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- [00:01]
A
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. I'm Tiffany Reiss and this is Something Was Wrong.
- [01:15]
B
Hi, I'm Dylan. I am a survivor of the troubled teen industry and I am 44 years old. To this day, out of my experience, I have been changed completely from who I used to be, the way that I operate and the way that I interact in my relationships. I wanted to share my story because I think that's really important for survivors to find solace in each other. What I really like to get out of this is being a strength for anybody who has been through this and heeding some warning to anybody that is looking to send their kids to these programs.
- [01:52]
A
I'm so thankful that I was able to connect with you through Haley, who listeners heard from last week. How did you two meet?
- [02:00]
B
I am a moderator or admin for a Facebook group. It's just a bunch of us who experience that program over the course of different years. There's some of us are in, you know, our mid-40s, some of us are in our late 30s. It's a place where we can connect with each other, continue to foster the relationships that we once had back in the 90s and 2000s. That is where I found Haley. Haley is a member of our group. Hailey and I did not attend at the same time. She arrived shortly after I left. She reached out to me and wanted to know if I wanted to share my experience and I absolutely did. I was adopted when I was four days old, but I like to say that I was bought and paid for in utero. My parents went through a private adoption with a lawyer. I was born in South Carolina. My parents were from New York City, so they came to South Carolina when I was four days old to pick me up. That was my first plane ride and I was taken back to New York City. New York City is amazing. I would not change my childhood for the world. As somebody who is such a people person and really like enjoys adventure and urban exploration, I'M sure I got that from there. It was just the most amazing and magical place to be. I never met a stranger. I had great friends. I was inquisitive, smart, adventurous. I'm not going to say that my childhood was always easy. I was bullied and felt excluded from things. But my parents were very affluent. I grew up on the Upper east side of New York City. I went to one of the top private schools. Excelling at school was always an expectation. It was never an option not to succeed, not to excel. So there was always a lot of pressure. My mom was wound really tightly. She was very neurotic. That manifested for her in micromanaging me because she did not have to work. My dad was the vice president of a jewelry manufacturing company and was making a ridiculous amount of money. Being able to quit her job and raise me full time was probably a dream for her. I have always been super independent. Really, really wanted to just do my thing. For years I was able to do that. But as school started getting more rigorous, my mom nagged me constantly to do things. If she had given me a moment to breathe, I would have done my homework. But everything was a timeline. It had to be on her time. My life was really scheduled to the minute, and I rebelled against that. It caused tension between us. I was in about seventh grade when it really, really started badly. I love her and it's hard to speak ill of her because she passed away from cancer. We never actually repaired our relationship. But I have to be honest about all of this because both can be true. I loved her. She was a wonderful mom, but she was not perfect. I had always been really active, not only just walking around New York City, but doing sports. When puberty hits, like most kids do, I started to gain some weight. I would grow out, and then I would grow up. I got that expression from my mom because she would say, oh, you're growing out again. When are you going to grow up? My first real memory of this was standing on the scale as I had been doing every morning for probably a good while. At that point, my mom reached over and she picked up my shirt to look at my belly. That made me feel horrible because she had always talked so horribly about people who were overweight. I was so afraid to become the person that my mom hated. Her only child, her adopted child. That I think was probably the trigger that started a lot of my behaviors that actually ended me up in the programs. As I started to gain weight, she started weighing me. I wasn't allowed to have sugar cereals. I Only could drink diet sodas, if sodas at all. She actually gave me food issues, gave me body image issues. She was chipping away at something that I couldn't control or change, really. I mean, I know you can lose weight, but I was a growing preteen going through puberty with people like that.
- [06:31]
A
Sometimes there's never skinny enough.
- [06:34]
B
That, unfortunately, is the case. My mom was anorexic. She basically starved herself. Her relationship with food was insane. She would skip meals all day and then eat just a giant salad for dinner. She would always make sure that when we went out to restaurants, which we did every weekend, she would get dry chicken not made with oil or butter. She was very explicit with how she wanted her food prepared. She would always want her vegetables steamed. That is healthy eating. But to take it to this extreme of eating one meal a day and then kind of binging during that meal, that was a problem. I am so scared to do the same thing to my kids.
- [07:15]
A
It's such a big responsibility, Especially when you've experienced the harm yourself. You know what it costs.
- [07:21]
B
Exactly. And the last thing I ever want to do is because to this day, I look in the mirror and I am cruel to myself. These are things that no person should look at their selves and say that I know are a direct result of. A culmination between my mom and the programs that I attended.
- [07:43]
A
And the harmful irony is that also a lot of these programs were advertised as being an option for children who are struggling with disordered eating. I've learned from survivors and their parents thus far this season. Even if kids didn't necessarily have, quote, food issues before they often left with them. When did you initially hear that your parents were thinking about placing you in a program, and what were the circumstances that led to that?
- [08:11]
B
As it would turn out from the years later that I did meet and spend some time with my biological mother, that I inherited her rage problem. And that started to show up when puberty started around 12. My mom and I were alone together a lot. My anger started growing. One day I just snapped, and I physically attacked her. That physical abuse continued, I would say, up until probably right before I got sent away. Through about age 14. I would feel this energy coursing through my fingertips and up my arm. And I would warn her. I would say, mom, I need you to leave me alone. I am going to lose it. Please get out of my room. I would black out. And when I would black out, that's when it would happen. I have been told that I have chased her through the apartment, that I threw her on a bed, that I choked her, that I slapped her, that I punched her. I don't remember most of this at all. I'm not trying to make excuses here. What I did is absolutely unacceptable and seemingly unforgivable. I don't think I was ever forgiven. Despite that, I never raised a hand to my mom or even spoke harshly at her. Since 1995, I started skipping school. I would actually call out as a parent. I would just be like, he's sick and not coming to school today. As long as you called from home. It was a different world. So you could fake those things, you could sign your parents signature. There was never any kind of intervention. I started smoking weed. I was hanging out in Washington Square Park. I wanted to stay away from home as much as possible. I am a pacifist. I am non violent. I didn't want to hurt her, but I also just didn't want to be around her. I finished up my 8th grade year in school. My grades were probably slipping a little bit, but they would never slip below a B. That was unacceptable and I knew that. And I was also very competitive with other people. I wanted to have the highest test scores and get done first. I got through my 8th grade year and I was at home with my parents and I was standing at the edge of the kitchen counter and I could see out the window. I remember them saying, you know, we have to talk about something pretty important. And I'm like, okay, what's going on? I'm thinking, who died? But they told me that my school had asked that I not return the next year, which to this day I really have a hard time believing that that was true. I've been to two reunions as an adult and I am invited. So I do think that they leaned on that as a way to deliver the news and make it seem like they were not the bad guys and that this was not their choice per se. So they told me that I would be going to boarding school starting that summer. The summer before I was going into ninth grade, I went to the Hyde School in Bath, Maine. It was more of a traditional boarding school with a underlying therapy angle. I would meet with my counselor, who was qualified to be a counselor, and we would have one on one sessions. They did not enforce crazy rules or crazy dress codes. You went to class, you walked around, you could earn privileges to go off campus. I'm pretty sure that you started with some off campus privileges. It was not hard to move up, but for me, I saw it as A jail. When I went for the summer, I had an off campus apartment. It was a house that they had renovated for students in the school. It was very easy to hop on a Greyhound bus back to New York. In hindsight, if I had stayed at Hyde, things probably would have been a little better for me. But I ran away. And then the summer program ended. I know I ended up back there and I probably lost privileges, got in trouble. And then I did start my ninth grade year at Hyde. I just felt like my whole world was stripped away from me and I didn't want to be there. There were a couple times that things happened. There was a kid that did sexually assault me. There was an attempted rape. I told my parents. They didn't believe me. That was really hard. They really thought that it was just another ploy for me to go home. I wasn't saying I wanted to go home. I just wanted this kid held accountable and expelled for trying to rape me. I was done. I ran away again. After that, I was asked not to come back. I did get expelled from there. And that would bring us to my summer in New York and the removal from my home.
- [12:51]
A
What did that summer look like as.
- [12:53]
B
My parents were trying to scramble to find someplace to send me? Not to my knowledge. I spent it partying and doing drugs that I had never done before. I had made some friends at the boarding school. We had met up in New York. When I started boarding school, I had smoked cigarettes, I had smoked pot. I had drank, but wasn't really a fan of it. Being at boarding school introduced me to a whole new world. Pills, cocaine, acid. One night I went to bed as normal. And around 3, 3:30 in the morning, I remember the light coming on, blinking my eyes open and seeing two strangers standing right in front of me. They had handcuffs. They were all dressed in all black. They looked like they were wearing tactical gear. I thought I was being arrested. My shoes were taken from me. My dad was in the hallway. I remember my mom standing there kneading her hands together. She used to do that for anxiety. There was two transport officers, a man and a woman. They told me to get up and get dressed because I was leaving with them. We could either do this the easy way or the hard way. I would do it on my own accord and walk out with them, not in handcuffs. Or I could fight my way through it and be physically restrained and escorted out of my apartment. But they made it clear that either way I was leaving with them. I went willingly. I didn't want to be embarrassed. Kicking and screaming through my apartment. I didn't even think about how my parents would feel about it. I thought about myself. I think that being raised in the affluent Jewish community that I was raised in, saving face was something that we didn't really talk about but you knew was something that was important. So that's what I did.
- [14:50]
A
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- [16:02]
B
I left with them and got in their car. We went to the airport. We flew to Las Vegas because they lived in Vegas and just the timing of escorting me there, it didn't line up. So I stayed the night with them at their house. I must have gone to sleep that night and went willingly with them where we were going the next day. And that was to Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions in Oregon. We were hiking 2324 miles a day with packs that almost weighed our entire body weight. You had to usually hike to get the water or go get some water from a nearby water source if you didn't have it in your water bottle.
- [16:43]
A
How much of the day do you think you were hiking?
- [16:46]
B
I would say 8 to 10. From like 6pm on we probably had arrived at our place and then you had to build your fire. We had a flint and steel and that was it. At the bottom of the sagebrush plant you would find small twigs and get incrementally larger pieces. Once you did all that, you then had to really hope that you got enough of that really fine nesting material because you had to Take your flint and steel and you had to shave the seal onto it and then use that flint to create a spark. And then you had to nurture that spark so it built your fire. We were fortunate if there happened to be free roaming cattle in the area because you could grab one of those cow pies, a literal pile of cow poop that had been out there drying in the heat, and you could actually save your fire for the morning so you wouldn't have to go through the process of gathering your supplies again. And then you had to cook your food. It was a big calorie deficit and the options were disgusting, like oleomage and government cheese and lentils. I lived on lentils and miso soup for five weeks. I was so afraid that I would not have enough to eat that it kicked. That instinctual basic human mammal experience. You have to save food, you're not going to have enough. Because I felt like I was starving on that wilderness program. And we never could be near somebody or not be close enough to interact. It wasn't like we could find safety in numbers overnight. All they give you is two tarps, one for the bottom, for the ground, and one to rig above you so you don't get wet. There was no bug protection. We were in the desert in Oregon. There are some real creepy stuff things out there. There are some scary, dangerous animals. The roaches, the spiders, the ticks, the scorpions. I did learn how to push through it. I had a goal every day. I knew there was no getting out of it, so might as well, for the first time in my life, comply. I complied. I did very well. I was not one of the people that slowed everybody down. I was able to really handle it a lot better than some of the other people in my group.
- [19:00]
A
What do you remember about the staff?
- [19:03]
B
I do remember they were hard asses. When people really felt like they needed to take a break, they just kept pushing and pushing.
- [19:12]
A
And how long were you in wilderness for?
- [19:15]
B
I was there for five weeks and it would have been three had I not been scared of the dark and broken solo out of fear.
- [19:22]
A
How long were they trying to get you to go on solo for?
- [19:25]
B
I believe that it was three days and two nights. I've always been scared of the dark. So to be out in the middle of Oregon where there was absolutely no light pollution whatsoever, it was terrifying to me. Solo was definitely the hardest part of the wilderness experience for me. The first night I had discovered two ticks crawling up the inside of my thigh towards my genitals. It was When I found the second one, I was done. I was like, I'm just gonna blame it on the ticks. And I refused to go back to my solo site. I was not doing it. I was going to stay with the counselors. And that was when I got rolled into the next session that had already been going for a week.
- [20:07]
A
Do you recall how you found out that you were going to another program after Wilderness?
- [20:12]
B
My parents came and picked me up after Wilderness and they told me I was not going home. They told me I was going to Montana. They brought me to school. It's one of those little cities in the middle of nowhere. It was a two year program. That was what I knew. And so I knew that my teenage life at that point was essentially over. I remember driving up the road, seeing the lounge building come up over the hill of the driveway. I remember it was an all dirt driveway. I remember seeing some girls walking in modest long skirts and T shirts. I remember thinking, what in the holy cult have I just stepped into? Nobody had on makeup. And the staff didn't help that impression either. They were dressed the same. I just remember being like, where did they send me? They wanted to micromanage and control every aspect of our lives. There were four physical cabins. Each of those cabins were split into sides. So you had like 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, et cetera. In those cabins there were eight total people. So on one side there were four, on the other side there were four. But what made it really difficult is that we had one bathroom to share. Privacy was completely off the table. I don't remember there even being closed doors when students were using the bathroom. To not have that kind of privacy and to be forced into sharing the most gross parts of a human life is just absolutely disgusting. It really is potential abuse. We got up, we ate breakfast, we had morning exercise, which was not easy. We had to log weigh and measure our food every single year meal. We were forced to drink an entire Nalgene bottle of water before we left the table. After you have eaten a whole bunch of food, it was really filling. They gave us like a halfway decent amount of food because they knew we were going to be burning calories, but you know, you're very full and then having to chug this four quarts of water at the end of your meal. I didn't drink it throughout the meal. They would not let us pee if we had to pee really bad. So to this day I have bladder damage. Didn't know that could be a thing. And I have trauma surrounding Water. The bathroom was a huge control and they would not allow us to go for so long. I've never experienced pain like that. I am so fortunate that I did not pee my pants, but others did. If you didn't, I guess, strengthen your bladder muscle enough. There was one girl who had to wear diapers. How humiliating is that? A teenager and you don't have a medical condition. You are being forced to wear diapers. And everybody knows you're wearing a diaper because it's a very small school. And there was probably, if I remember correctly, a group on it shaming this poor girl. To this day, I will make sure that I schedule in bathroom stops. If I'm traveling somewhere, I always make sure I use the bathroom before I leave my house. It's something that stayed with me for a really long time. We would have to clean our cabins every day. White glove type inspections. Everybody had a chore and they rotated. Cleaning toilets, cleaning showers, vacuuming, dusting. Of course you had to make your own bed. Part of our chores were pretty normal. There was some tending to the horses, carrying buckets of water during the winter to release the ice from the spigots so we could actually carry the water to the horses, scoop the poop, bring the poop down to the horse manure pile. That in and of itself was fairly normal. Where it got to be not normal was anytime they wanted to do something to the school, they wanted to expand, they wanted to build, they wanted to do maintenance, they would find a reason to put us on intervention. They would find one thing that somebody had done. The amount of clear cutting that generations of survivors have done. Acres and acres and acres. We would have to clear cut, made burn piles. I have dug stumps. I have built an entire corral by myself. It was cold outside and I remember having to haul really big posts. And I would have to dig these post holes in this ground that was partially frozen. I had never done any of this before in my life. I just had to figure it out, carry these heavy posts by myself. They had to be 8 to 10ft long and probably 6 inches in diameter. I would have to haul them on my shoulder one at a time and bring them to the area where I was building this corral. I was on solitary intervention for at least three months, Feeling like I had been rejected by my birth parents. And that was obviously a deep core trauma. And then being rejected again by my adoptive parents, the people who were supposed to want me so much. To then be isolated for three months. It was so lonely and heartbreaking. And really assured me that I was a worthless human being. And that took years to get over. At one point, I was tied to another student because we had engaged in sexual behavior. When we woke up every morning, we had to get tied together, do everything together, bathroom breaks together, all of it for a week before we ended up getting tied to buckets. I assume that the reason was because we weren't fighting tooth and nail. And that's what they wanted. They wanted us to get so sick of each other that we turned on each other. I was not able to speak to a single person in the group. I was off talk during that experience. Being tied to somebody. Try being tied to somebody and not being able to speak to them, not being able to communicate them. When you're trying to do manual labor together, like peeling logs with really sharp tools or carrying incredibly heavy logs together, there's teamwork that's involved in that. You have to communicate with that person. And we weren't able to. And that resulted in these heavy things being dropped. I don't remember any staff member actually being around while we were doing this stuff. And when we were working with saws, razor sharp edges to peel the bark off of these trees. It's so incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. We had a three seater outhouse. I was part of the digging crew. We ran into a multitude of rocks and stumps that had to be removed. And of course we had to dig this hole like six feet down. Kind of like a grave, but for your poop. After we did that, they constructed a three seater outhouse. If you had to use the bathroom on Intervention and somebody else had to go at the same time, you had to sit basically right next to them or with one toilet apart. There were no dividers. There was nothing like that. You just had to poop and pee right in front of your classmates. That is absolutely mortifying. It does feel very prison. I've been to jail before. At least there was a half wall between the toilet area and where the other inmates were. Even in jail, there was more privacy. I remember them normalizing this labor when there were parents visiting by having the parents participate. So there are pictures somewhere of my dad and I holding paintbrushes, painting the log cabins. At this school. We used to have to Murphy's oil the log cabin walls for the ones that were like the natural ones, which is the lounge, which is where we had our groups.
- [28:07]
A
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- [29:16]
B
We did our groups every single night in the lounge, sitting on the carpet. Oftentimes there would be one focus of each group. More often than not, it was meant to be on a specific person and their issues. If there was not anything that was happening now, they would just dig into their story and their life. We were encouraged to what they called it was hold up a mirror to shame them by quote unquote holding them accountable. That's what we were told we were doing. But what we were really doing was cutting them down and shaming them. To have every single peer in in that room attacking you and telling you what a horrible person you are, you're broken and that you're damaged. And then at the end of it, and this is the cringiest thing, there would be a group hug. They had absolutely no qualifications and no business running these groups asking us to write lengthy sexual histories and drug histories and family histories telling us that we weren't worth anything, that nobody really loved us, that we had nothing to contribute to society. You get told that enough times, your peers jump on that bandwagon because they didn't want to get in trouble, you start to believe it. We would have these weird processing groups when they would make us all lay on the floor and cry. Lay there, think about what you've done and this horrible person that you have become and then process your emotions about that. And some would be screaming and sobbing. It was just the weirdest thing to just group cry. I never was able to do it. One time we went on this three day biking and camping trip in the Rocky Mountain front. I remember us all piling into vans and loading up the trailer with all the bicycles and all of our camping gear. It was supposed to be a fun thing granted, riding 2830 miles a day is not really super fun, especially when a lot of times you're summiting a mountain. But it was something that we actually got excited about because it was a change from the norm. So on the first day, we definitely rode for over 30 miles. And it was direct heat, it was nice weather, but they don't call it big sky for nothing. So lots of direct sun. Once we got to our campsite, I started feeling really sick. I had a horrible sunburn, I had blisters, I had a headache, I was nauseous, I was vomiting. There were still two days left in our trip and we were sleeping in tents with only our sleeping bags. Instead of receiving any medical attention, I was told to just go lay down in my tent for the rest of the night. I have no doubt in my mind that I had sun poisoning and I had to finish the trip in this condition.
- [32:04]
A
Did you ever know of anybody to receive medical attention?
- [32:08]
B
Not to my knowledge, no. Most times we were given some ibuprofen and sent on our way. It was very rare that anybody was taken to the doctor for anything that I can really remember, except for required monitoring of certain medications.
- [32:26]
A
Do you recall speaking with your parents if you ever tried to tell them about the place?
- [32:32]
B
We were allowed to write letters and receive letters, but those communications were monitored going out and coming in. I want to say that we were supposed to have weekly phone calls, but I don't really remember it being more than once a month. Those were monitored calls too, with your assigned therapist. I do remember one time being on the phone with my parents, trying to tell them there was abuse going on and hung up the phone immediately. I don't know if he said there was a technical problem or that I was lying. I'm sure it was made to be my fault. You could not say anything honest to your parents. The friends that I had that I still talk to when they would go on home visits, a lot of them didn't come back because they did get that time with their parents to tell them what was really going on. Some were not as fortunate. Some were made to come back. And I was one of the least fortunate because I never did get a home visit, nor did I ever even get my own therapy group. I was never allowed to talk about why I was there or have any focus be on me because perceived me as arrogant and a know it all. I would put my hand up as wanting to talk because I wanted to try to make progress. I wanted to go home. I wasn't allowed to I never had the opportunity to, quote, unquote, do the work. And because I couldn't do the work then I didn't earn a home visit. But it wasn't for lack of desire. It was that I wasn't allowed to. The new kids would come in and they would get a group and I'd be like, hello, I've been here for like over a year now. We still haven't talked about any of my life. Oh, we just ran out of time. Sorry. One of the things that really sticks with me was that at this school I was forced to say I'm often wrong, but before I spoke. But the truth is, although I can admit being wrong, I don't really like it. So I always went to kind of great lengths to make sure that I'm always fully informed or well researched. So to have to say this was a huge attempted hit to devastate my ego. And my ego's not involved in that at all. We all were highly intelligent, but another issue with that was that the ones that he felt threatened by were the ones who just didn't buy into the bs, challenged him in any way, shape or form. And why? I probably never had a group that was focused on me. He just didn't want to hear or give me the opportunity to speak anything that was going against his programming.
- [34:58]
A
I imagine it felt like rejection over and over, 100%.
- [35:02]
B
I think that a lot of adopted kids actually ended up in these programs. And when I was in these programs, they were so hyper focused on, you're adopted, so you have this fear of abandonment. And I'm like, well, I don't really feel that way. I love my parents. I never had an issue with, with being adopted, you know, at least I didn't think I did.
- [35:22]
A
What do you remember about plotting to escape?
- [35:25]
B
I was able to get off campus periodically with a group that had to go to a psychiatrist and get blood draws because of the medication that I was on. So I would get off campus and I would pay attention to what direction we would go down the road. I was kind of thinking about doing this for a long time, but never was really set in stone until I was on that solo intervention. I spent about a week keeping track of staff movements and then putting that together with my knowledge of where we were generally located based on the drives that we would take off campus. I even was paying attention to weather as much as I could. This is pre cell phone. We didn't have access to radio or to tv. We did not have any interaction with the real world. So I just had to kind of make some assumptions and go off of the things that I had learned and put it into action. I remember going to the kitchen. I had gotten them to agree to allow me to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner because I was out there busting my butt. I went to the kitchen for my normal scheduled peanut butter and jelly. And I was alone in there, and I knew I would be. I packed a bunch of food. I had already packed my bag with all of my stuff. It was the time and it was the day, and I was going. I remember running as hard as I could for as long as I could till I thought that I was probably off of their property. I was able to take a break. It was absolutely beautiful there. But it was really hard to see that beauty when you feel like a caged animal. I felt free in that moment and came across a dirt road. By this point, I had been gone for a few hours. I didn't really know where I was. I just had a general direction that I was walking in. I didn't have a compass even. I had no business doing what I was doing. I remember hearing people calling my name. As it gets closer, I dive into a ditch on the side of the road, and I covered myself with leaves. And I waited until the van had driven by. And I knew it would be coming back. So I got up quickly and I ran as fast as I could and as hard as I could. And I tried to stay away from the road until I lost that road and didn't hear them anymore and didn't see them. That was when I came across just a random camper in the middle of nowhere. I don't know what I told this guy, but I'm sure I lied about my age. He felt bad for me. He knew that I was off on my own, wandering through the woods. But I got really scared. Some kind of instinct in me kicked in. I was in the woods with a stranger, and nobody would hear me if I screamed. So I was like, if you wouldn't mind giving me a ride, that'd be great. So he did. I called my parents, and I was like, yeah, so I am going to choose to go back because it's getting dark and I'm afraid I've made a mistake. My parents then called the school. They had someone from the school pick me up and take me back. I jumped back into everything as normal. But then I got called to the office like, a day or two later, and that's When I was expelled and I was happy about it, I wanted to get the hell out of there. It was a two year program. I had already been there just about two years. I had never had a group, never gone home. So I'm like, I have to get kicked out of here. And I did.
- [38:50]
A
What was your parents response to that?
- [38:52]
B
I don't think they were really surprised, but they were disappointed that yet another program, the one that they thought was going to stick, had failed. And I'm pretty sure they had no idea what to do with me at that point. To my knowledge, this school unexpectedly closed quite some time ago. Luckily, that means that no more young people will be subjected to its abusive programming. However, given the response of the former school head and his legal team, even decades later, we have to live in fear of legal repercussions by simply speaking the truth. This person is still using fear tactics to silence us. It's incredibly egotistical and textbook narcissistic for this person to continue to control the narrative and use the money that he made forcing abusive situations on teenagers to shield and protect him from any liability or admission of wrongdoing. It's truly sad that this person's ego is still so fragile that he has, is and will continue to hide behind his legal team to avoid taking any responsibility for his actions, both directly and indirectly. This time they sent me back to the farm, one of the holding farms. And then they hired a board certified psychologist to come do a full evaluation on me. That probably upset them because the only thing that really came out of that was that I'm not crazy. I'm just really smart and really independent. I had expressed to him how all I wanted was to go to not such an abusive program. I said ultimately I want to go back home, but I guess that's really not an option. So I just want to go to someplace more like Hyde. He accomplished that for me. I got sent to John Dewey Academy. They did manual labor too, but it was more lax. It was a level system. I didn't have any privileges to go off campus really or anything. Not alone. And I wanted those privileges. I actually wanted to move up. I wanted to get through the last years of my high school years and maybe go back home. So I was going to work the program. I had every intention on the night that we were supposed to have my group at that school, something happened. All I know is that we did not get to me during group that night and I promptly ran away the next day because it triggered that two years that I never was allowed to talk about what was going on with me. I got on a Greyhound bus and I went back to New York. I ended up going back to John Dewey for a little bit, maybe a day or two. But because I had run away, they put me on isolation and they forced me to sleep on the stage. The school was in a castle, I shit you not, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. There is absolutely no way that this castle wasn't haunted. I would hear things, I would see things, and I would sense things. I sat up all night, I didn't sleep a wink waiting for the Greyhound station to open so I could pack my and get on that bus and go back to New York. And this time I was not going to get found.
- [41:57]
A
You've been in these programs for how long at this point?
- [42:00]
B
Since 14 to 3 years. I took the bus back to New York City and I connected with my friend whose parents owned a brownstone in the NoHo East Village area. They owned all the floors of it and the fourth floor was her dad's office. But he only had the office in the front of the unit. So they did allow me to live there in the back. I had my own room, my own bathroom, I had a kitchen. I had everything I needed. I got a job, I met a girl and we started dating. And then I started staying with her in her dorm room. She had to leave the dorm. I realized I have nowhere to live. My job doesn't pay me nearly enough money to get my own place. And I am 17 years old. So I did what I never wanted to do and I called my parents and I said, okay, let's find me another place to go. But as it would turn out, no school in the United States at this point would take me because I was labeled a high run risk and rightly so. And that was what landed me in a po Western Samoa, where I went to the last program.
- [43:06]
A
What was the program in Western Samoa like? Was it considered a lockdown facility?
- [43:12]
B
I would definitely put that in air quotes. Lockdown because we were on a compound. They had two campuses in Western Samoa and I ended up on the co ed campus. There were no fences, there was no barbed wire. There was a stone wall that was very short, but it was a lockdown. You were literally on a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific. Like, where are you going? It was a level system. There was a lot of physical abuse, there was a lot of sexual abuse. We didn't really have groups. It wasn't like the therapy angle. It was just these are a Bunch of bad kids. Let's stick them on an island type situation. I went there the summer of my 17th year, so I wasn't there for that long, about six months. On my 18th birthday, I demanded my passport from the person who was in charge of the campus. She was so mean. She called one of the owners, and one of the owners came out to talk to me. He was like, no, no. Your parents signed your rights away. You're actually a citizen of Samoa. You can't leave until you're 24. I was like, I am a U.S. citizen. There is no way that I am a citizen of Samoa. If you do not give me my passport today, I will sue you. And he did. And then he asked me to please not tell anybody that they would address it. So the first thing I did when I walked away from that meeting with him was I went up to where everybody was and I said, if you're 18, demand your passport. We're getting out of here. He was unhappy with me, to say the least.
- [44:42]
A
How many kids were there?
- [44:43]
B
Over 18, I want to say there were at least four of us, and we all left together. There was a counselor there who was half Samoan and half American. Most of the other counselors that were in charge, they were Americans that were living there because this was their job. She really felt for us kids. She really saw that there was stuff that wasn't right. When we all demanded our passports, we knew we didn't have anywhere to go. And she actually brought us all to her house and we stayed the night there. I had talked to my parents. They said that they would fly me to Hawaii, and that was it. And I'm like, so you're going to still strand me on an island, but it's the United States. They refused to fly me past Hawaii. And I was like, well, that's not going to work. So I went to the American Embassy and I spoke to the ambassador. I told him my whole story. I told him everything that had happened to me. He sat with me for a long time and just listened. And at the end of it, he was like, let's get you back on the mainland at least. He said, I can fly you as far as the West Coast. Do you know anybody out there? Do you have anywhere to go? The girl I was dating when I was 17, the one that was going to the summer program at nyu, she actually during the year, went to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. I got in touch with her and told her what was going on. Told her I had been in Samoa and that I was still there and asked if I could stay with her. She was living in the dorm and she was like, yeah, come on. So. So I got on a plane. I actually was with two journalists. They were there to do a story on Samoa. They happened to be on my flight. They took me under their wing and we had a layover in Hawaii. So I, like spent time with them at a hotel bar and walked around Hawaii a little bit. At one point, I had no shoes on. I don't know why, but I was free. I went to a mall and I got hair dye and then got back on the plane, flew in to Phoenix. I got on a bus from Phoenix to Flagstaff and met up with the girl that I had been dating in New York. She saved my life twice, basically. She was kind enough to let me crash with her. Then I met somebody else and then I was in a dorm with her. And then I did eventually get my own place, got a couple jobs, got some subsidized housing, got on food stamps. You know, I was 18, I had nothing. Ended up taking my GED and started communicating with my parents. They eventually actually allowed me to enroll in school and I started in community College, got a 4.0. I transferred over to the university. I did what I was supposed to be doing that whole time. And I remember saying to them, I was like, I told you I could do it. I just needed you to let me do it on my own. It took me until I was 32 years old to get my life together. And that right there is the real impact of these programs. You make bad decisions because no healing has been done. It was a very conscious goal. I wanted to forget. I wanted to not think about this anymore. I felt like such a worthless human being. I felt like a failure. I felt like I had failed my family. And it wasn't that I wasn't trying to better myself. I was just never provided the opportunity. Of course, when I left, I threw things away. I threw away opportunities. It took me years to get off methamphetamines. And the only reason I did it was because I just needed to escape from all of the pain, all of the trauma and all of the self hatred talk that was so ingrained in me now because of being told for years that I was really nothing.
- [48:28]
A
Well, you really are something.
- [48:30]
B
Thank you.
- [48:31]
A
And every single Survivor I've spoken with this season, they've all been incredible human beings. And the fact that these adults tried so hard to break so many kids spirits that ultimately rose above it is extremely Impressive, because it's a miracle that people just survive these institutions honestly. And it's not surprising, given what everybody's gone through, that the rates of suicide or addiction are so high in survivors of these programs. How could you not need to numb after something like this on top of whatever else you were going through before you even got there? I'm curious if you were ever able to really share with your parents and get support from them in regards to what you went through in the programs.
- [49:23]
B
Yes and no. My dad was a lot more apologetic than my mom, and I think that's because I really ruined that relationship with her with the physical abuse and the continual disappointment and not doing the programs, not doing the work. As a parent, she probably saw things from a much different perspective. I remember sitting down with both them, them one night because I finally made it home. I wasn't there to live, but I was there to visit. I sat down with them at dinner and I said, when I told you that tried to rape me, that was true. You guys didn't believe me. And they were both like, oh, my God, we are so sorry. I told them all of the hard labor that we were forced to do, all of the emotional abuse and attack therapy, and then the weird hugging and the crying groups. My dad cried when I told him all of this. My mom was very stoic. But my dad did apologize. And I think that the guilt of that experience for him was what caused him to support me financially for way longer than he should have. I think he was trying to kind of make up for it in the way that he could. And he had money, and I needed bills paid.
- [50:35]
A
I know your parents are now passed. I'm so sorry for your losses. What has being involved in the support groups with the other survivors meant to you?
- [50:45]
B
It's so validating, especially because we didn't have technology back then, and we all lost touch for so, so long to be able to reconnect as fully functioning adults. Now there's nobody telling us there's anything wrong with us. There's nobody beating us down. We survived to be able to connect with them and share stories. It's not only, like, sentimental and nostalgic to a degree, because I did forge really good relationships. But to be able to connect and have the trauma validated, it is unlikely that you would just run into somebody who has been in the TTI and understands any of what you're talking about. Incredibly validating, incredibly supportive. It means everything to me that we have this shared experience and to not feel alone.
- [51:35]
A
Thank you so much for being willing to share with us. I just really appreciate your honesty about your journey. I also really appreciate all of the support that you've offered to others by being a part of the group and continuing to show up for survivors the way that you can.
- [51:52]
B
It's hard, but it's really valuable because not everybody did make it. So we really have to stick together.
- [52:03]
A
Next time on Something Was Wrong, they would basically try to use fear tactics to manipulate the parents into sending them to another program.
- [52:15]
B
The sales pitch is, okay, it's going to be 25,000 plus this and that. And you're like, whoa. And they can tell in your voice. And they go, well, what's more important? You, your money or your child's life? Because that's what's at stake.
- [52:35]
A
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. Team Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager Sarah Stewart, our 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, resources. Thank you so much for your support. Until next time, stay safe, friends.