffany Reiss affirms Danielle’s courage:
"Thank you for sharing that with me. You deserved so much better. It costs so much to revisit and can be really draining and physically difficult." ([81:04])

Key Timestamps by Segment

[01:01–10:21] – Host’s outreach and Blue Ridge’s entire official statement
[12:01–24:55] – Danielle’s family background and early trauma
[24:55–42:37] – Second Nature Blue Ridge: intake, daily life, tactics
[42:37–70:58] – Carlbrook School: entry, punishment, workshops, “therapy”
[70:58–81:04] – Reunion with parents, post-release trauma, recovery journey
[81:04–81:27] – Host’s acknowledgements and episode close

Listener Takeaways

Institutional abuse can be deeply damaging, regardless of the intentions or perceptions of programs.
Survivors’ stories must be believed, as the systems in place often train them to hide suffering or perform “wellness.”
Recovery and family relationships are often complicated, but other survivors can be a source of support and understanding.
The healing power of being truly heard, believed, and acknowledged cannot be underestimated.

Next Episode Preview

Sneak peek into the next survivor story, highlighting protests and family dynamics at another controversial program, Academy at Ivy Ridge ([81:27]).

For more information, content warnings, and resources related to this episode, visit the show’s episode notes.

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Transcript

A (0:00)

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B (1:01)

Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children, which may be triggering for some listeners. As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources and resources for each episode, please visit the Episode Notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season. Something Was Wrong and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. We reached out to Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wellness to request a response for comment in regards to multiple stories from survivors involving their past and current programs. Their current Executive Director, Danielle Hava, LCSW, requested a phone call, which took place Tuesday, September 2, 2025, to better understand the allegations before writing a written response. Danielle Hava is Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness's Executive Director and is a licensed clinical Social worker in the state of Georgia. As a reminder, an lcsw, or Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is a type of therapist and counselor who provides mental health services, but their practice is typically distinguished by a unique focus on a client's social and environmental factors within a broader, holistic approach. However, in regards to this discussion, Hava is operating as the Executive Director under founder and owner Dan McDougal. While we agreed we would not publicly air our phone call conversation, I think it's extremely important for context for you to hear what questions I submitted to them and what they came back with. Here's a summarized list of questions that I posed to Danielle Hava, Executive Director, Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness As a therapist, how do you justify putting your name and license behind these programs? Given their history of allegations, how is it acceptable for your company to allow children to be transported to your facilities, often without their consent, when transport services are considered harmful and not backed by medical evidence? Do you perform strip searches? What are the minimum qualifications of day to day staff who spend most of their time with students? What background checks and hiring processes are in place for these staff members? Are children allowed to speak with their parents or authorities without a staff member present? Do you use impact letters and require students to read them aloud in front of their peers? Do you use corporal punishment or physical restraints? Do you use food deprivation as a consequence? How often are students allowed to shower and can the showers be withheld as punishment? What clothing and underwear provisions are made? Are students allowed to use menstrual products like tampons? How often do students meet with therapists? Do students earn actual school credit recognized by the state? Is isolation used as punishment? Are students forced to carry excessively heavy backpacks on long hikes? Do you ensure proper fitting shoes and clothing to prevent physical harm? Are students forbidden from looking at, speaking to or sharing personal information like last names and emails with peers and are they punished for attempting to do so? How do you respond to parents claims that your marketing is deceptive, presenting the program as a therapeutic summer camp while their children returned abused or worse off? Why was the program name changed if nothing except branding and business restructuring changed with McDougal still owning it? How do you reconcile your role as a therapist with the lack of individualized care, especially for disabled and autistic children who survivors say were targeted and abused? Do you believe survivors consistent reports of abuse or do you think they're lying? How do you justify profiting from what experts and data shows to be a harmful trauma inducing system with high rates of long term negative consequences such as suicidality, addiction, trauma and disappearance? The following day, Wednesday, September 3, 2025, we received the following email from Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness executive director Ms. Hava. Quote hi Tiffany, Please use our statement below in regard to any mention of Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness. We ask that you use the statement in its entirety. It may be attributed to the executive leadership at Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness. Over the past 24 years of operating, Blue Ridge has continually evolved just as all fields of practice like medical, therapeutic and educational practices must. When we learn something new, or when feedback shows us that an approach is not having the impact we intend, we make changes. We take seriously the need to look for truth in what has been shared. That commitment to improvement is why we remain single owner operated so we can adapt quickly and responsibly at the same time. This isn't an all or nothing conversation. Wilderness therapy has saved countless lives. I know this because of the strong alumni network at Blue Ridge and the hundreds and hundreds of letters, phone calls, DMs and visits we receive expressing gratitude. If you take the opportunity to connect with these alumni, their stories could add further perspective to the conversation. You asked about daily life at Blue Ridge, suggesting that this was the abuse in quotes that the program itself was harmful. However, many of the items you listed are inaccurate and I can state with certainty that they are not true. We believe that anyone who commits child abuse must be held fully accountable. At the same time, we are dedicated to ensuring our program upholds the highest standards of dignity, safety and care. Deprivation, oppression or any form of mistreatment has no place in our work and is not tolerated under any circumstances. Our team, including licensed therapists, a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a highly trained outdoor guides with Wilderness First Responder certification, pours their hearts and expertise into supporting the well being of our students and the families who entrust them to us. We categorically do not use corporal punishment. In addition to rigorous third party accreditation through the association for Experiential Education and state regulations through the Department of Human Services, we seek ongoing feedback from alumni and families both during and after their time with us. Many alumni share stories of growth while others have brought forward challenges or concerns. Both perspectives are essential to our progress and we take them seriously. Each year, alumni choose to return as staff members, reflecting their belief in the value of the program and their desire to support future students. Over the many years Blue Ridge has been operating, we have witnessed countless stories of healing, hope and positive change from our alumni and their families. I really encourage you and your team to reach out to former students who have had positive, impactful experiences and whose lives may have been at serious risk without wilderness Therapy. I know that our Blue Ridge alumni families have already reached out to you about your podcast series and they would love the opportunity to speak with you directly about their positive experience. The voices of alumni whose lives were profoundly transformed and in some cases saved by Wilderness Therapy are essential to provide context and balance and to ensure your audience understands the full impact of these programs. They can provide perspective on how Wilderness therapy instills hope, fosters healing and offers opportunities for a healthier life. Blue Ridge remains fully committed to providing a safe, supportive environment and for all students in alignment with state regulations, AEE accreditation standards and best practices in outdoor therapeutic care. Thank you so much for giving us a chance to respond. Danielle Hava, LCSW Executive Director Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness Emerald Arrow A Bold path for Young adults End Quote an important note in response to Blue Ridge Wilderness Therapy's statement's claim that alumni reached out to our team to provide statements to us in support of Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness. We searched high and low in our public email inbox and our website submissions and we did not find a single message claiming to be an alumni who wanted to share their perspective with us. I'm Tiffany Reese and this is Something Was Wrong Today, a survivor whom we're calling Danielle shares about her harrowing experiences at two programs, Second Nature Blue Ridge and Carl Brook School. Danielle was enrolled at Second Nature Blue Ridge for eight weeks December 2004 to February 2005. She then spent 18 months at Carlbrook School, which was self described as a private, co educational college preparatory boarding school. Today, Second Nature Blue Ridge goes by Blue Ridge Therapeutic wilderness opened in 2002 in Clayton, Georgia. Second nature Blue Ridge was founded and still owned and operated Today by Dan McDougall. Blue Ridge operated under collaboration originally with Second Nature Programs, which had multiple wilderness therapy programs until about 2016 2017. It's reportedly around this time that Dan McDougal separated Blue Ridge from the second nature umbrella and rebranded the program as Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness.

A (12:01)

Hi, my name is Danielle. I am in my late 30s and I attended second nature Blue Ridge and Carlbrook School between the years of 2004 and 2006. I just wanted to come forward to share the truth about what happens in these facilities. It's only after years of processing what I went through and hearing other people say that's really messed up has it come to my attention that a lot of the things I went through at these programs were traumatic and have shaped who I am today as an almost 40 year old. Looking back, I now see that my childhood is really traumatic. My parents definitely have issues of their own like untreated alcoholism, eating disorder issues, trauma from their parents and they've never wanted to receive help for their issues so they put it on my siblings and myself. My parents were young, they had me when they were like 21, 22. My mom said she had me because she was lonely when I was born and I didn't satisfy all her needs. She still Felt the loneliness, if not more. I think it was just resentment from the get go. I think the only reason they had kids was just it was kind of what everyone was doing. And I come from a very wealthy, successful family and having a lot of kids was a status symbol. My mom says that I was a really colicky, unhappy, loud, crying baby. I look back at pictures and I was a really scrawny baby, whereas my toddler was the chunkiest baby. If she was hungry, I would feed her. But my parents, not knowing anything about kids babies and also having maybe the boomer quality of fat phobia, I think they were accidentally underfeeding me. I think my parents love me because they have to love me. But I never felt wanted. For me as the oldest of three kids, I definitely took my hurt and pain out on my younger siblings. I have a lot of regret and had to do a lot of healing in the last couple years and making amends to my siblings and forgiving myself for not knowing better. I'm three years older than my next sibling and then they are like 18 months apart. Growing up as kids, they were kind of the babies. The quote, but you're old enough to know better. It like replays in my head. And I remember even saying to my mom, I'm nine, my sister's six. When I was her age, you told me I was old enough to know better. But now she's that same age and she's not. I feel like I was the scapegoat, but also the forgotten child. My dad loved and doted on my sister to this day. She'll be like, dad and I were best buddies growing up. I was his favorite and my mom was obsessed with my younger brother. I grew up moving a lot. I moved eight or nine different times before I was eight years old. That was a jarring thing to go through. Having to change schools, states, countries every couple months or so. I went to very good private schools. I didn't really care that much. So I've never been like a straight A student or a bad student somewhere in the middle. For me, changing schools was definitely one source of trauma. Having to start a new school over and over again. Naturally, I had some strong big emotions and my parents never knew how to handle that. It got that label of dramatic crazy, just wanting attention. In a way, they're right. I did want attention. I had needs that weren't being met. I was going through things I couldn't process. But my parents used that as a way to just write me off.

A (16:19)

Exactly. These are a couple stories I have that show the dynamic between my parents and myself growing up. I remember in first grade, my dad took me to go see the movie Fly Away Home. In the movie, a big part of the storyline is that the young girl's mother passes away unexpectedly. When I was leaving the theater with my dad, he looked at me and said, I hope watching this movie makes you think before the next time you're mean to your mom. And I remember thinking, I've not once in my life thus far meant to hurt my mom or be mean to her. In seventh grade, we went to a skate park and my brother and sister and I were just rollerblading around. I ended up at the very end of it tripping and landed right on my elbow. I instantly knew my elbow was broken. I'd never felt so much pain. My mom came up to me and was like, what's wrong with you? I told her that I think I broke my elbow. She didn't believe me. So we got in the car and she took us out to lunch. And it was only then, which was an hour later, when I could not eat McDonald's, that she realized, oh, maybe she is telling the truth. Then she took me to the hospital and it was broken. Things like that, never believed, never heard or listened to. To this day, the biggest compliment you could get from my parents is that you're skinny or that you look thin. Not that you look healthy, not that you're a good person, but that you're skinny. My mom has never not been on a diet. I was always on a diet. Starting from second grade. I definitely have binge eating disorder. I would try to not eat, but that would result in me binging and I'd get disappointed in myself. So I'd eat more looking at pictures. You would never know any of this, but it was the thing that was 100% on my mind all of the time. One of my first memories was when I was in second grade. One of the semesters was dedicated to swimming for our PE class. I remember thinking, oh my gosh, swimming PE starts next week. I need to start running. One time I tried to stay up all night doing laps in my room. When I was 12, I knew that the place where we were moving was going to be where we would live for a long time. And I wanted to make A good impression. And I remember telling my mom, I just learned a way to, like, shave extra 50 calories off this turkey sandwich I'm about to make. Being so proud of that, I just got a lot of compliments on how good I looked. And that was hard to maintain though, the not eating and playing sports. One day I made myself throw up after I ate. That really scared me because I didn't know I was capable of hurting myself in such a way. So I told my mom, I think I need to go see a therapist. She said, don't worry about it. I'm sure it's fine. It was ignored. So I continued making myself throw up all throughout 9th and 10th grade. One night I got up and walked to the kitchen and I just passed out. And my parents heard me fall and came in. Some signs were giving them cause for concern, so they did have me go see a therapist. But when I was talking to the therapist, my dad was like, I don't get how you could be depressed or have these issues. Just like, join a club at school or something. The bulimia stopped because I was seeing a therapist. But over the years, I really did flip flop between binge eating disorder, anorexia, and bulimia until I Finally, in my 20s, got proper help for those issues. Last year I ran a marathon, and a week later my dad commented on how much I'd put on my plate at dinner when I had dinner with them. So it's really hard to have a healthy body and mind around my parents.

A (24:55)

When I had my big move during my high school years when I was anorexic, I was really at a horrible low point. I was living overseas, moved back to the States in a really, really small town where everyone had grown up together. I was just a hodgepodge of all the places I had lived and all the people I had known. So my interests did not align, my sense of humor didn't align with the people. I was so resentful that I had lived in these cold countries because I was so different. I was just so alone, full of self hatred. I never felt like my parents wanted me, so I just always wished I wasn't born. I thought I was a burden and I was a pain to the world. One night I decided I was going to kill myself. I called my friend on the phone and I mentioned it to her. It was a literal cry for help. I wanted something, somebody to reach out and try to stop me. Next thing you know, the phone hangs up and my dad comes bounding down the hall into my room saying, your friend's parents just called us saying you called her saying you wanted to kill yourself. Do you know how crazy it makes you sound? Do you know how embarrassing that is? You need to call her back right now and say that you didn't mean it. So I did. Right after they left my room, I swallowed a bottle of Tylenol PMs. I tried to kill myself. I woke up, I was disappointed in that, but that was like a really scary moment. I tried to kill myself again a few months later with same thing. And then about a year or two later, because of a fight I had with my parents, they both left the house. I went straight to my room and I had a box of caffeine pills. I took the entire box of caffeine pills. And I felt my heart racing and speeding up really fast like I'd never felt before. The reality of what was happening set in. I was scared. So I called my mom and I said, mom, you need to come home now. I just swallowed a bottle of pills. I'm really scared. I can feel the effects, and I think I'm going to die. She said, I don't know about that. We live in a really small town. What if we run into somebody we know at the hospital? Is it really that bad? I said, yes, it is. Please come get me now. She was not gonna come home. I remember finding my sister shaking her and saying, help me. Please call Mom. Please tell her that I'm serious. So my sister called my mom and convinced her to come home. I just remember laying on the sidewalk and my mom got there. We got in the car. She goes to Walmart, gets a bottle of Ipecac and makes me drink it to try to throw everything up. I threw up on the way to the hospital. I had to get my stomach pumped. I remember being in and out of it, asking the nurse, am I going to die? And she said, I don't think so, but do you want to? And I shook my head, no, that I didn't. The next thing I remember, after the doctors and nurses leaving, as I'm making a sense of my surroundings in this hospital room, I looked over to my right, saw my mom sitting there next to me. And the first and only thing she says is, I was looking through your room the other day, and I found a vibrator. I started busting out, laughing at the ridiculousness. That's always really been a shocking memory for me. Seeing movies of parents who love their kids. Oh, the kid is missing for an hour. And they're so happy they're found. They're not mad. My mom, the first thing I came to, and it was like, you fucked up again. Let me shame you. Let me embarrass you. Not. Oh, my gosh, I was so scared. I'm so glad you're okay. I was really looking for anything and everything to numb the pain. So, like, boyfriends who were bad news, friends who were into substances and doing questionable things, cheating, shoplifting, anything sketchy to Give me that thrill of excitement I was looking for. After that suicide attempt, I was very lost. I didn't have childhood friends because social media wasn't a thing. And I had moved so many times. I felt like I did not have my siblings. I did not have my parents. I was alone in the world. My parents wanted to send me to a really prestigious boarding school because that looked really good for them. But I ended up finding a boarding school and presenting it to them. We thought that was, like, a great compromise. I went to this music boarding school. I didn't have my parents as authority figures over me all the time. So I really just, like, went crazy. Things got bad fast. I had problems with friends. Like, people hated me at that school. I was just doing all kinds of reckless stuff. And I knew I was. I just didn't care. I would drink, I would smoke weed, pills, Adderall, smoking cigarettes. I only got in trouble one time for drinking. When I was at my boarding school and we went off campus to a party, I got really, really drunk, came back and was throwing up all over my dorm room. They kicked me out for that. I made it through one semester of the music boarding school. In December of 2004, they took me to an educational consultant. I just remember spending a whole day there, taking tests on the computer. I assumed this was one of the prerequisites to get into one of those more prestigious boarding schools. So I didn't think that much of it. But then a couple days later is when my mom told me, you just got in big trouble at your school. You got kicked out. We feel a big distance from you. We think you have some emotional issues you need help with. There's this camp you can go to for three weeks, and you'll be with other girls you can relate to who have emotional issues as well. You'll make some great friends. At the end of three weeks, you get to come back home. It's in the winter, but it's basically like a summer camp. Like, it'll be really fun. There's all kinds of activities you can do. And it's just three weeks to, like, have you set for the rest of your life. I kicked and screamed, no, that's awful. But after a couple more conversations about this and the reassurance that it was three weeks, come back home, everything, like, back to normal, except I'll just be a little happier. I reluctantly agreed. I needed help and love a long time prior to when my parents sent me away. We drove there, pulled up Once I realized how desolate it Was the reality hit me. My parents got out of the car to greet the people and I just locked the car doors. Some big burly guy came up to the window and was like, if you don't get out of the car willingly, I'm gonna have to force you out. And I was like, holy, where am I? So that terrified me. My parents said, bye, I love you. I remember not even looking at them. Could not make eye contact. I was so mad and so scared. I remember getting my first strip search. That was shocking. And after, I guess, the intake process, I had to go get a physical at the doctor's office. I think I tried to open the door and it was child locked. All I could think about was like, how do I get out of the situation? So I get to the doctor and there was a teenage boy wearing the exact same outfit sitting in between two people in the waiting room too. He just wore like baggy khaki pants and like a bright orange T shirt, like an inmate, and hiking boots. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I bet he's going wherever I'm going. And then got back in the car. And I just remember driving for what seemed like forever through the woods, up mountains, and the escorts asked me, do you want something for your last meal? I was just angry and spiteful. So I said no. Wish I had taken them up on that last meal. We get to the woods, the absolute middle of nowhere. Just this small cluster of people wearing the same outfit as me. They told me I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. All I remember about that first night is sleeping in between two counselors who I'd never met before under a tarp. I said to the counselor, I think I'm in the wrong place. I think my parents didn't know what this was because this is not what I was told I was walking into. And she said, yeah, your parents absolutely know what this is and you're sent here for a reason. I just was flabbergasted and just felt like an out of body experience for the first two days as the reality set in. I think there are a lot of similarities between the wilderness programs, the day to day having small groups and therapy throughout the day, having to yell your name as you go to the bathroom behind a tree so they know you didn't run away. Hanging the bear bags, graduating through different phases of the programs. They all sound pretty similar. You have to get through like water phase, earth phase, fire phase, something like that. The first phase, you're not allowed to talk to anybody. Can't make eye contact. No one else exists. You just have to do your little journals and your assignments and your work. Then you graduate and there's this little ceremony. This is when you get to the second phase. For about a week in at this point, you receive impact letters from your family. Each family member, mom, dad, brother, sister, my 8 and 10 year old siblings had to write how I hurt them and how mad they were at me. All the things I did wrong. They were led to believe by my parents that I was the problem in the family. They were totally manipulated into thinking I was this evil person. I had to read these impact letters out to the entire group. When I read my mom's, she had mentioned how disappointed she was that she had found this really provocative photograph that my boyfriend and I had taken. She didn't like explicitly say what we were doing in the photo. At the end of the impact letters, the group is allowed to ask you questions. And somebody asked what was in that photograph, what was about. And I was mortified. I said, oh, it was just like a picture of my boyfriend and I kissing. The counselor pulled me aside after the group and was like, we know that was a lie. We know know what was in the photograph. You're starting over. So I had to start all the way back to phase one. I might have had to sleep in between the counselors again. Couldn't talk to anybody. The whole charade over again until I was ready to tell the truth. We got our bear bags refilled once a week. So it's on us to ration it out. We'd have perishable vegetables and things like that. If we finished all the vegetables. We got a little pack of Gatorade to put in our Nalgene and that was really special. So it was our mission to finish all our vegetables. We still had a bunch of onions to eat. In this one night we were in trouble for something. So we didn't get to make a fire. And we were already eating cold, hard, uncooked rice and beans. We had these onions. We're like, oh, we want to get our Gatorade. The next day we have to eat them, but we don't have a way to cook them. So a bunch of us just ate raw onions like an apple out of desperation to get this little pack of Gatorade. One girl tried to hide her, like dug a little hole and buried it. I think she might have had to start the program over. She got in big trouble for that. The whole time you're in the woods, we weren't allowed to shower, but we would get a can full of water to go out in the woods and used soap as our shampoo. Body wash once a week. But there was a time where we went two weeks without. We got laundry change out once a week. So the same clothes except for underwear. I think we had multiple pairs of underwear. It was smelled so bad, but you get used to the smell. We didn't have mirrors, so I had no idea. I had this big open wound on my face that wasn't healing. So one of the staff actually brought it to my attention that I needed to get it looked at. I think they gave me some, like, Neosporin. For the most part. I have neutral feelings about the staff. I do remember thinking that they were very young, straight out of call, like just a few years older than us. I always thought that was strange. The really young ones felt more like kind of friends than anything. There were a couple of really strict ones. They did a staff change out every week.

A (37:29)

We saw him once a week. He was the main person you essentially wanted to impress. So I just remember always being super calculated before I went into our sessions. Had to like, say the right thing, show that I was changing a little bit. Every week there would be a big group with him and the counselors who were leaving or switching out. And one time we were given the quote unquote opportunity to listen in on this change out. It's where they like, talk about our progress. I just remember thinking that was really fucked up because we would hear the counselors basically saying which of the kids they thought needed to stay longer. That was a crazy experience to hear that change out with the therapist and the counselors who lived with us. I don't know if this is promised to parents that we would be continuing whatever high school courses we had been taking at home. But I just remember the school aspect of it being so such a joke. I think we would have 30 minutes to an hour of a class a week and it would be like, identify these bodies of water. How does fire make heat? I think we actually had to do a couple word searches for, like, things we would see on a hike, like Bird Tree. We would get full science credit from that. The day of my three weeks, there was no sign that I was leaving. We were actually on something called a solo. And it's where the whole group is separated. You're absolutely by yourself. And we either had our food or they came around different times of the day to give us food. But Totally remote by myself for, I think, two or three nights. Absolutely nothing to do but, like, read the Bible and journal. I was like, well, my parents said, three weeks, I'm out of here. So while I was on my solo, I tried to break my arm. I made myself fall a couple times, and then I couldn't do it. So I eventually started, like, hitting my elbow with a log. I went through the whole charade. Like, screamed out for the counselors. They were nearby and they ran over. I told them I broke my arm. So they took me to the hospital, and I was like, score, I'm gonna get out of here. But no, they bandaged up my arm. I had to go back. And then it made me feel worse because when we hiked for the next week or so, I wasn't allowed to carry my backpack, so the other girls had to. So I felt really bad about that in the woods. The trauma for me was the physical parts of it that became so normal. We would hike 8, 10 miles a day uphill with these 80 pound packs, then have to sleep in the snow under a tarp. What was hardest was figuring out how to get out of there. That was just the goal. How do I get out of here? Like, as soon as possible? And essentially, that meant using the right amount and type of manipulation. The first few weeks I played, like, I had no problems and I was fine. And then I got feedback that that wasn't believable. So I learned I need to turn it up a little bit. We had to, like, call a group if we felt a big emotion. So I would start calling groups that I felt, quote, unquote, negative emotions so that they would feel like I was learning and growing. I got feedback that the boyfriend that I had before I went in there was bad news. So about halfway through my stay, I told them, I think you guys are right. It's going to be hard, but I think I need to break up with them with absolutely no intention of that. Everything that I did became so calculated. I did have a lot of issues. It wasn't even scratching the surface of getting real help or doing real work. When you're out there, you form very close bonds. I knew we were not allowed to tell each other our last name, our email address, anything like that. We were not allowed to keep in touch with anybody. I had written my email address and last name down on a piece of paper for a girl who was about to leave. I was, like, off in the distance, and I saw that piece of paper in one of the counselor's hands. So I thought, this is gonna set me back. I'm gonna have to like stay here longer now. So I remember I called a group and said, I have to admit something. I gave whatever her name is my address. I feel really bad about it. So I just wanted to confess to like beat the counselors to it so it would look like I was doing something noble. I left without knowing any of the girls information or anything. And that was kind of sad.

A (44:04)

I found out I would not be going home, not even for a second. I was going straight into another program. I was told that I had made some good progress there and they wanted to see it continue. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe I was told no other schools would accept accept me. It was always told to me from the first time I remember hearing the name Carl Brook, that I was going to one of the best luxurious dream school that everyone wishes they could go in. And I was so lucky. I should be so grateful for this and I better not screw up again or I'll go somewhere worse. I found out an hour before the car came to get me that I was leaving. I think we had, like, a goodbye group and you were allowed to run it. I might have asked all the girls to say one funny memory they had about us together and then what their favorite food was out in the woods. My parents picked me up in the woods. The big thing everyone looks forward to is your first shower. You're promised you get this amazing shower at the home base. It's just gonna change your life since you haven't had a real shower in eight weeks. At the home base, the hot water wasn't working and they didn't have any soap. So this glamorous shower I was promised was awful. Borderline worse than in the woods. That was a huge letdown. It kind of symbolizes the whole process. A big part of my story was that I had this toxic boyfriend. My parents hated him. In order to get through the woods, I promised my counselor that I would never talk to that boyfriend again. We stopped at a restaurant to use the bathroom. I grabbed my dad's cell phone, ran into the bathroom stall and called my boyfriend and told him that, like, I was okay. And then we drove straight to Carlbrook. I was feeling hopeless and lost and that this process would be endless. There was absolutely no end in sight. You speak up that you don't want to go, you're seen as defiant, and potentially you could be put somewhere worse or for longer. I, just for survival, accepted that I would be going somewhere else. But it was devastating news.

A (46:30)

Absolutely not. They would believe these therapists and counselors over anything I had to say. Carl Brooks campus was on a very beautiful piece of land in Virginia. Two students were there to greet me. As soon as you get out of the car, you say just a quick goodbye to your parents and instantly get strip searched. They went through all my suitcases, and not only were they looking for contraband, but they were looking for clothing that was out of standard. I just remember initially being told the rules, which was a lot. It was really overwhelming. I was not allowed to acknowledge any students except for ones that were further along in the program. The owners of the school, if you saw them on campus, you knew somebody was in trouble or something was going to go down. Every time you got in trouble, you had to stand in front of the entire school and say why you were in trouble. I felt like they put a lot of shame on you for making mistakes. The owner, Grant Price, whose mother was the education consultant who sent me to that school. He would stalk around the school scowling at everyone. He and a couple of their owners met at a therapeutic boarding school and started their own. He threw around all the time. You guys have it so easy. Like, y' all don't know how great it is here compared to the school where I went to. When you first arrive at the school, you're on bands with all of lower school. That means other lower school students do not exist. If you get in trouble, you might be put on bands with a particular group. So towards the end of when I was there, I was on bands with all guys. I had gained weight in the woods, and my mom had bought me this new wardrobe of clothes. None of them fit me, so I had to wear other girls clothes for the first few weeks until my mom got some in my size. And that just added to the feeling of I didn't have anything of my own. In this new, strange school. The dress code was very strict. Pants, for example, couldn't touch your butt. They had to go straight down the back. If you washed your clothes and your pants were a little tight, we would have to put stuffed animals in the butt of our pants to kind of stretch them out a little bit. Skirts, dresses below the knees, no tank tops, spaghetti straps, anything like showing arms. A lot of our go to attire was J. Crew's business wear. Boys had to wear ties, no tennis shoes or sneakers. A lot of girls just wore, like plain flats. No makeup, no hair products, even for undergarments. No thongs, no underwear that had lace. You could never see, like your underwear line through your pants. No bras that had lace had to be very plain, preferably like sports bras. We were not allowed any jewelry. Towards the end of your stay, you're allowed one pair of stud earrings. We had to iron our clothes every morning. I remember this one boy did have wrinkles in his pants, and he got yelled at for being sloppy, not taking care of himself.

A (49:44)

They were called mods. They were basically like mobile homes. There were probably 12 to 15 girls a mod in each room. There were four girls. One of the girls was, I think it was called Dormhead. And they were in charge of like, enforcing the dress code for their room, making sure that cleaning was finished and up to par. Because we had to clean our rooms every morning. When I first got there, we didn't have a cafeteria. We just had another mobile home that was dining hall. And it was all frozen, fake, processed food. There were a lot of rules on the food. Like you couldn't Eat too little because there were students there who had eating disorder paths. They wanted to make sure they weren't starving themselves. But you also couldn't eat too much. The upper school students I think could have tea. Lower school students couldn't have any sort of caffeine, anything like that. The school is divided to the academic side with like 20 teachers and then the counseling therapy side. And there's probably like 10 staff. Each staff member has like 10 students of their caseload. A lot of them were pretty cool, younger, but to my knowledge none of them had any like true psychology degrees. Something that stood out to me, my counselor, I was crying to him and upset that I had gained a lot of weight and that I was ashamed of how I looked at. And he said weight is actually something that you have full control over. So if you feel fat, just lose weight, go on a diet. That was his advice and that was advice that I shared with another student in a group. That's awful advice to tell a 14, 15 year old girl who's probably already had eating disorder issues. That just shows the mindset of our counselors. I hurt myself really badly one time and did require medical care. So I was allowed to go off campus and like get that looked at. But most things were treated by the school nurses. Some of the staff were really scary. A lot of them were cool. Looking back, they were probably all in their like twenties, maybe thirties. The teachers were the coolest though because a lot of them had the rules be a little bit looser in their classes.

A (51:58)

No. Amongst the students, the school part was kind of a joke. I was 18 years old and having to take the same math class as a 14 year old. I'm not a good student and like I was on the dean's list one time because I got all A's. But I do think that the college counselor who was there did a really good job. Like she worked her ass off because myself and a lot of my friends got into some amazing schools. The reason they probably tried to get so many students into really good schools is because Ivy leagues were on the list of where the alumni had gone. We had group three times a week, two hours long. After school. He would have a group with like 50 kids in it. It's called railing. When a staff member or another student yells at another student. Grant was known for having these big groups and just yell. I was subject once. It was horrible. It's embarrassing. I got called out for basically not giving a disgusting enough Confession. If you didn't have something awful to confess, you truly had to make it up or else you'd be called out for it and yelled at. After a two hour group, you go to dinner. After dinner you have a one on one deep hour long conversation with another student. After that was last light. That's when everyone got on the ground, laid on the couches, cuddling, giving massages. They were pretty strict about no boys with girls. But it would be piles of boys, piles of girls cuddling. The staff would participate. Staff and students cuddling in piles on the floor, on the couches. If you don't participate, you stand out or you get in trouble. And then they would either like read a poem or good night message and then everyone would go to their dorms, go to bed. The two girls that were my welcome guides gave me a heads up. They were like, it's going to seem a little weird the first couple days, especially like seeing all the boys cuddling on the couch. And then truly you get used to it. When you first get there, they're still forming your peer group, the group of students that you're gonna graduate with. When I first got there, I was on bands with everyone in my peer group until we went through the first of the five workshops called Integritas. That's sort of your initiation into the school. Each peer group is open for like three or four months. I was one of the last people in my peer group before they closed it. There were kids who had been there since before I even went to the woods. There were girls. I feel like they were resentful towards me because I got there. The peer group closed. We went through the first workshop. I only had like a week of no human rights. Whereas there were some girls who were there for like upwards of four months who were just waiting. Your peer group are typically the people you're closest with. Also the girls in your room you get to know pretty well. You get used to hearing very deep, shocking things all the time. One of my assignments from my student supports was to go up to every student in the school and be told what the worst thing they thought about me was to have these God awful like things casually said to you on a daily basis is normalized. The students that give you the harshest feedback, you're supposed to essentially thank them for that afterwards. It's like, oh my gosh, you were brave enough to tell me this. Thank you so much. Nowadays I have resentments towards some of the kids that I probably at the time looked up to because they Said some really fucked up things. I had an injury and I needed a little bit of help. So during one of my classes, the teacher asked us to all get up, get textbooks, come back to our seats. I asked the boy if he could grab one for me while he was over there. He brought me to group the next week and told me I was so selfish and lazy for asking. I was clearly physically impaired, but I still got brought to group and railed for that. I had to, like, sit a different way because of my injury. I got called an exhibitionist for that and that I was, like, trying to flash everybody. The weekends, we deep clean for two hours. Then your morning block. You could either do, like, arts or crafts or play basketball. Then lunch, then your afternoon block, then dinner. I think we were allowed pizza. And then we watched a movie. It had to be G rated. And then the cuddle session and then to your dorm. We were allowed to wear jeans on the weekends. They had to be baggy. Health and fitness and sports were a passion of mine there too. But I didn't look like a super athletic person. I had attempted like six times to join this athletic committee that they had. And the athletic committee would get to go off campus to sports games once in a while or stay up late one night and watch a basketball game. Perks that people that were interested in sports would enjoy. I was rejected from it. One of the times I remember, we were standing in front of our dorms. One of the girls who was the head of the athletic committee came up to me and was like, why would somebody like you want to join our committee? And looked me up and down insinuating that I was overweight. So that was like a huge gut punch. One of the modular homes was reserved for the workshops. A couple times a year, students would go in here and come out crying. So the maintenance staff called them the cry sessions. My counselor and another one would run the first workshop. The second workshop, two other random counselors and two student supports. And then the owners would duck in and out during some sessions. I think it's like every three months you go through another workshop. The length of these workshops got longer. Integritas was, I think, two days. And then the last workshop was like a whole week. This is an analogy that was explained to me when I was a new student about the workshops. The first workshop is basically like a kid going to a zoo and the mom saying, okay, let's go see the monkey exhibit. The second workshop, you have a little bit more freedom. It's up to you. And like, Your peer group to do the therapy. So it's like, we're just gonna go to this area of the zoo. And then by this last workshop, it's like, what do you want to do today? It's really like all us therapizing ourselves and each other. And one of the workshops, I think the third one, Animus, the first day was dedicated to people just confessing if they had broken any rules in the school. I felt like they got mostly everything out of everyone. But so much anxiety and sinking feeling in your stomach knowing you had to, like, confess everything. Also, some of the workshops had questions. They would make you go around in a circle and envision that you're on a lifeboat out in the middle of the ocean. The lifeboat only has room for two other people. Who would you save? And you had to go around in a circle and say, like, I want you to die. I want you to live. I got told that I would one day be the worst mom. People just telling you disgusting things. It's rewarded if you say shocking things to other students. Another thing about the third workshop, People would always come out with literal blood on their hands. We had to hit the back of a pillow, pound it with the back of our hands. We had to do these writing prompts. This is towards the end of my stay. I had to write about integritas. The first workshop. What would I do differently? I put. I was so full of shit during integratas. If I could go back, I would have said real, actual disclosures. I got in trouble for not saying some that were, like, deep enough so I wouldn't have been so selfish in my head when I was giving feedback to other students. In most of the workshops, I would believe the positive feedback and not get so spiteful about the negative feedback. I would use this feedback as a valuable tool, not as ammo against myself. The fifth final workshop was about a week long. They told us we had to be, like, very pure as we participated in this last workshop. So to not take our medications. I felt so weird about it, and I physically felt sick. So the second day, I did, and I basically had to confess to the group that I had taken my medication that morning. My assignments for the last workshop were, what do I tell myself is wrong with me? What will it take for me to finally hit rock bottom? How do I trick others into liking me? What things get in the way for me, being who I really am? Those are prompts during the last workshop. They have you, everyone go outside. The staff sets up this, like, real world Haunted house of what life's gonna be like after we graduate to kind of scare us into wanting to stay on a good path. So we walk in to this heavy metal music blaring like empty liquor bottles laying around, a little pile of fake drugs. Then they sat us down and made us watch the ending to Requiem for a Dream. The ending is a prostitution ring and then another guy overdoses on drugs and dies. So they made us watch that to like scare us. Like, if you steer off the wrong path, this will be you. I do remember us just like sitting there paralyzed in fear and crying about what would happen if we messed up. This would be our lives. Amongst all this stuff, they had put a picture of me as a little kid. That was such a mind fuck. In the fourth workshop, there's a whole day dedicated to looking at your baby picture and crying over it and like wishing you could be that innocent child again. Somehow my baby picture got mixed up in the props for the scary stuff day in the fifth workshop. And so to see this wall of scary things and then me in the middle of it, it was like so weird and twisted and really messed. The staff said it was an accident my picture got mixed up with that stuff. But in the moment it was really like, what the fuck.

A (62:32)

In retrospect, my punishment was more lenient than some. I just was on straight out of school suspension. When you're in that kind of trouble, it's called a program. I was on an out of school program all day, every day. I sat in this tiny room in the main building with the red notebook that I actually have sitting beside me with assignments that my student supports gave me to do. There are two students in the whole school I was allowed to talk to. They're my student supports. They would give me assignments. I had to do them all day, every day. Unless I was helping out in the dining hall. You have to eat at this little desk. No eye contact, nothing. And then every group, three times a week, I would just get yelled at. The person fresh out of Carlbrook, I would tell you that it was a pivotal moment and it changed me. It helped me like get on the right path. And it was hard, but worth it. Now looking back, it was really fucked up. There were 15 year old students responsible for me, this entire punishment. Giving me assignments, no training, no background. When I was an older student, I had the opportunity to be another student's. Support. I just cringe at the assignments I gave him. There were some physical punishments. So when you're on a program, you have to run crews every night. So instead of having detention, they would give you a crew. That meant that for an hour after dinner you had to put on your workout clothes, physically run and clean the school while you're on bands with the whole school. I had to do that every night for six weeks. If you stop running or if you like, take a breather, you get yelled at and you have to keep going or you'll be given another crew. That would include taking those huge office water jugs, running those across the school. Once in a while they would cut down a tree and you would know that someone was in trouble and they would be responsible for that stump. There are two students in my peer group who were on stumps. It must have taken them months. One of the boys sat in the corner of our program room and just the soul was sucked out of his eyes. After he dug the stump, he got sent somewhere worse and to this day I don't know where he is. Another girl had to carry pebbles all day, every day. She lost like 20 pounds. Carlbrook was for like wealthier kids. It was a lot of money for us to dig stumps out of the ground.

A (65:26)

I think you have bi weekly calls with your parents. I want to say they're 20 minutes long. There was a phone room and this one man, his singular job at the school was to pass out mail and to dial the phone. He basically was an ear to all of our phone calls, monitoring the content of our phone calls. Phone calls were a thing that could be taken away. In upper school you're allowed to call, I believe, once a week for 20 minutes. I think when I got closer to graduating, I was allowed like a weekly phone call with my sister. Letters are allowed. Staff reads all the letters and monitors all packages. At Carlbrook, I gained a good bit of weight because I had an unhealthy relationship with food. My only real coping mechanism was overeating in the cafeteria. I hadn't seen my parents for about 18 months. They were allowed to come to the school, take me off campus for a visit, go out to eat. I hadn't been to a restaurant in over 18 months, so I was excited when the waiter brought bread to the table and I grabbed a fresh roll. And my dad said, if you and a skinny person apply to the exact same job, and she had the same resume as you, she would get it, not you. Like, that was the most important thing about me. That I was overweight, and I just could not get back to campus fast enough. I just remember running back into my dorm, like, sobbing that my parents didn't love me, and that's all they saw, was just some fat girl. It was horrifying to experience that towards the end of the stay, you're allowed to go home for, like, a weekend. I remember going to American Eagle, this clothing store. I was so overwhelmed. It was just like a regular slow day at the mall, and I had to leave. Being around normal people gave me so much anxiety. You're still supposed to follow all the school rules. One of the rules is you're not allowed to drive. But my mom needed me to drive my car down the street. For whatever reason, I was so conflicted. Like, do I follow the school rules, or do I follow my parents? My mom made me drive my car down the street. Once I got back to school, I had to confess to the rules I had broken. I got in really big drop trouble for that.

A (67:43)

I stopped saying I didn't want to be there because that would only prolong my stay or make it more painful. So I just accepted it. We weren't allowed the Internet, but we had laptops on our Excel spreadsheets. You can make a countdown to when you graduate. We would watch the milliseconds go by. We had our countdowns on our computers. So I knew when I was graduating, there were three graduations a year based on your peer group. There was one in May, one in August, and one in December. The last couple months and weeks are sort of a blur. You feel so elite. You accomplished all the stuff at the school, and the new students that are still coming in just look to you like heroes. Before you graduate, you have to have a portion of your head shaved for a drug test. If you fail that, you have to stay longer. I was there for a year and a half. In our graduation, we wore white dresses. Students hold a rose and walk down the aisle with another student. Most of the graduations take place outdoors, and you are allowed to invite immediate family. Each student has a chance to speak in Front of all the family and all the students about their time there. I think they give out a couple awards and that's it. Right after the ceremony, you just get in the car and you leave. You go home. Not every student graduates high school there. It's essentially like a graduation of the program. Some kids get their high school graduation, so some kids, like, had to go back to normal high schools after they graduated the program. I knew a girl who graduated high school but had to stay, like, a year longer to finish the Carlbrook program. She was there for, like, two and a half years. I think the hardest part was the helplessness that you feel because you have no choice but to conform. If you are defiant in any way, you stay there longer or go somewhere worse. If you're too compliant, though, same thing. Facebook came out when we were at Carlbrook, so I found a handful of them when I got out. So that was actually kind of cool to reconnect with them. But a lot of them, I still to this day, wonder, like, what happened to them. Especially the ones that went to, quote, unquote, worst lockdown schools. And I do recall seeing, like, some kids who went one extreme. There were groups of kids who lived near each other, and they. It was just partying, beers, cigarettes, all the things we weren't allowed to have. I was there in 2004 or 5. The staff was so proud of the fact that no alumni has died. The year after I graduated, I think the first person died. And every year since then, it's been a couple people, like drug overdoses, suicides. So that thing they used to brag about when the school was new, it's the opposite now. Once I left these programs, trying to assimilate back in the real world, a lot of my friends had kind of moved on. Like the boyfriend that I had, that was part of the reason I got sent away. He had started dating someone else. You get back into the real world, and it's constant loneliness and change.

A (71:04)

Initially, it was a lot of, now I'm the kid that you guys always wanted. But still, my parents expected me to be completely good and moral. A month or two after I graduated, I just turned 18. I bought some cigarettes, and my mom found them and was devastated, sobbing about it. She felt like all this was for nothing. Like, what a letdown. You're still. I graduated and then went to college a few months later. In college, I was such a robot of the person that Karl Brooke Made me. I remember some random boy down the hall from me were having a conversation, and my first question was, but how did that make you feel? In Karlbrook, they train you. You cannot have superficial surface Y conversations. I remember my mom set up an appointment for me to get highlights, and I felt this internal struggle. I almost didn't get a couple of highlights in my hair because I thought it went against everything that Carl Brook taught us. The first few years in college, it's normal to talk about high school memories. I couldn't relate to any of that, so I felt very weird not ever being able to contribute. And then when I would want to tell a story of high school, I would just get met with these looks. Like, what are you talking about? Kids could not comprehend what I was saying I had been through from my high school experience. It just became known as a joke. Like, oh, Danielle went to this really crazy school with these crazy rules. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. In very recent years, my friends were like, wait, that's the kind of place you went? And it hit them how crazy and abnormal it was. My closest friends in quote unquote, high school were in this institution with me. So it was normal is all I knew. So it wasn't until being separated from it for years and having a celebrity come forward saying that it was wrong, what I realized, wow, some of this stuff was really messed up. My late 30s is, like, just now dawning on me how not okay and not normal these experiences were. And then with Elizabeth Goldman's book coming out, she did an amazing job, but I had another layer of struggle in that I was not one of the cool kids. And so I was held to a different standard. I've seen former students post on Reddit and other social media platforms, especially when Elizabeth's book came out defending the school. It wasn't that bad. Yeah, there's some hard parts, but, like, it really changed my life. A lot of those kids were some of the ones that, in my opinion, were bullies. Nowadays, I don't really tell people unless I know them really well. I'll drop little snippets here and there of what my high school experience was like, but it's definitely a very awkward subject approach. I don't know if survivors can relate to this, but especially when I was in my early 20s and trying to date people, I would for sure let them know about these experiences way too soon because I almost wanted to warn them. I've made a lot of mistakes in talking about it too soon. It's really taken a while to kind of figure out, like, what I'm most comfortable with sharing. I'm lucky that I have a really great husband. He allows me, without judgment, to check myself and my intentions. Let's just say I said something to somebody and I'm dwelling on it, like, did I hurt their feelings? Did it come across the right way? Nine times out of 10, he's like, you're overthinking this. I've been programmed to not trust myself. Now in my late 30s, I'm finally the most true me that I've ever been. I didn't want kids because if we were just such disappointments to my parents, I didn't want to produce something that was going to be a disappointment to me. Up until my mid-30s, I looked at my parents as being the perfect parents. And it's only when I had a child that I realized, no, the feelings they had towards us aren't normal. I can't imagine. And having anything but unconditional love today, it impacts me in the way I parent my daughter. Because there are so many times in my life and childhood my parents could have intervened sooner before it got to a point where I would need to be sent away. So I'm trying to set a good foundation as a mom with my daughter so that she doesn't grow up with the need for so much therapy like I did. I don't want her to feel like a bad daughter. And all the things I felt growing up. I know my parents will never acknowledge what I went through during these times. I've had to, like as an adult. I just accept my parents for who they are and accept that I'm better than the messages they gave me when I was little. That the reason I ended up at the school wasn't entirely my fault. My parents, before they had kids, they needed to do some work on themselves. I think it really stems so far back. What should have been done differently? I should have been heard when I was asking for help at a younger age instead of waiting for me to scream for help.

A (78:16)

It's something I want my peers to keep in mind, is that we were brainwashed. The person I was there is not who I really am. I just have a lot of love and empathy with other students I went to school with because I know that, like, if I wasn't my real self, they weren't their real selves either. So that's allowed me to let go of a lot of resentments. If there's any other fellow students that I attended these programs with, I'm sorry for anything I said that hurt or impacted or traumatized someone else. I was in pure survival mode, trying to conform to be the best student there I could be. I don't have any grudges or resentment to anyone that hurt me there. I want my peers to know that my heart goes out to all of them. I feel like we're a sort of a family in that we have so many the same shared experiences. There's no, like, hard feelings or anything towards the other students I went to school with. To friends of survivors, be honest and open and a shoulder to cry on if they need it. Listeners that haven't experienced this, it starts with your own home. Be the best parent you can be and show your child love. And there are other ways to get them help rather than having them locked away in an institution like this. Everything I've spoken about is just my experience and my opinions I can acknowledge that there are students who look back in a positive way on our time there, but for me, it was a very, very hard, traumatizing thing to go through. I can pick out a handful of positives I gained from it, but overall, very negative and painful. Personally, I don't have this agenda to take down the industry or make a bunch of reforms. A lot of me coming forward is honestly to get stuff off my chest because these extra experiences I had in these institutions bring a lot of trauma in my life. And up until this point, I have not had somebody either willing to listen, wanting to understand, to empathize, to believe me. So it's nice just having someone listen and hear me, being able to tell these stories as someone who believes me, someone who wants to hear what you've been doing, say that it's not okay and that you hear me. And just the acknowledgment has truly been healing for me.