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- [00:01]
Tiffany Reese
Something Was 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. Thank you to Survivor Nicole for sharing with us today. Nicole attended the Desisto school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from 1994 to 1996. The Desisto School was founded in 1978 by Michael Desisto. Prior, Desisto had been a teacher and director at Lake Grove School on Long island, allegedly separating from the institution because of educational differences. In 1980, just two years after the Desisto School launched the a second campus was opened in Howie in the Hills, Florida. However, desisto at Howey School, as the campus was called, closed in 1988. In 1991, both campuses came under legal scrutiny for alleged violations of the minimum pay and overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Following a one day bench trial, the district court concluded that the schools were liable and for $951,399.18 in unpaid back wages and liquidated damages. However, the schools appealed the judgment and the judgment was ultimately vacated. Still, various allegations continued through Desisto's next decade of operation. Eventually, founder Michael Desisto passed away on November 1, 2003. However, prior to his death, investigations into the Desisto School had already begun. In fact, as early as 2000, the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services launched an investigation into the school for operating without an OCCS Group Care Facility license. In their investigation findings, the OCCS alleged that the Desisto School provided their office with very limited information. Since 1995, a thorough investigation into the schools was initiated. As a result. According to the findings of the 2002 Office of Child Care Services investigation, no staff had current CPR First Aid certification, the school could not produce criminal background check documentation for 17 of the 27 staff, and no residents had individual treatment plans. According to Academic Director Ian Wingrove, the Office of Child Care Services also cited failures to report restraints and other record keeping and safety problems. The report went on to claim that at times students were deprived of sleep, food and school hours as punishment, and incident reports were often Left Unwritten after Michael DeSisto died, the Stockbridge campus closed in June 2004amid continued state actions and findings that the school's environment endangered students. I'm Tiffany Reiss and this is. Something was wrong.
- [04:14]
Nicole
Hi, I'm Nicole. And my teenage years weren't exactly your average coming of age story. While everyone else in the 90s were getting into the grunge scene and quoting the movie Clueless and waiting for their AOL to connect, I was being placed in a therapeutic boarding school. I grew up in the Midwest. My parents divorced when I was 2. They pretty much stayed good friends and amicable. I would see my father a lot on the weekends. It was easy to travel and be able to see either parent. But I basically lived with my mom. My mom got remarried to my stepdad when I was 10 and eventually they did have my one sibling and my father ended up getting remarried as well right around the same time. And they had eventually two children. I loved having my siblings. I adore all three of them. By the time I was 10, I think I really struggled finding where I fit in my family dynamics.
- [05:21]
Tiffany Reese
And I believe you were struggling with an undiagnosed learning disability too. Did that affect your confidence you feel.
- [05:27]
Nicole
Like at this time as well? Absolutely. When I was in fifth grade, I moved to Chicago with my mom and stepfather and they put me in a private school. It was top notch. These kids were smart. They'd also been together since preschool and I was completely lost on all of the subjects. My mom was not a strict parent. So fifth grade, I was running around downtown Chicago unsupervised with friends, skipping school, smoking cigarettes, doing whatever we wanted. I didn't have rules. Sixth grade came, same thing. We didn't do drugs, we didn't drink. We just were young kids having a blast. She had no idea what I was doing. She was very busy. I think that my stepfather was getting annoyed with my freedom. I think he was like, I'm done. She should go live with her dad. I was happy to go. He was a very good father. He also worked 12 hour days and he found time to be our coaches on our soccer teams and our softball teams and at our swim meets. When I moved there in seventh grade, it was completely controlled. At first my stepmother was very nice to me. But once her children started coming along and I started to get older, it was a real inconvenience for me to be there. She seemed to, in my teens, enjoy catching me doing something wrong and making sure my father would find out about it and basically trying to make the story of this teen is not safe around my children, so she needs to go. I never felt loved by her. So that was a constant theme of I was just not welcome. It just never felt like I was a part of the family.
- [07:23]
Tiffany Reese
Would you still get to see the other parent when you were living with one?
- [07:27]
Nicole
Not on a regular basis. It would be an airline flight. I always remember when I would get off a plane to visit my mom and this happened throughout my life. The moment I would get off a plane, the first thing she would say to me is she would comment on my weight. If I was heavy, she would say, oh, you're looking a little heavy. Or if I was thin, it was, oh, you look great. It made me feel like she was judging on how well I was doing in life if I was heavy or if I was thin. 8th grade was pretty difficult. When puberty hit full speed, my body developed significantly, especially my breasts. I was triple D before hitting 14. I sustained a lot of shaming and physical bullying and I attracted attention. The 90s were not kind to us young women. Boys would grab me in the hallway and they wouldn't get in trouble. It was always a boys will be boys kind of thing. My family made me feel pretty ashamed of my body so I would wear big clothing and try to hide it. I did end up going to a private school in New York, ninth grade and I struggled more there. They finally got me in with a tutor who really helped me and they said I was dyslexic. Once I had that diagnosis, I felt very different. It wasn't accepted, it wasn't something I shared with people. As I got older, we would move quite often. I've lived in Chicago and Tennessee and Georgia. I've never really felt confident in any school that I was at. Public school, private school wise, it was always kind of feeling on the outside, not as smart, looking different. After ninth grade, I basically told my dad I was moving back to my mom's. I wasn't asking anybody if I could do it. I just said I was going to. I knew there would be no rules. Summer before 10th grade, I moved all my shit down to my mom's and showed up like I'm ready to go to the regular high school come fall. They basically were just shocked. I was 14 going on 15. I had a 20 year old boyfriend who worked at the Dairy Queen and I would sneak out at 2 o' clock in the morning to see him. My mom had no idea. We'd go and watch Pink Floyd, the Wall and Hang out in his Ford Escort with the moonroof open, looking at the stars. Eventually, they did know about him and where he worked. This is about the time I started to get caught for smoking cigarettes. I did take the car out, my stepfather's Jaguar, out in the middle of the night. And I got caught. And my stepfather was having none of it. He found a regular boarding school in Georgia. 10th grade, I was sent away to this boarding school for all girls. It was very college feel. We had a roommate, we had a bathroom. And then another adjoining room with two other girls. We ate all the time. We would hang out. We'd go to school in our pajamas. Sometimes we had dorm mothers that were these little old ladies. It was like a real southern all girls boarding school. And it was super fun. Then just three months into 10th grade, about five of us got kicked out. We got caught for drinking. Our parents had to come get us the next day. They scrambled to figure out what to do with me. So I went and stayed with my grandparents in South Dakota for a few weeks during the holidays. This is when my stepfather found Desisto. My mother would tell me about it. My dad was on board. They said, we've got this great school. It's got horseback riding and culinary school and performing arts. It's this beautiful campus out in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. I didn't want to go. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be a regular teen. I wanted a locker, I wanted to drive a car. I wanted to have that all American high school life. And I didn't really have a choice. They didn't want me. And that's a really hard feeling. In January of 1994, at the age of 15, I was sent to the Desisto School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. My mom met me in Boston. We drove out to the school. No one forgets their first date. You remember so much, the feeling, the smells, the weather, things like that. I'll set the scene for you. Driving up the driveway, it's long and you're looking at this big white mansion. I thought, this isn't going to be so bad. I get to live in that mansion. How awesome. You get inside and you're immediately separated from your parents. I didn't know it was the last time I was going to see her, so I would have hugged her. I would have told her, I love you. But I didn't get to say anything. She just disappeared. And they do that on purpose. They don't want you to manipulate your parent. I was led into a office library and there was this man sitting on a chair and another younger person come to find out. The older gentleman is Michael Desisto. He's the founder, he ran the school. He interestingly was sitting in this chair wrapped like a pretzel basically. He was so thin and with him was a dorm parent. He starts to talk about things that you don't understand, how he knows all these things. So it's obvious. My parents have been telling him things that I had been doing. Drinking, stealing the car, smoking cigarettes, dating older boys. It's embarrassing. I remember just sitting there frozen. Very shortly after another dorm parent came and got me. We left the mansion and I'm looking behind me like, am I not going to live in the mansion? Don't I get to go that way?
- [13:49]
Tiffany Reese
Friends in Sacramento, California, we are so excited for our next benefit meetup party Friday, Nov. 21, 2025 in Sac Town. Join hosts Amy B. Chesler, myself and our amazing Broken Cycle media team as we come together to party for a purpose with all the net proceeds benefiting the Gathering Inn. The Gathering inn is a 501C3 nonprofit serving placer and Sacramento counties. They provide shelter, housing and wraparound services to individuals and families in need. Their mission is to meet people where they are, inspire hope and walk alongside them on their journey to sustainable housing. Today the Gathering inn serves over 468 individuals, adults and families with children offering critical life saving services like emergency shelter, medical respite care and permanent supportive housing using a trauma informed well being approach. They also provide comprehensive case management, clinical therapy both in group and individual settings, and connections to community supports all intended to help guests secure the tools they need to transform their circumstances. And while we're raising funds for this incredible work, we're also going to have an unforgettable night together. Your ticket includes all of the evening's entertainment, trivia, meet and greet, dancing, karaoke, cocktails, a photo booth, funtivities for introverts, giveaway prizes and more. Grab your tickets and all the details@brokencyclemedia.com we can't wait to see you and support such an important cause together. Thank you so much.
- [15:36]
Nicole
You're led down to these dorms that are cinder block, dark, cold. It looked like a prison. I thought that this was going to be like this boarding school I was at. Free to walk around, eat whenever you want, go to school, chill with friends. I knew that there was going to be therapy. That was part of the understanding and I didn't have any problem with therapy. I had been to therapy before. I didn't have A stigma around it. But it was very different. It was forced. You were not free. You get down to your dorm and from that moment you learn that you are never going to be alone. You have to be in a group of three or more at all times. You can't walk down the hallway by yourself. You can't walk to the bathroom by yourself. All your things are searched. Things were taken away. You're stripped of your music. You're stripped of any T shirts with writing on it or any bands, any jeans, things like that. You feel like a zombie because you're listening to all these kids tell you you can't do this, you can't do that, don't do this, don't say that. You're just wanting to go home.
- [16:42]
Tiffany Reese
Were you all in like one big room?
- [16:44]
Nicole
It was a cinder block building and there was in one end a big lobby. There was furniture always in a circle. That's where everybody would hang out. And then there was the bathrooms and dorm rooms. And they would hold two to three girls, sometimes four. There were bunk beds. You'd get a dresser. You're in this dorm called New Girls. There was a New Girls and New Boys. And this is bottom level. No freedom whatsoever. Our bathroom had no doors on the stalls so they could see you using the bathroom in the shower room. It was pink tiled with three shower heads. Twenty of us would have to be in this small shower room, showering together, all naked at the same time. And I have never experienced that before in my life. So it was very uncomfortable, especially with my body issues, to be naked in front of 15, 20 girls that I didn't know.
- [17:44]
Tiffany Reese
You mentioned that the school was part therapeutic, quote boarding school, part art school. Can you walk us through a little bit like your day to day, how you guys spent your time?
- [17:56]
Nicole
It was therapeutic in the way that we had weekly sessions with a therapist that they were contracted into the school. We had a psychologist and a psychiatrist, but we would see them once a week, maybe once a month. The day to day was you'd wake up around 6:30 or 7. You would go to morning activities. It was mandated. We have to do something active. So there were different things you could do. You could go to yoga. They would have a television and VCR on our roller cart and we would roll it into our dining room area in a different building and we would do Sweatin to the Oldies with Richard Simmons. I think we all kind of enjoyed it. We would go back to our dorm and you'd have 15 minutes to shower, 15 minutes to get dressed and 15 minutes to clean your dorm up. Our dorms would get checked on the daily to make sure they were clean. Things were put away, beds were made. One of the things we had to do every Saturday there called super cleanup Saturday. It was this deep clean of your dorm. If they found a hair on the floor of the bathroom, they would make you clean the entire dorm over again. What we were taught is that if your dorm is not getting clean, something is wrong with the people of that dorm. So internally you have a problem. School was very interesting at Desisto. I don't remember learning anything in the two years that I was there. It was pretty much a joke. You're in school. And then it would become a dorm meeting. This person would say they're having a hard time and we'd have to all support them or talk to them. And then that person basically was in the hot seat. We were encouraged to attack them. And then we would go to lunch and then we would have possibly more school. We'd have free time and then dinner, and then it would be door meetings every night. Every night you would get together in a circle and one person would be in the hot seat. Everybody would go around and say to the person that they didn't believe them and what they were saying. I saw you do this today and I think you're being ingenuine. It just was constant confrontational therapy.
- [20:09]
Tiffany Reese
Who would lead this quote therapy?
- [20:12]
Nicole
The dorm parent would. They were not qualified. These were people needing a job. They'd live in our dorm, they'd have their own quarters. I don't even know if they were background checked. I did have some really nice dorm parents. They were 20 somethings that were looking after all these teenagers. There were some really shitty ones too that were mean and seemed to get off on making us feel bad. We had some teachers or staff or dorm parents that would disappear in the middle of the night. And some of them stayed for many, many years. It was pretty wild how some of them became so attached to Michael in his philosophy. Michael Desisto in the late 70s, had been working as a director, I believe, at the Lake Grove school. The story is he was fired. And a group of parents were so upset about this that they funded him to start his own school. It was about 1978. Everybody looked at him like a God. He emphasized that your kid will never be kicked out of this school. Because that's what other programs would do. These wilderness programs. If you got in trouble enough, basically, or you ran away enough, they'd kick you out. Not Michael Desisto's school. And I think parents found that comforting. We had a lot of kids that were violent and could be really abusive. These are dysregulated kids. These are kids who needed professional help. Michael Desista was able to convince these wealthy parents. Pay me 50, $70,000 a year baseline for your child to come here and I will fix him. He could sell it. He pretended and projected that he was this therapist.
- [22:07]
Tiffany Reese
He.
- [22:08]
Nicole
He was not. But the main message that Michael preached was that any dysfunction we were undergoing as teenagers was a result of poor family dynamics. Most often this related to, like, enabling and codependency of our parents. And the solution to this was to repair this damage. So family therapy and dealing with family issues were. Was a main focus. Yet we weren't at home. So our dorm was our surrogate family. There were things he talked about that made sense. Children are hurting themselves. They need boundaries. They need better relationships with themselves and their parents. These are not wrong concepts. It's how he went about and allowing things at the school to happen, that's not okay. We would get consequences. There were times where you'd be handheld. This is a tactic they'd use where you had to hold hands anytime you walked around. So your whole dorm would be chain linked. Walking up to campus to go to breakfast. If three of you needed to go to the restroom and get up from the table at breakfast, all three of you had to hold hands and go into the restroom and trying to use the restroom. Sometimes your dorm could be in trouble and you weren't allowed to talk to other kids at school. Or it was. Was farmed. Desisto had a farm. It wasn't maybe a functioning farm, but it was a dorm that you would get sent to that had no privileges. You had no clothing of your own. You wore a blue jumpsuit. You would do work hours where you would do manual labor. Painting a school building, repaving the driveway, large things like that. Where Michael didn't want to hire a crew to come in. It was children who were fixing things and repainting things. I did get sent to the farm. I remember it very well. I wasn't there long. I had done something on a trip with the school. I had gotten back and I got sent to the farm. It's a horrible feeling. I mean, in general, you feel very trapped at the school. But when you're on the farm, it's an even more confined feeling. It's like being in jail with less rights than a prisoner. You wouldn't go up to the dining hall for meals, they would bring it down in these coolers and it would be lukewarm. And sometimes you wouldn't have furniture. You'd have to sit on the floor. They would come and take all your things too, out of your dorm. Another thing that would happen to students was called getting cheated. I never got to this level, but there was a girl that got sheeted. She's having to wear a sheet as clothing. She has her bra and her underwear on and she is walking around campus around her peers. She made it look like a toga. But how traumatic is it to be a teenager in front of your friends wearing a sheet with your underwear under it? And none of the adults said it was wrong.
- [25:19]
Tiffany Reese
It's shame as punishment, essentially.
- [25:21]
Nicole
Exactly. Let's shame them enough to conform. Kids would be held down on the ground if they were a threat to others or themselves. And that was called a limit structure. It was very scary. Your parents would find out, but they were totally sold on that. This was the process, this was okay. That a child sat in a corner for three days straight and didn't go to school. And the grownups at the school were okay with it because Michael said it was okay. I wanted him to like me. I wanted his approval. I wanted to be on his good side. Because if you were on his good side, you eventually got more privileges. You moved up easier. You became what we called during my time there, Michael's kid. By the time I was there in the mid-90s, Michael had gone into the 12 step program. He self proclaimed he was an overeater, so he was an Overeaters Anonymous. And the school shifted. The focus changed towards 12 step. If you wanted to survive at this school, you had to pick an addiction and you had to work on it. And I didn't have one. I chose overeaters because Michael, that's what his thing was. There was a visiting psychiatrist that would come in because of, quote, my symptoms that my psychologist at the school felt I had. I was recommended to go see the psychiatrist. And then I was diagnosed as bipolar and personality disorder. And I was prescribed lithium. It was then that I started to feel very numb. I was walking around in this daze. And then at night I was given Ambien. My friend who I've spoken with recently stated she remembered that I would shake a lot. I remember vomiting every morning. Come to find out we would get levels drawn and I was having too much lithium in my body. I ended up getting switched to another drug called nortriptyline. It was again this foggy feeling. I Didn't have a choice. I was just told, you are this and you are going to start taking this medication. I don't know if my parents were talked to about this. The thing about desisto is the parents had to be involved. So the parents would go to a monthly parenting meeting out of New York or Massachusetts area. I believe the Midwest also had their own physical meeting. There was a parent that ran those meetings, and they had to actively participate. And the parent would totally get ripped to shreds. Sometimes Michael would lay into the parent. Very intimate details would get brought up about maybe a parent's cheating on their spouse. Maybe there was abuse that was happening at home that would get brought up in front of everybody. He would basically present himself as a therapist, and the therapist would be there assisting on parent weekends. The parent had to be involved in this program. And if they weren't, they were excommunicated from their kids. And they would have to work their way back into the parenting group to talk to their kids. And the same thing would happen on our end as well if we were without privileges, basically. I don't remember a lot of phone calls with my family. There was somebody always listening on your end. So it wasn't that I could tell them things that were going on. There were two paths you could take at the school. You could be a conformer or you could be a resister. The people who resisted took longer to get out of the newer kid dorms. They fought against the rules. They would do things intentionally to get in trouble. I didn't follow that path. That wasn't my personality. I learned pretty quick at Desisto how to work it. So I moved up out of new girl's dorm quicker than other people. You would move up in the hierarchy of the dorm. If you would go up to the next dorm and say, hey, alternate girls, I've been living in new girls, and I think I should be in your dorm. You would kind of pitch yourself to the next dorm and they would, what's called, spin, and they would go around and give a vote if they felt that you were quote, unquote, appropriate for their dorm. So if you got in, you were out of that new girls dorm and you are now in the next dorm. You'd go into upper dorms, and then it was regular girls, and then it was the steward dorm, which are like the seniors, and you'd get privileges, like finally living in the actual mansion of the school. It was definitely a sign of status. I got into the theater arts dorm. I was there probably about six Months when I had moved into that dorm. And our first production that I was in on was Little Shop of Horrors. And this is the craziness of this school. You feel you're in this jail, your parents aren't coming for you, it's hell. And then all of a sudden you're in this production of Little Shop of Horrors and having a great time. I don't really know how to put it into words, but that's a lot about my existence at this school is. I hated every minute of it, but yet I got to do some of these activities that were pretty amazing and that I probably wouldn't do at a regular school. But it all surrounded Michael Desisto. Michael Desisto was very much a theater person. He was very into New York City theater life. He loved musicals. The school through the 90s was a performing arts type of school. So there was always some big production going on. He had this dinner theater every summer throughout the week. In the evening, paying customers visiting the Berkshires in the summer would come to our mansion. They'd sit down at these large tables and have a three or four course meal. And in between the meal settings, we would dance and sing Gershwin and Rodgers and Hammerstein and all these wonderful musicals and dance around with very sexualized costumes. On the weekends there would be cabaret and local New York City jazz artists. They would do a set and then it would just be cocktails for the paying customers around town. And us kids would be waiting the tables. We wore like tuxedo suits. There was Michael's PC waiting dorm. This PC waiting dorm ran the back end of the show. The behind the scenes. It would be touted that the children also made the meals. There were professional chefs there, but there were people that I am friends with to this day that were also involved with making the dinners. There was also an off Off Broadway production called Inappropriate. It was about the lives of the type of kids that were coming through the school. It was more of a musical built around old journals from past senior or stewards. They would use several different stories for one person's character. People would pay for this, and we didn't get the money. They would tell us that we were earning some money and it would go into a fund that I could use later to buy clothes out of a catalog. But it was going into the school's pocket. There had to have been money being made off of children. And there were some really, really talented kids at the school. I mean, voices like you wouldn't believe. And I don't know if they knew they were talented prior to coming in. I think sometimes the talent was found when they were at school. This is where it's really hard because I think it really did help some people. There were a lot of people that were hurting themselves. They were doing drugs and physically harming themselves. And there was now this outlet they were channeled through and praised and doing very well. Dinner theater in the summer. We would be over at his house in the evening, and he would be in his robe and in his underwear, traipsing around his own living room with his robe open. Nobody said it is inappropriate for the founder of the school, the director, the principal of this school, to be half dressed in front of children. He would expose himself. I don't know if it was intentional. I can't say that, but I felt that it was sometimes intentional. It was very uncomfortable. I feel that Michael preyed on children that did not have good relationships with their fathers. I get this information from talking to about 10 to 12 different people from different times of being at desisto, 80s, 90s, 2000s. He would get that child to adore him and trust him and get in his inner circle and be a part of his theater productions. There were other things that you could do within the school. If you wanted your Spanish credit, you would get to go to San Miguel de Allende and spend six weeks in a house the school owned and learn Spanish and take art classes. It was a great trip. You're getting out of town, you'd have therapy there, you'd be amongst the locals. Kids would run away in Mexico. That was kind of scary. Also, the school owned a house in the Florida Keys on Big Pine Key. A group of students would be sent for six weeks, nine weeks to the Keys. Stay in this house and you would take your science credits. There was a sea school down the road. You'd ride your bike, you'd go to the school, you'd learn about oceanography and marine biology, and that would be your school. Then you'd go back and eat and swim. We learned how to scuba dive. I got PADI certified. At night, we'd go into the Keys. I did run away when I was on my trip in the Florida Keys in the middle of the night. The gal that I was with, we, like, made it all the way down to the road to the main strip. I was supposedly having a boyfriend that was gonna come and pick us up that lived in Georgia. That never happened. So we were like, fuck, we can't make it all the way to Miami. It was scary. So we just snuck back in and then they caught us. There was a point at Desisto where if a student ran away, the older students or stewards and dorm parents, they would all pile into a van and they would travel around Lenox and Stockbridge looking for this kid who had run away, and they would tackle them, pull them into the van and take them back to school. I think there was some factor of it being exciting for the students that got to go hunt other students. And that's the fucked upness of the school. Once you turned 18, they could no longer come after you. But what would happen is if you ran away and you were 18 and your parents were completely involved in the school, your parents wouldn't talk to you. Now you're on the road is what we called it. You've run away, you probably have nothing. Some kids left without shoes, without clothing. They're living on the streets of Stockbridge. Maybe they made it all the way to New York City and their parents aren't helping them. No one will help them. And so they're so desperate they end up coming back.
- [37:23]
Tiffany Reese
Did many kids stay past their 18th birthday?
- [37:26]
Nicole
Yeah. So if they didn't make it through graduation, they'd keep trying to be a senior and do the work, and their parents would stay involved and keep paying. I wanted to figure out, how the fuck am I going to get out of this school and what do I need to do to do that? It was clear to me that you needed to move up to the steward dorm, which is the highest dorm you could be in and graduate. Five kids would graduate a year. Maybe these stewards were the senior class. They would also be assigned a lower dorm to be in charge of. And they would work with a regular dorm parent on being at dorm meetings, being a mentor for the younger students. They would also have to do a senior project. Then to graduate your steward dorm, your group would spin, would vote if they felt you were ready for graduation. There were times where kids would make it all the way to the graduation day, and then all of a sudden Michael would pull the rug out from underneath them and their parents would be there, and all of a sudden the child would not be graduating and they'd have to stay another year.
- [38:43]
Tiffany Reese
How long were you there in total?
- [38:45]
Nicole
I was there for about two years, until 1996. And I ran away at 18 because I knew they couldn't keep me.
- [38:56]
Tiffany Reese
What was that exit process like for you?
- [39:00]
Nicole
My mom's mom passed away. I was asked if I could go to the funeral, and I had to go to my dorm and spin to be able to leave, I had to ask every person, you have to make promises I'll be appropriate, I won't do anything against the Desisto rules, and I'll be back. I was able to convince this dorm of mine that I would be okay. And so, interestingly, nobody seemed to pick up on that. I had packed my suitcase so heavy. It was everything that I had. I flew to Arizona, went to the funeral. It was very hard. This was one of my favorite grandparents. I was also angry at my mom. This is in the 90s. So I'm in my hotel room, you know, it's getting close to leaving, and I call the airline and I say, oh, this is so and so. And I'm going to change my flight back. And this is back where they're like, oh, do you just want us to charge the credit card that's on file? And I was like, yeah, sure, just charge it. It's a $50 fee or something like that. And I changed my flight from flying into New York City into Boston, and nobody knew. I just got dropped off, went in, got my ticket, checked in, got on the flight. I had a layover in Dallas. And I don't know why I felt compelled to do this, because. But I called Desisto school and I spoke with my therapist. I told him, I'm not coming back. I'm going to Boston. Peace. I didn't call my parents. I got on the plane, and it was taking forever for us to leave. We weren't taxiing away. And I look out to my left, there were cop cars with the lights going down there. And I'm looking at them, I'm like, fuck. I wonder if they're here for me. Are they going to take me off the plane? This is going to be so embarrassing in front of all these people. But nothing happened. I don't know if the doors were shut. I don't know if they realized. I was 18. And maybe it wasn't even for me. I honestly don't know to this day. But we left and I flew into Boston. My mom wouldn't talk to me. But now I look back on it, and this poor woman lost her mother to als. She's dealing with that grief, and then her teenager is running away to a place she doesn't know, has no control over that.
- [41:22]
Tiffany Reese
I'm so sorry to hear that your grandparent passed away. What do you think was the hardest part for you, personally, about being there?
- [41:31]
Nicole
There are a couple things. Feeling trapped. I have reoccurring nightmares of being there and being Unable to leave. I'm in my 40s, and I still, to this day, from when I was 15, 16, 17, have nightmares about being on campus and unable to leave. I missed my family. I didn't get to have that family life in my teens. I didn't get to experience high school or going to prom or anything like that. I missed a lot of family events. At times throughout my life, I've been at family functions and memories would be talked about and I wouldn't know what they're talking about. They would talk about skiing adventures and laughing about inside jokes. And it felt like there wasn't any sensitivity around that I hadn't been there. Leaving the Sisto was a huge culture shock. I didn't even really know how to function. I started to drink. That's when I started to find ways to make myself feel better that were not healthy ways. I had a boyfriend, six years older than me, and I ended up living with him for a while. Thankfully, got out of that relationship. It was very toxic. He was very abusive, controlling. I was able to find a roommate. I lived with her for a little while, and I got a job as a receptionist at an insurance company. That's kind of how I started. I was only 19, but I did fall in love for the first time. And it was one of those first true loves. I still love this person today, and I haven't, unfortunately, been able to find that kind of love again. But my life did get on track a bit. I found advertising as a career, and I went to college for a little while. This person I was with was good for me. He took care of me, I took care of him. We were in our own little love bubble. The world kind of revolved around us. But I think the thing that happens for me is I get into situations where I'm very scared that I'm trapped. I do attribute this to the school. And unfortunately, I started to feel very trapped in this relationship. Even though it was a very loving relationship, I had to get out. Unfortunately, I hurt this person pretty bad and moved across the country. I spent much of my 20s and 30s looking for that first love like I had when I was younger, and running away from it and finding the wrong person, or maybe finding the right person and leaving that person because I was so scared. I was a young adult. I moved to a new city. No family, a couple friends, and I was really struggling. I decided I'll seek out a therapist. So I went into a hospital. I found a psychologist. I said, I'm bipolar. You need to put Me back on my meds. And she was thankfully skilled enough to say, let's sit down and go through some checkpoints here. Let's get to know each other. I remember filling out tests in office questionnaires. And the conclusion was she's like, you are not bipolar. You have ptsd. You are depressed. Let's work on that. And that was really hard to hear, that I was misdiagnosed and taking medication that was inappropriate for me. How many other children at this school went through this? That's what scares me. They can charge what they want, diagnose what they want, and then everybody's on board. No one's questioning, no one's protecting us.
- [45:24]
Tiffany Reese
I'm curious what your relationship was like with your parents after you started your own life. Were you communicating very frequently with them?
- [45:33]
Nicole
When I had run away, neither one of them would allow me to come live with them. And for different reasons. My mother was still involved with the school, saying, you gotta go back if you want us to be involved with you. And my father wouldn't let me come and live with them because my stepmother did not want me there. I had to grow up real quick. You're down to dollars at times when you're that young with an entry level job, trying to pay your rent. It's scary. But my relationship with my mom did change over time. I think once she realized the months and then the years would pass and I'm not going back. We would see each other and she would fly me to see her. And so we would eventually start to regain this relationship. But it was fractured. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't lovable enough to keep around. That was something I just felt like, don't you love me enough? I was very angry about that. So I stopped talking to her for some time in my 20s. I kind of had to keep figuring out my shit. My mom passed away in 2019 from stage four breast cancer. I tried very hard to be involved at that time and help her. It was very difficult. When you're having all of these old emotions that are just inside of you, and yet your parent is dying and you want to help them, but you're still so mad. I loved her. I know she loved me. But it was a different relationship that I had with her than I think my sibling had. We put together this beautiful funeral. But the people who were talking about my mom to me, they were describing someone I didn't know. It was very odd. A lot of them were my siblings, friends, and they were telling stories about how they would call my mom and talk to her for hours and she would give them advice about life. I didn't have that with her. Are we talking about the same woman? My dad and I were very close. We slowly built this relationship. It was very hard because he couldn't tell my stepmother that he was talking to me or maybe giving me a few hundred bucks every now and then to get by. Slowly I was able to be around the family and invited over for holidays. My dad apologized to me. He just looked at me and he said, I am so sorry we sent you there. And I didn't really know how to respond. I just took it in and listened. You know, I'm a mom now and I love being a mom. I just adore my kid. I have the best kid ever. I can't imagine life without her. I purposely don't date. I purposely focus on taking care of her in our home and showing her that you can be a functioning, happy woman in the world today and to seek relationships that I want and not ones that I need. So I think they do a pretty good job of that. I can't ever imagine sending my child away.
- [48:55]
Tiffany Reese
In those later conversations with your dad, did they have any idea what the school actually was?
- [49:03]
Nicole
I think they lived in a bubble of not wanting to know. I think there was an understanding that it was not a good place. I believe they had heard about cases and lawsuits. I think it was too scary to find out that they had sent their child away to a place that was unsafe. That's really hard to hear as a parent. I mean, it's not like now where everything's on the Internet. So it wasn't free information that you could go somewhere and look up. I think it all got pushed under the rug and nobody talked about it. And maybe some of the higher ups knew about what had happened. But when these things happened and we found out about them later, it didn't surprise me as adults. We talked about it later on in life and we knew that there had to have been things going on. It was very hush hush and they were very good at hiding it. I just couldn't believe how long the school stayed open. Honestly, the school kept trying to function. After he passed away. The state came in and was like, we've had enough reports, enough evidence to close it down. The unsilenced group did post a few documents on their website that I had just today looked at again and I literally felt sick reading it. These documents are from just the 2000s. So I know that there's More that exist, I believe, from earlier years. When I was researching the school, I spoke to an ex parent and they to this day love Michael. They still talk very fondly of him. Thirty years later, there is still a parent group happening. I absolutely still love and adore a lot of the people I went to school there with. There's a couple people who live here in my state. I see them, I adore them. It's an odd bond I think some of us have. I don't know about the other people, but for me, these people I feel super safe with. I could tell them anything and I don't feel like I'd be judged. I feel like I could call them if I ever needed them and they would be there for me. But there are people who are very protective of the school. I have people in my friendship group from the school. They still will defend the school. So it's a difficult relationship balance. You don't agree with them. These are smart people. They understand what they saw and what they went through. And they know a lot of it was very wrong, but they believe what they believe. What happened at this school changed my family relationships and other relationships for decades to come. It skewed my view on mental health and altered the entire trajectory of my life. I'm suffering. I have been diagnosed with PTSD from this experience. I have worked on it with EMDR therapy. I am doing much better. I am working at being a good parent so I don't make the same mistakes my parents made. I make mistakes all the time, but I'm trying to be better in relationships. I definitely have social anxiety. It is why I used to drink a lot in social situations because I didn't feel comfortable and then I would over drink. I have finally stopped drinking. For a year and a half. I had to take that out of my life completely because I saw it affecting my relationship with my child. I want to trust her to hopefully make the right decisions and if she doesn't, to not fall apart. Let's learn from this situation. You did a really bad thing. You cheated on your test. But let's talk about why you made this decision. What was going on with you? My parents, they didn't sit and talk with me about how I was feeling. Now we're learning as adults. We've got to validate that the feelings they're having are real. They matter, and I should listen to them. There are children out there that need help. And I feel for those parents that are struggling with not knowing what to do and how to help their child and they just want them to live. They want them to make it to the next day. I just really hope that if there are parents out there listening and they're going through it with their teen, they just hang on and don't send them away. I think making your child feel wanted, you know, that was what I didn't feel. Even before the school. I wasn't really a part of. The family life for your teen is very difficult, but fostering a feeling of being wanted is very important.
- [53:52]
Tiffany Reese
I'm curious what it's like to navigate self compassion as an adult when these programs and schools often underscore the opposite. What tactics you've learned or how you try to give yourself that self compassion.
- [54:09]
Nicole
That's a great question and it's definitely something I've been thinking about. It was very hard to come to terms with all of this and I still struggle. In my 40s, the two people that I depended on most were in their actions saying to me as a child, we don't want you. We all have that core feeling and it's all experienced differently. We all have our different scenarios, but when you really look at it, we're all being rejected by the people that should love us the most. And I've had to continually overcome this feeling as I get older. Feeling wanted, feeling worthy, being compassionate to myself, liking myself, being kind to who I am.
- [54:58]
Tiffany Reese
Thank you so much for everything that you've been willing to share. What inspired you to reach out and be so public with your story?
- [55:08]
Nicole
I think what inspired me first was.
- [55:10]
Tiffany Reese
To just get it out, put it.
- [55:12]
Nicole
Out into the universe, let it go. I'm not holding on to this as much now that I'm in my 40s, but it, it is a part of me. I used to find a lot of shame that I was sent away. I don't feel that shame anymore, but it's always going to be with me. It's part of who I am. I just want parents to do their research, be involved and look into other options if they can, and not send their kids to these schools.
- [55:44]
Tiffany Reese
I just want to say I'm so sorry that you experienced this and we're very thankful.
- [55:50]
Nicole
I'm so thankful for you. Your entire podcast has brought so much comfort to me. The help you're giving people is life changing. I love it all and I'm just so glad to participate and be a part of, hopefully a solution and positive outcomes.
- [56:15]
Tiffany Reese
Next time on Something was wrong.
- [56:19]
Nicole
Tranquility Bay was the last resort. People got sent there when they got kicked out of all of the other WASP programs, but I got sent there directly. The church was really instrumental in making most of the decisions for my family, so I'm assuming that somebody in the church had probably pointed them in that direction. It was kind of like that same cult brainwashing as the church had installed in them. It was this is the program. This is going to work. This is what you need to do.
- [56:54]
Tiffany Reese
Something was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media Production created and produced by Executive Producer Tiffany Reese, Associate Producers Amy B. Chesler and Lily Rowe with audio editing and music design by Becca High. Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our Social Media Marketing manager Sarah Stewart, our grand graphic artist and Marissa and Travis from wme. Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories and thank you each and every listener for making our show possible with your support and listenership. In the episode notes you'll always find episode specific content, warnings, sources and resources. Thank you so much for your support. Until next time, stay safe.
- [57:43]
Nicole
Friends.
- [57:51]
Tiffany Reese
Friends in Sacramento, California we are so excited for our next benefit meetup party Friday, November 21, 2025 in Sactown. Join hosts Amy B. Chesler, myself and our amazing Broken Cycle Media team as we come together to party for a purpose with all the net proceeds benefiting the Gathering Inn. The Gathering inn is a 5013 nonprofit serving placer and Sacramento counties. They provide shelter, housing and wraparound services to individuals and families in need. Their mission is to meet people where they are, inspire hope and walk alongside them on their journey to sustainable housing. Today the Gathering inn serves over 468 individuals, adults and families with children offering critical life saving services like emergency shelter, medical respite care and permanent supportive housing using a trauma informed well being approach. They also provide comprehensive case management, clinical therapy both in group and individual settings, and connections to community supports, all intended to help guests secure the tools they need to transform their circumstances. And while we're raising funds for this incredible work, we're also going to have an unforgettable night together. Your ticket includes all of the evening's entertainment, trivia, meet and greet, dancing, karaoke, cocktails, a photo booth, funtivities for introverts, giveaway prizes and more. Grab your tickets and all the details@brokencyclemedia.com we can't wait to see you and support such an important cause together. Thank you so much.