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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Tiffany Reiss
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.
- [01:44]
Max (Survivor)
When I got to Mount Bachelor, it was fully daytime and by the time the staff had assigned me to two students to show me around campus, it would take me to like the dorm that I was staying in. It was dinner time. The way that the campus was set up is that there's a lower level and an upper level because it's built into a hillside. The program itself is literally in the middle of the Ochako National Forest. When you go from the intake office, there's three sets of like very large stairs. You go up the stairs and then if you go to the right there's like a gym facility. And then when you go to the left, there's the dining hall, the lodge. That's where you did all your meetings every day. Then there was the atrium, a bathroom, and what we called the old gym, all in that same building. And that building had like a huge deck that overlooked the forest. It was very pretty there. They had a swimming pool that they would fill in in the summer and like drain in the winter. Also in a different area there were like classrooms in that lower level area. They had a large lake on campus. You could not swim in it. It was disgusting. The dorms were split by the lake, so you would walk probably a good quarter or half mile until you hit your dorms. The Boys dorms and the girls dorms were separate and there would be four to five people per dorm. The two people who were in charge of showing me around took me through all that. And then they took me to the dorm that I was staying in to let me shower. That was one of the first things they let me do. I remember from the first shower vividly. Even now, watching all of the dirt come off me. The water was dark, murky brown. I think I washed my hair like two or three times and I think I scrubbed my body four or five. And even then I was still dirty. The dirt really gets into your skin and it packs in there. If I remember correctly, they gave me like sheets with information on it. I remember reading all these rules about what you could and couldn't do in terms of personal appearance. You weren't allowed to have anything branded. I was very, very upset with the lack of individuality. And it was very obvious to me, even at that point that those rules weren't about safety. They were about stripping you of your identity and control. The kids were sorted out into groups by time of arrival and you would be in different, what were called peer groups. I was in Peer Group 68. Each peer group had a pre assigned graduation date. I came in and my graduation date was going to be in December of the next year. What's wild is that the staff members, both mentors and teachers would be bussed in every day. The closest town, I think was 40 miles away. There were night stuff. There was only maybe three people who were on campus overnight. But they had us so controlled that nobody would have ever tried anything. There was a school nurse who was on site and I think that she would be the one who would divvy out the meds. But there were students who did not have access to their meds, sometimes for weeks. I remember being really disappointed with the level of education because it was stuff that I had learned in fourth, fifth, sixth grade being repeated. Because the schooling felt very simple for me, they started to let me do independent studies, which is how I accumulated a higher number of high school credits than I would have normally. There was one man who was a psychiatrist able to actually diagnose kids. I met with him, I think within the first week or so of me being there. He diagnosed me with anxiety and depression. I remember having to write this thing called a cleanup list. And that was something that was used throughout the program. The cleanup list went over any possible indiscretions you could have ever had in your life. Lying, stealing, cheating, sex. They made you Disclose rape and sexual assault also. That wasn't something that had happened to me at that time. So it didn't really register to me how disgusting that is to make somebody do or disclose. Especially if there were like issues with incest or anything like that. They made you say who, what, when and where these things occurred. Everything but the why, because that did not matter. You did it and that was wrong. They made you read this list to your parents. With your mentor there, you would have a cleanup phone call. And the reason that they said that they did this was that so all of your indiscretions had been laid bare. You now had a honest foundation to continue your work from. I had to tell my parents that I had had sex at 13. Raised Catholic, lots of shame around sex. It's very uncomfortable. Your parents also had to make a list of what they thought that you did and then they would compare the two. It really made me realize there was no point in this other than to like humiliate shame and force these kids into self disclosure that was non consensual. About every three months, each peer group would go through these different processes together called life steps, which were shrouded in secrecy. And you weren't supposed to tell anyone about anything that you experienced. And you had to do all these predetermined assignments. These were done in a place called the lifestep room, which was completely isolated from campus. There were no windows, no clocks. You just had to be in there for whatever period of time this lifestep was going to run. It was very rare that you would go outside. There would usually be two to three staff facilitators and like two student facilitators. You were encouraged as a student to like participate and facilitate as a student facilitator in the lifesteps. I don't know that that was a requirement of the program, but it was very heavily encouraged. It would really show that you have accepted what the program is teaching you. The way that it would be set up for all of these life steps is that you would either be in a circle facing each other or you would be in a horseshoe. And whoever was being evaluated would be at the front. Even to this day, like those configurations I can't really sit in because this is where the attack therapy really started to come in was in these life steps. That's a perfect place to do that because the only people who are witnessing it are the students who are experiencing it. The staff members were referred to as mentors. You had a pre assigned mentor and if that mentor decided that you had more work to do in a specific life step, you had to what they called re audit it so you would have to do it again. They could also do that if they decided that the work that you put into it wasn't satisfactory for them. If you decided that you didn't want to do that, they called it refusing. If you refused to participate, you would be quote unquote dropped to the peer group below you, meaning that you would graduate three to four months later. If you kept refusing to a certain amount, you would be punished with something called a self study where your mentor would make writing assignments that you had to do that correlated with whatever the infraction was. Self study is a program designed just for you. It's a time for you to look closely within yourself to feel whatever feelings you need to feel, ask yourself questions and seek answers. If you want to make constructive changes in your life, it will take time and determination. During this self time, you will be guided, but it's your decision to go for broke. You are to take your self study journal with you everywhere you go. Meetings, work projects, group class, and all meals. Your journal must be with you. Without your journal, you may not move forward on your self study. Do not forget your journal. Rule number one. When you get on a self study, you lose all privileges. No singing, smiling, laughing or other distractions at all. Number two. You will work on work projects, which is physical labor, until your mentor tells you otherwise. While working on projects, you are to work as hard as physically Abel and you are on bands with all other students during your work project. On weekdays you are to meet at the tool shed at 9am and on Sundays you are to meet there at 8am you may not leave your work project site except to use the restroom or get water. What were you doing at the work site? Whatever they decided. One kid had to do a relay race with boulders so he would have to carry a boulder up a hill, drop that one, pick up another one, go down the hill, drop that one, pick up another one, go up the hill in circles until they told you you're done. Sometimes you would shovel for hours. It was like whatever work they needed done around the campus that they didn't want somebody to pay for you to do. And if they didn't have any work for you to do, they make up some asinine bullshit and sometimes would also give you physical punishments. You basically were isolated away from the rest of the kids when there was any free time. What's an example of something that someone would have done to Go on one of those. I got on two. One of them was for kissing this guy. And I wrote about it and I reread it, and it was like, that was the first time I've ever experienced a bad kisser. It wasn't even worth it. And then the other one was for cutting my own hair because there was this woman who was a alleged cosmetologist in school who would jack up everybody's hair. And I was like, I'm not letting that bitch touch my hair. So I cut my own hair. Some staff member was like, your hair looks shorter. Did you cut it? There's no plausible deniability here. So I was just like, yeah. And then this staff member snitched and told my mentor, who was like, this is the most bullshit thing I've ever heard. This person should not get in trouble for cutting their hair. She gave me the gentlest assignments for, like, three days.
- [12:32]
Tiffany Reiss
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- [13:56]
Max (Survivor)
As you're moving through these life steps, you also move from one phase to a next. Each of them was a little bit different. The first one that you did was called the Bridge, and the purpose of that one was to start you off on your journey. And because they didn't really know that much about you yet, they just kind of would go with really obvious, easy stuff. I think that personally, I also got very lucky in this life step. It was all based around, like, how judgmental I was and how judgmental I was of myself, which, it's true, I had a lot of negative worldviews and a lot of judgments about things at that time. The assignment was write out all of the reasons that you judge everyone in your peer group and then write out all of the things that you judge about yourself. So I had to like, stand and face each member of my peer group who I was supposed to be bonding with. And they made me tell them, like, well, I think that you're a people pleaser, or I think that you're fake. I think that you lie to get attention. At the very end, I had to read all of the things that I judged about myself. That is very much the entire program. This is a bad thing. We're going to make you do it. During phase two, I had a mentor who was actually really helpful in terms of having my family and I do work together. I felt, at least on my end, that she actually held both of my parents accountable to what their work was supposed to be and would actively challenge them even when I was in the room with her, which was not something that other staff members did. She was also extremely kind and compassionate towards me. We actually have like a long standing friendship to this day. She was a blessing within the system. There in the middle of phase two, you did a life step called Forever Young, which was basically a forced age regression under the guise of inner child work. They had a whole list of assignments that you had to do. For me, the worst ones were the five best memories and the five worst memories of your childhood. When I'm like going through these assignments and looking at them again, they're the hardest to read because they remind me of the worst parts of my childhood. Even in remembering the best memories, those are painful because they're like tainted. Through this lens, I don't really remember much of what happened in that lifestep and I did it twice, so I had to re audit it. They wanted me to do one for my mom and one for my dad because they thought I had so much work split between the parents and because they were divorcing. So they dedicated one to either one of them. The things that I do remember and why I say it was like forced age regression is that they would have us use baby talk. We listened to like Sesame street songs while we did childlike activities. And then they gave us a cozy blanket and then they read Us, the velveteen Rabbit to fall asleep.
- [17:18]
Tiffany Reiss
Was this conducted by therapists?
- [17:20]
Max (Survivor)
No. Staff and students. Somewhere in between. Forever young. My whole group went on a camping trip with two staff members. They drove us to the middle of the woods. It was the middle of winter, so there was snow on the ground, and it was literally freezing. We got lost in the woods. They did not know how to read the map. I, like, overheard them saying they didn't know where we were going. I think we were only supposed to be out there for, like, three days, and I think we were gone for five or six by maybe the second day. Our laces were wet. Our boots were wet. We would wake up with them frozen. So we had to thaw our boots and our socks by the fire in the morning. Eventually, we ran out of food and we ran out of water. We were boiling snow over a flame to make water. The Forest Service actually had to come rescue us. We did not know that this was occurring. They came by on their ATVs. Most of the students were so thankful that they just took off running after the ATVs. Like, please save us. They never told the parents about this, but somehow the local news reported it. And I didn't know that those Forest Service folks had been sent specifically on, like, a mission to find us.
- [18:40]
Tiffany Reiss
That's how much they hid everything from you guys.
- [18:42]
Max (Survivor)
Yeah. Phase three was called the Promise, and.
- [18:48]
Tiffany Reiss
You had to go on total bans leading up to it.
- [18:51]
Max (Survivor)
Yeah. So if you're on total bans, that means you're not allowed to speak, look at, communicate with anybody except for staff. Personalized bans for the Promise were determined by your mentor at the time. It was like, whatever staff saw as your biggest problems, they would hone in on that, and they would put you on bands with whatever that was. And that could be an activity, a way of dressing a specific person. Part of the Promise preparation was that you had to memorize this song. They also forced you to learn how to pat your head, rub your stomach, and kick your feet in alternating succession at the same time. While you were singing this song, you were forced to, like, do drills of this on campus at whim. So any staff member could basically be like, show me. They called them Watuzis. And your entire peer group had to stop whatever they were doing and, like, do that. That would also happen throughout the life step. What was the point of this public humiliation? I'm certain of it. If you think about it, you're coaxing someone into doing something without them knowing where the end is. That is one of the prime examples of their insidious methods of power and control. Brainwashing, essentially, because you introduce this small thing and you just guide them closer and closer and closer to the ultimate thing that they want you to do, that you don't know what you're leading towards. Also during this one, they took you on a trip to Portland, which you didn't know you were going to be going on. They basically, like, woke you up one morning and were like, all right, get in the van. We're going somewhere. And then along the way, they were telling you, we're going to Portland. This is what we're going to be doing. What I remember the most was that they made us write out a guess of how much our parents owned, basically how much wealth, assets we had. They took us to a soup kitchen, and they were like, these people have nothing. You should be thankful for what you have. And then they had us take a walking tour of a rehab and detox facility and would tell us everything that happened to you as you withdrew from the different drugs. At this point, I would have been one month into being 15. The detox center was pretty impactful for me, I think, because there's so much addiction in my family that it was already very close to home. But all it made me, I think, consider was, if I don't want that, how can I still do what I want without having the worst case scenario occur? One of the places we stopped was Pioneer Square. They made us all get out of the van, get into the middle of Pioneer Square, do the Watusies and sing our song, and then get back in the van. They had given us assignments to go interview people who were in Pioneer Square. We had to go talk to eight different people, ask them a preset number of questions, and then come back and, like, report what we had found. There was one guy in a business suit who was super nice to me. And then there was one really punk kid who I talked to. I was like, oh, my God, one of me. It was just so refreshing to see, like, an alternative person. I have the assignment sheet.
- [22:10]
Tiffany Reiss
Pioneer Square interviewing Eight people today. Two people you see in your image.
- [22:15]
Max (Survivor)
So I guess that was your punk guy.
- [22:17]
Tiffany Reiss
Two people that are different from you. Two people you can see that have a purpose. Two people that represent a powerful man or woman.
- [22:25]
Max (Survivor)
Ask them the following questions.
- [22:27]
Tiffany Reiss
What does a promise mean to you? Does promise have to do with the.
- [22:31]
Max (Survivor)
Fulfillment of your dreams? Who is your role model and why?
- [22:36]
Tiffany Reiss
What is your dream? What do you do to live it?
- [22:39]
Max (Survivor)
What have your struggles been in life?
- [22:41]
Tiffany Reiss
How do you view youth in society from talking with me for this short time? Do you have any observations of me to share?
- [22:51]
Max (Survivor)
Yeah. So for the folks listening, this is a 120 page college ruled notebook. And the entire thing is full of writing. And that was our assignments. They were, like, obsessed with do your work, be accountable to your work. Number four was called Venture. This and the bridge. The first one were the worst. I remember the goal of this one was to bring to light and conquer your work that would inevitably arise when you went home. Venture had these archetypes that they would use. I was Cinderella because I was always cleaning up everybody's messes. So obviously I'm dirty. I needed to look like Cinderella, who in the movie was filthy compared to her stepsisters. My task as Cinderella was to find an outfit with all white clothing, which was extremely challenging for me because all of my clothes were, like, black. And I had to run around the campus, find any mud that I could find, and make myself as filthy as possible. Mud on my clothes, face, and my hair, my skin caked in mud. I will say running around campus and covering myself in mud was really fun. I enjoyed that very much. The symbolism did not really hit me. They gave you some time to do whatever you were supposed to do to prep for your role. And then you would go back up to the lifestep room and you would be in that role for the rest of the lifestep. So I had to clean up everything in the lifestep room. I was not allowed to sit in a circle. I had to sit outside of the circle. I had to have a broom in hand at all times. And I could not speak. Kids were also encouraged to, like, leave their trash around. So I had to come pick up after them. It's not something you want to be included in, but then you're excluded and you're like, how am I on the outside of all of this? They would also sometimes just tell me to start sweeping. So I'd literally just be standing there, broom in hand, off in a corner, sweeping. Nothing while I'm dressed like this. There was a young woman who was a student who told me that I would never achieve my dream of working with bands because I would be too busy cleaning up condoms outside of their tour buses. This shattered me deeply. That was a prime example of students being encouraged to participate. It was unnecessarily cruel. They literally would tell you over and over again, we're breaking you down to build you up. What's kind of implied in that also is that we're building you back up to be better than you were. Was there any building up? Very little. The way that they did it was really fucked up in some way. It was maybe two or three hours at the end of every life step or at the end of the big activities where they would infuse this positivity back into it. What was number five? It was called La Mancha. It was framed as the nice life step because this is when we took our trip to Eastern Europe. We went with the peer group above us. In my opinion, this was their like last ditch effort to try to get you dropped because it was basically a test of how you were going to behave with independence. It was a very expensive trip. I remember that my dad already had to ask his parents for money to send me on the trip because he was so broke. And the school kept telling me, your dad can't afford it. We don't know if you're going to go. I was very like wigged out about the financial situation, which has not my responsibility. They would give you a packing list and you would go through everything with a staff member and they would make sure that you had all that stuff. If you didn't have all that stuff, you would get in trouble. And I didn't have enough clothes to like meet the requirements for this packing list. I didn't want to say anything about that because again, I knew my dad didn't have any money, so where is the money for clothes going to come from? But at the same time, I really did not want to get in trouble for that. I ended up having like a mini breakdown about it and telling my mentor at the time and he asked my dad to send money. And so my dad did end up sending the money for the clothes. It reminds me how little I had. Even though from the outside it looked like there was a lot of money going into this. My clothes were falling apart and at the same time I'm surrounded by this school who is profiting off of me. We took our trip to Eastern Europe. The first place we landed in was Romania. And we drove out to this village and we volunteered at an orphanage. We just stayed in little like host houses in the village, which was actually illuminating in a lot of ways because this village was based on a bartering system and it was all like dirt roads and horse drawn carriages still. So the host family that we stayed with had turkeys, chickens and like a few other animals in the backyard during this time was when most people who went to the program who were vegetarian or vegan Would end up breaking that dietary habit because you had bread, jam and soup that was all you would be able to eat during that time. The staff and the students would be like, almost gleefully excited, like, are you going to break? Are you going to eat meat? We went to Krakow, Poland. They took us to Auschwitz in Birkenau. They had us study the Holocaust for months before we went there. Each person from the peer group had to do, like, a specific report on someone. I had to do a long form report on Josef Mengele, who was referred to as the angel of death in Auschwitz and Birkenau. He was the doctor who did all the, like, fucked up experiments. We went through where they have all the piles of hair and the piles of ships shoes, and we went through the barracks and where they kept the prisoners. And we even went through the actual gas chamber that they used. And they played the, like, recording overhead in my head. I'm just really scared. I thought that we were gonna die. Society is already trying to get rid of us. The program doesn't even want us really here. Who's to say that they're not actually gonna just murder us all? I had a panic attack in the room, but, like, nobody cared. You just had to do it. Then we spent some time in Hungary. How long was the trip? It was about two weeks. It was very nice for me to not be on campus, despite all the, like, fucked up shit that we had to do. Then again, we have teenagers running around Eastern Europe unsupervised. A lot of students misbehave on this one and they get dropped, which makes a lot of sense because that's truly your first taste of freedom unsupervised. I learned you can't trust anybody because inevitably one person will cave. And if that one person caves, everybody goes down with you. That was also how I learned to, like, really not trust anybody with your deepest, darkest stuff because someone would rat you out. We all kind of had an understanding that we were trying to survive. It wasn't personal. And I tried, at least on my end, to mitigate that as much as possible. If I have to attack somebody in order to, like, get through this program, let me make it as minimal as possible where it's acceptable to a staff member, but is hopefully causing as little harm to this person as I possibly can.
- [30:17]
Tiffany Reiss
Would you say that the workshops were the hardest part about being at Mountain Bachelor?
- [30:22]
Max (Survivor)
They were the things that I blocked out the most. So most likely the entire environment was really challenging, at least for me. I was always trying to figure out. How do I present as if I am giving them what they want while also not entirely losing my sense of self. And that kind of interaction, I think was frankly the hardest part for me. Outside of the life steps, experiencing a high level of trauma at that point interrupts your development. So for me it felt so crucial to like hold on to my identity. That's not something that you can talk about with anybody because you were encouraged to essentially like, snitch on other students. So if this was something that I was talking about actively, they would have taken that and used it as ammo to try to crush that.
- [31:22]
Tiffany Reiss
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- [32:37]
Did your parents come and visit you?
- [32:39]
Max (Survivor)
You had to earn the privilege of your parents coming to visit you. I'm sure my dad visited me. I don't really remember that. I know that my mom and one of my aunts came a couple times. I remember seeing my brothers and my sister at least once. It didn't make a lot of sense because they had to come all the way from California and they weren't allowed to stay on campus. You're gonna drive or fly? Stay in a hotel? Not really. Get to see your kid and then go home.
- [33:11]
Tiffany Reiss
When Max was at Mount Bachelor, were you able to talk to them more frequently?
- [33:17]
Max's Dad
Yeah, she had given up. She's just like monotone sometimes, like, hi dad. She was not like her bubbly, goofy self, but it was more frequent and they had assignments where they had to write and apologize for Whatever perceived wrongs or tell you how much better they were looking back on it was just a bunch of crap. They tried to make it sound like they were really making great strides. And then if she did X amount of activities and passed them, then she got more phone calls. Or I could come up and see her for a day.
- [33:54]
Tiffany Reiss
And when you would see Max for those short periods, could you sense in the moment that something was sort of off with them or was it hard to tell because of the space?
- [34:04]
Max's Dad
It was kind of hard to tell, but I could tell she wasn't happy. If she would tell me anything that didn't sound good and I would go talk to the Mount Bachelor people, they would say, oh, that didn't happen. Don't listen to them when they tell you that.
- [34:20]
Tiffany Reiss
Did you know your exit date at Mount Bachelor?
- [34:22]
Max (Survivor)
They would give you your graduation date. So like I was basically just xing days off a calendar waiting. The graduation was held in like this big school auditorium and it made it seem like this really great celebration. And each student had to like pick a song from a pre existing list that would play when you walked up. And it was supposed to kind of embody your experience at Mount Bachelor. This makes me like cringe down to my core because I really cannot stand this man. But I chose the song Daughters by John Mayer. They would play your song and then you would go up and you would give your speech about what the program meant to you and what you learned and how it impacted you and how you're going to be different. Something that almost everybody said in their speeches. They would say, I'll see you on the outs, like I'll see you on the outside. The staff would also tell you if you try to say anything snarky or use your speech as like a fuck you to the program, you will be dropped. They reminded you you are not out of this program until you are walking out of these doors with your parents. So they held this over your head till like the very, very end. Also, as part of graduation, you had to develop a plan on your own and get it approved by staff. It was called the After MBA Parent Student Contract Rules and Expectations. It's like home rules and consequences, Weekly meetings or phone calls, future plans, financial agreements, other rules, lists of supports, consequences for broken rules. What I find very funny is that on mine it has a signature spot for the parents and the students, but nobody signed it. I'm not quite sure what the point of this is. I think they gave it to us as like a packet to work on at Some point. And then maybe just never followed up with it because the post graduation stuff was super lax. Mountbachelor would make you box up all your stuff and then they would make your parents pay for shipping all the way to wherever you lived. So my dad had to pay to ship all of my boxes. At that point I didn't know where I was gonna go next. Cause I didn't wanna go back to my dad's place. So my aunt, who's my mom's brother's wife, offered to take me in. And they lived in Bend. So my dad agreed to that. I think I went back down to Davis for like a month or two and then ended up going back up to Bend. I didn't receive any like emotional support after I left the program. My mom had said she had a very serious conversation with my aunt and uncle and was basically like, this is not going to go as easily as you think it's going to. And it wasn't to be like, my kid's fucked up. It was to be like, you need to know what you're getting yourself into. And they very sweetly and naively just went ahead with it. My aunt was very warm and welcoming. But everything was worse once I graduated. Personal issues, behavioral problems, my relationship with my family, Any type of worldviews that I had, self views, so on and so forth. You're in this highly controlled environment that's super traumatizing. And then you're just spat back out into like what we referred to as the real world. And you don't have any emotional or social or psychological support. And society's also like essentially been withheld from you. That's something other survivors have mentioned a lot. Very much so. So this is when you start seeing addiction problems actually worse than they were before. They would tell us you're going back into the same environment. So you have to be prepared for like these triggers or you have to be prepared to like put these boundaries down. So they were also creating this idea that if you yourself were not capable of doing these things, it's somehow a personal failure. Which also I think exacerbates the need to use and it perpetuates this problem on and on and on. After I got kicked out of my aunt and uncle's house, which is just a long story in and of itself. My uncle tried to send me away to another program, but he couldn't because he didn't have any custody of me. So the judge basically laughed him out of the courtroom. Because I was a minor, I got linked in With a social worker, a lawyer, an advocate. And they developed a plan for me to go back to Mount Bachelor while my dad figured out what to do. And so I opted into that decision because it was either that or go back to Davis. Of those two choices, the program was actually better. And this is when I started seeing DHS on campus. They came out there a few times. There was a school nurse, she was the whistleblower who got that place shut down. She reported it to dhs. In the last couple months, there were all these whispers about DHS and, like, the facility being investigated. The program staff would identify people who were very, like, compliant, such as myself, and they would ask them, hey, can you be a representative for the school? And they would coach you on what to say and what not to say. You were basically an ambassador for the program. Officers would sit down with you somewhere separate from everybody else. Staff were not allowed to be around them, which I'm sure is why they coached you. Mount Bachelor was shut down in December of 2009. What ended up happening was that this program offered to take me in as a unhoused youth. Essentially, it was a transitional youth facility is what they called it. This would have been in summer of 2009.
- [40:03]
Yeah, my social worker, she was an absolute godsend, as was everybody else there. They were, like, incredible support systems. Even when we would get in trouble, they would advocate for us to go through educational programs rather than sending us through the court system. They were very well connected with all of the other agencies within the area because they were actual social workers. They were instrumental in getting me back onto this course. Because you were not allowed to use while you were there. And I was like, well, I really want to stay here. And so because of that, I understand that I need to do this. It was not a forced decision as it was in the programs. I did relapse multiple times, and they were always very understanding. They helped me with substance abuse, getting driver's license. They helped me graduate high school early by, like, working with the student counselor who was there. They walked me through the fafsa. They helped me enroll in the Paul Mitchell cosmetology school down here. So they basically set my life off in that course. And then it was once I got to San Francisco that things started to get a little dicey again because I was 17, on my own, and trying to numb out everything that happened. When the school shut down, there was a big email going around about, like, getting on the lawsuit, and I was telling my dad, like, hey, I really want to get in on this lawsuit. He was basically telling me like, that's bullshit. Why would you do that? I remember trying to tell my dad. He said that it was for my own good, that if I hadn't gone there, I would have turned out like my mother. That it was the only thing that he could do because I was so out of control. I was like, that is not at all true. This is not something that I can even discuss with him. So it was this big silent thing that existed in our relationship for a very long time. I had come to the understanding that I would maybe never get an apology. He would maybe never see the impact that it had on me. I was so close with my dad and wanted that relationship so much that it was more valuable to me to kind of accept that and to try to have like a surface level relationship with him than it was to completely disengage and face the fact that I was essentially losing that relationship entirely. That was too much for me to bear. On top of everything else, it may have been made easier by the fact that I wasn't living in his house anymore. I wasn't like having to look him in the face knowing what had happened to me and having him tell me those things repeatedly. I was processing that on my own. Why was I sent away? And trying to not only look at it from my perspective, but if I was in my dad's shoes, what would I have done? I started to see the impossible position that he was in because he bit off more that he could chew. At the same time, I was starting to see that he did that with the best intention of trying to help my sister. And I. I don't know what would have happened if I had stayed within my mom's custody. I was thinking, he's also trying to get me away from this super tumultuous divorce that's happening that he doesn't want me to receive any more damage from. This was the decision that he made. And very unfortunately, it was a decision that fucked me up real bad.
- [43:41]
Tiffany Reiss
What made you ultimately decide to pull Max?
- [43:44]
Max's Dad
She was done with the program. She had gone through all the steps before she graduated. They have a pre graduation one on one meeting with one of the counselors. So I drive up there and I go, okay, well Max is all done. She's ready to go. But we can't tell you that they're not going to drink and use. More than likely they will. Basically you just paid a shitload of money to warehouse your kid because you didn't know what else the fuck to do loser. I mean, that's what it felt like.
- [44:17]
Tiffany Reiss
How much do you think you spent.
- [44:20]
Max (Survivor)
On the program's total?
- [44:22]
Max's Dad
Ironically, I just found some of the records. Sagewalk was about 32,000. Mount Bachelor started at five a month, and then at ended up being 6,800 at the end. And that was for a full 15 months, I believe over 100,000. So I'm like, I can't have her go back. She didn't come home when it was time to go to high school, she enrolled up there.
- [44:48]
Tiffany Reiss
What has your relationship been with Max since?
- [44:52]
Max's Dad
It's been challenging because sometimes I don't know how they really feel. And I'm not super approachable sometimes are they've asked me something, and I've given a flippant answer, not meaning to. And then they've held onto that for two or three years before they ask me about it. It's just delicate sometimes. We both like music a lot, and so I just started taking her to concerts a couple times a month. We'd go to a show, and that was like, our time where everything would be okay. I take her to see, like, old 90s bands, old metal, and then a bunch of new wave bands and then a bunch of modern metal. That helped us a lot because we'd have the time driving there. Like, I hope we get up front, because we'd always go general admission. And it was so fun to have that time together. Music was the one thing. No matter what's going on, we can go spend two or three hours on the floor, either getting knocked around, and everything will be cool. It's a lot better now. But then a lot of times, she also feels like I abandoned her, I'm for sure. So we talk about that.
- [45:57]
Tiffany Reiss
I'm curious today what you would want Max to know about the decision.
- [46:04]
Max's Dad
That I regret it, that I wish I had had some other option thrown at me. I don't want her to think I did it because I don't want you around or that you're too much work. I was truly afraid she was gonna die, and every grownup in my life was telling me to do it.
- [46:26]
Tiffany Reiss
Unfortunately, this season, a lot of the kids that we've spoken to, they're adults now. A lot of them, their parents died before ever apologizing, or they don't speak to their parents anymore, or their parents refused to even acknowledge that this was harmful, or it's parents whose kids have now passed away. And so I'm hoping it will be really healing for people to be able to hear a story about what happens in a family when people do the work, that there can be healing and there can be restoration in these situations. As difficult as it is and as dark as it was, I appreciate so deeply you being willing to speak with me about it and revisit all of this. I'm sure it means a lot to Max to have your support as well.
- [47:21]
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- [48:30]
Max (Survivor)
It took my dad 15 or 16 years to realize the impact of I remember when I got in the car after his mom had died and he was picking me up from the airport. The first thing he said to me was, if there's anything that's unresolved that you need to talk to me about, please do that. I could tell that he was in such a state of grief, so it did not seem like a good time to really be like, dad, you really fucked up my whole life. But it was like, there is some hope here. He's actively seeking this out. So he was kind of primed for when my mom just a couple years ago found an article that I think that I had sent him before detailing the lawsuit, the abuse and the closure of Mount Bachelor. I was at work and my mom called me and then my dad called me and then I think my mom called me and my dad called me again and I was like, what is going on? I finally picked up my dad's call and he was like, your mom just.
- [49:34]
Tiffany Reiss
Sent me this article.
- [49:35]
Max (Survivor)
I'm so sorry. He was frantically apologetic. If I Had known this, I would never have done this. I didn't know this happened. Which I'm like, you weren't able to hear me at the time, but like I told you. And he was like, I don't know that I can ever make this right. What can I do? Please, just tell me what I can do. He is coming to me basically begging, please let me rectify the situation. What I told him is, all I want is an apology and acknowledgment. That's all I need. He basically told me, I am so sorry, and that even now, what is happening in my body is this overwhelming sadness commingled with relief. That was all I wanted for years. And it's so simple to say I'm sorry. The eventual forgiveness process, I think, was also a result of me being in therapy for so long after the programs. He was very actively seeking help as well. The one thing that I'm very thankful for about my family is that everybody did their work in one way or another. Even my mom did her work as well. And without each individual person going through their own process, my family would not have the same structure as it does today. When he said it, I don't quite remember how I felt, other than being like, finally, you see, it's not like we had this big, long conversation about the impact of it on him or it on me. It wasn't this difficult, messy process. It was simple. I think that that was the most profound thing, was how simple it was. It's not that it made it okay. I do still, I'm sure, harbor feelings of resentment. But I also had come to the conclusion that he was trying his best. I'm very privileged in the way that this came to be for myself, I guess, also because I do have this experience of some type of reconciliation with my parents. I wish that I could give my dad to all the kids who were sent away because they were seen as, like, a problem rather than somebody who needed help.
- [52:08]
Tiffany Reiss
What has it meant to you to.
- [52:09]
Max (Survivor)
Have your dad participate in this? I was curious about whether or not he would want to talk about it because he had said that he realized how much of a mistake it was through my mom and through my dad. Both of them have a pretty heavy social justice activist kind of swing about them, so to speak. I knew that he would want to say something about how predatory everything was. My mom, she's been sober for probably close to 10 years now. She and I are also close now. In the conversations we've had around this, have her been, like, really Understanding the impact that she has had and being able to be like, I'm really, really sorry that this happened. Her voice was lost so much in this because she didn't have any say. And I was like, that feels really cruel to exclude her from this. So I basically asked her to write about the impact. She says, thank you for giving me the opportunity to express the impact this has had on my and my family's life. And then she said, that day changed so much for me. The day that a fax was sent to me at the local restaurant saying that my child had been sent to a wilderness camp in Oregon or Utah. She didn't even know where I was. I went into Max's bedroom and cried and yelled out Max's name over and over again. The thought of my child being taken into the wilderness was unbelievable. I was really scared about what they must be going through because they were only 13 years old. I couldn't imagine their sibling hearing the news that Max was going away. You see, both children had been taken suddenly for me and their home just months before because I could not get to a court date. We lived in a remote location. My driver's license was suspended due to a recent dui, and there was no possible way for me to get to court two hours away. As a result, their father gained custody. At this time, all the children had was each other and this unreal shift in their lives. The day came when Max was removed from their home to go to the TTI wilderness camp and boarding school. I had no say in the matter. And now their sister, only 10 years old, was losing their mother, their best friend and ally in this mess, their sibling. I was unable to face what I had done to my children. I wasn't able to continue visit weekends with the younger sister either. As a result of this decision, my heart was yanked from my chest. Indeed, motherhood was yanked from my soul. At the time and for years after, I no longer felt that I deserved that title and identity. There was an incomprehensible emptiness and darkness that filled my life. And the powerness of having no say in the matter was debilitating. I had to watch what was happening to Max without being able to do anything to help them. I could no longer cook in my kitchen, and I could no longer live in our house because of my inability to cope with what they must be going through. I rented the house out, but I couldn't manage anything. So I ended up losing the home. I started using street drugs and ended up in jail. Max's lost teen Years is sad beyond words. We can never get those years back. And it has been so difficult to see how the trauma has affected their ability to cope with the awfulness and cruelty of what happened to them in those programs. The impact of those schools and camps seems devastating to Max's life. I've learned to live without forgiving myself for my part in this woundedness that befell my family. Most everyone tells me I need to forgive myself. I just nod. But the mother in me can't. Those years are gone and we cannot ever get them back. I work daily to live from the present forward, but the scar of this experience remains. Max has a certain spot in our family, but because of their experience in the tti, we're all struggling to piece ourselves together. We have been scattered among the trauma those places have done to us. I only learned recently of the reality of the abuse that is done to teens at these places. I was inconsolable when I read about it. Max has been committed and determined and has had the courage to face this unimaginable part of their life to get well in this way. They have led the way towards our family's healing. Change cannot happen unless one person is willing to step forward and speak up. And that is Max. Full of grit, passion and perseverance and demanding change. Part of the change they have worked so hard for has helped me stay sober over these past 14 years. I love you, Max. Your bravery and dedication to healing shines through.
- [56:51]
Tiffany Reiss
Thank you for sharing.
- [56:52]
Max (Survivor)
Thank you for letting me share. It's a lot. I chose not to read it beforehand. Some of it is hard to hear, but like, she has always had a really hard time forgiving herself, so that doesn't surprise me. And what do you hope for the future? I hope to be happy to continue kind of on this path of processing. This really was something that happened to me and this is something that is continuing to happen and like be perpetrated upon children. I would love to see full exposure of the troubled teen industry. Not just this program closed and can reopen under another name, but of seeing like a system wide change where it's acknowledged how troubling these things are. And the whole industry has to shudder from political and societal pressure. All of that really negative internalized self talk that is super prevalent throughout survivors, at least for me. It still hasn't really left me, but it's more manageable. The emotional pain feels insurmountable at points even now. There are sometimes experiences where I feel like I just have to, like, let all of that Wash over me. It always subsides for me, thankfully. But that's been through years and years of trying to like access therapy, which even in and of itself was a challenge because a lot of the language that these programs use are co opted from therapeutic practices that do have real scientific basis and grounding. So when you go to seek help, you are re traumatized inherently. And that's assuming that someone even is able to trust another adult enough to want to seek help. I have major abandonment issues still that will like activate. If I am not invited to something that a lot of people are doing together. I am like, why am I left out? Rather than the brain going to a logical conclusion, it goes to what is so wrong with me? I am not good enough. The abandonment stuff I only realized recently. I would say there's so much that gets buried when you leave these programs because you're just trying to like survive that then going back in and pulling these pieces apart. There's so much suffering under there. There's the attachment problems, there's self worth issues, there's this overwhelming compulsion to just mask all of this sorrow. And because you're not being demonstrated how to actually do that by adults or anyone around you, you just do what you can. It creates this horrible cycle of trying to cope with the trauma in very maladaptive ways that have very real impacts. I was very lucky that I had a therapist who informed me that drinking was in fact a coping mechanism. I thought I was just an alcoholic because I came from a family of alcoholics. I'm assigning like personal defect to this. I'm not looking at my life and saying, wow, something really fucked up happened to me because nobody told me how fucked up it was. It was just something that happened. If I hadn't been given that information, the perspective that I would have kept would have been that I am somehow defective. We have these outcomes of like not being able to keep a job, not being able to hold relationships, not being able to have close friendships. And then it becomes this self fulfilling prophecy where everything that everybody told you that you ever were or that ever would happen to you, you see happening in your life and you see it as your fault. I have a lot of compassion for people who have substance abuse issues, particularly kids who go through trauma and like rely on that. I understand why so many kids have also taken their own life. I understand why people make that choice. As someone who's very seriously considered it, what I would end up saying is that like on the other side of that your life is waiting for you to like the people who have fought with those feelings. Every day is different. It really is. There are some days where I'm like, I am so thankful that I made it to an adult and that I can do whatever the fuck I want, even if that means that I have to sit here and pay my bills and deal with the rise of fascism. I'm so happy to have agency and to have the things that I need and to be able to get the things that I want. I'm very satisfied with the things that I've prioritized in my life. Even though I could sit here and be like, it could be different or it could be better, those are complete cognitive falsehoods. As long as I keep sticking to the path that I'm on now, I'll be completely happy. At the risk of sounding naive or overly privileged, I do think that people who seek it can have it. I have full autonomy, or at least as much as I can have. I choose what I do, where I go, who I associate with, how I dress, what I spend my money on. All of these things that were taken away from me that are very basic human rights. There is such joy in having access to those that sometimes that is what I have to look at and remind myself, like, you made it. It's a privilege to be alive and you're free.
- [62:44]
Tiffany Reiss
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 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, friends.