HLA SECRETS - PART II

[Anonymous]

The students had a 7 hour realizations recently due to a new students actions on campus.  Will this ever stop?

[Anonymous]

No, 7 hour reals because of the altercations
in the boys dorms...

[Anonymous]

Realizations are the group therapy sessions that we all had to do, which sometimes included being iterrogated for several hours on the actions of ourselves or other students,  at some points this included students who where acting up being taken to the bathrooms and strip searched for no apparent reason other than to get them to talk which i believe would qualify as some form of sexual harrasment.  It also can include PT and shit like that.  Not all reals are that servere though, only the ones where they want information about some kids acting up.


Oh and on another note, i know for a fact that none of the labor conditions we where under during restrictions would even come remotely close to meeting OSHA standards for safety, we werent given proper safety equipment and where sometimes forced to do work that was well beyond the limits of being physically safe for certain individuals. (i.e. people being forced to lift extreemely heavy loads and having to work a very long time without access to water and at some points not even being allowed to sit down for long periods of time.)

[juniper2]

Last Post..please PM me.

[Lacey]

does anyone know when this stuff happened? The rape / assault / attempted murder I keep hearing about on here? I'm just curious. The worst thing that happened when I was there was the girl who hung herself in the closet. A counselor quit over that. One of mine actually. But I never heard anything about the rapes and stuff...

[Deborah]

On 2006-04-27 12:24:00, Lacey wrote:

"does anyone know when this stuff happened? The rape / assault / attempted murder I keep hearing about on here? I'm just curious. The worst thing that happened when I was there was the girl who hung herself in the closet. A counselor quit over that. One of mine actually. But I never heard anything about the rapes and stuff..."

Welcome Lacey.
I assume the girl survived? Why did the counselor quit? What was that experience like for you, if you don't mind sharing?

Re: the rape, you can read more here:
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=0#186055

Also, click 'Search WWF" in the left column. Type in the search word 'rape', or whatever, then select the HLA forum to search.

[Anonymous]

On 2006-04-27 12:42:00, Deborah wrote:

"

On 2006-04-27 12:24:00, Lacey wrote:


"does anyone know when this stuff happened? The rape / assault / attempted murder I keep hearing about on here? I'm just curious. The worst thing that happened when I was there was the girl who hung herself in the closet. A counselor quit over that. One of mine actually. But I never heard anything about the rapes and stuff..."

Welcome Lacey.

I assume the girl survived? Why did the counselor quit? What was that experience like for you, if you don't mind sharing?



Re: the rape, you can read more here:

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=0#186055



Also, click 'Search WWF" in the left column. Type in the search word 'rape', or whatever, then select the HLA forum to search. "

Thanks for the tip. Sorry, quite new to this site.

Anyway. Yes the girl survived, although i do believe she had long term brain damage, but that could just be hearsay. I wasn't actually present on-campus when it happened, it was during Winter break. We were coming back from the airport, and a staff who I was very close with had a very disturbed look to him, so I asked him what was going on. He then told me that a girl there had hung herself in the closet while we were gone. If i remember correctly, all her other room mates were gone on break and during a period between school and a meal she hung herself in her closet. The staff who told me and my counselor were the ones that found her, and got her down. From what he told me, there was no pulse nor breathing. He preformed CPR and recussated (SP?) her and she was airlifted to the airport. I never saw her again.

The counselor left for a few days, understandably so, to take a few days off and get herself together. She came back for a few days, but I remember in reals that she wasnt the same. She was really shaken up by what she'd seen. Another counselor had been training with ours, and soon fully replaced her, months before our graduation.

What got to me was that in my earlier months at Hidden Lake, a very disturbed young man was admitted to HLA 2 peer groups ahead of me. There was not one inch of his arms not covered in SERIOUS scarring. Not little attention scrapes like some kids had, but massive, unsettling obviously not very old scars. He was in a room with 3 other older boys like this girl was, and when they all went on break, he cut himself so horribly in the night, and covered the walls with his blood, writing things like "I love God" and upside down crosses. He was never seen again either.  I thought they would have learned way back then, but I guess I was giving them way too much credit.

I know some of my responses are long-winded and I apologize, but its nice to have a place to explain and talk some of the things out that were denied for so long. We weren't even aloud to tell our parents on our once a week phone calls (mine which were NEVER taken off counselor calls, the whole 22 months i was there, only 3 other kids in the history of HLA ever had to do that) until they sent out a mass letter to the parents about it.

Happy to answer any more questions.

[Lacey]

Sorry, that was me above, obviously.

[kid_thorazine]

On 2006-04-27 18:31:00, Anonymous wrote:



What got to me was that in my earlier months at Hidden Lake, a very disturbed young man was admitted to HLA 2 peer groups ahead of me. There was not one inch of his arms not covered in SERIOUS scarring. Not little attention scrapes like some kids had, but massive, unsettling obviously not very old scars. He was in a room with 3 other older boys like this girl was, and when they all went on break, he cut himself so horribly in the night, and covered the walls with his blood, writing things like "I love God" and upside down crosses. He was never seen again either.  I thought they would have learned way back then, but I guess I was giving them way too much credit.

Ah yes I remember that guy, he was a pretty cool kid actually, but yeah he had some serious problems, I actually saw the room when it had blood all over the walls because he did it at night and everyone in that dorm new about it before the staff could do any damage control so to speak.  I dont remmeber if it was Charles Cates or Greg Lindsay that was headmaster at the time but whichever one of them it was they all made us meet in the lodge so they could downplay the whole thing as much as possible, they said his wounds where entirely superficial which i kinda doubt because it seemed like he bled pretty heavily considering that his sheet where completely soaked in blood and there where blood splatter marks on the ceiling, i remmeber the image of that room very clearly.  It was quite disturbing, but of course the headmaster and Mike Witherspoon made it seem like it was pretty much nothing.

[Lacey]

It was Greg Lindsey at the time. And yeah, he was a really neat guy... Just definitely needed a serious amount of supervision, which HLA is absolutely inadequate of giving. I mean they didnt even have him on the widely respected "Clean Air" (sleeping in a sleeping bag in the hall of the dorm on the floor because they couldnt trust you to be in your own room.)I mean come on. Those trusty night staff can handle anything, right?

[Deborah]

Thanks.
Not to worry about being 'long winded'. It's very informative and helpful to others.

In terms of the monitored phone calls, my son was there 20 months (against my wishes) and we never had an unmonitored call. Lindsey was the HM then.
I rarely got a call after I reported Ridge Creek for operating an unlicensed wilderness program, which was about the last six months he was there, and was told that my calls would be monitored indefinitely. Very lucky for them that their facility was 1,000 miles away...

They had him lined up to go to Gould Academy upon graduation, when the light finally came on for his dad and he pulled him two months early.

Was your incoming/outgoing mail censored?

[ This Message was edited by: Deborah on 2006-04-27 19:26 ]

[kid_thorazine]

all of our mail was censored, or at least read.  I wonder if they knew that its illegal to open other peoples mail.  I know i wrote several letters and e-mails to my parents that where returned to me for being innapropriate because i wrote about some of the not so great things that happened there.

[Anonymous]

I cant think of a time they deliberately doctored or altered a letter that was sent, however after a while they didnt have to. After not too long you learned. If you wanted contact with your parents at all, you simply didn't mention anything negative or truthful about Hidden Lake. At that point, just having those 10-15 minute phone calls were more important.

And Deborah, did your child have monitered phone calls or conference calls with the counselor? Theres a difference. All students had monitered calls, however the students still physically held the phone, and a staff was just in the room listening to our end. In conference calls, which i was on my entire stay there, you went to the counselors office and the parent was put on speaker phone and the counselors sat by your side. If anything was said they didn't approve of, they could immediately jump in, and most times answered questions my parents asked me, themselves, before I had a chance to respond.

[Deborah]

Apparently the attempted suicide was mentioned before but it was never divulged that she hung herself.

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... forum=41&3

[Deborah]

***"I cant think of a time they deliberately doctored or altered a letter that was sent, however after a while they didnt have to. After not too long you learned. If you wanted contact with your parents at all, you simply didn't mention anything negative or truthful about Hidden Lake. At that point, just having those 10-15 minute phone calls were more important."

Yeh, 'conditioning' the kid and their parent. How could a child report abuse? How would their parent ever know?
 
***And Deborah, did your child have monitered phone calls or conference calls with the counselor? Theres a difference. All students had monitered calls, however the students still physically held the phone, and a staff was just in the room listening to our end. In conference calls, which i was on my entire stay there, you went to the counselors office and the parent was put on speaker phone and the counselors sat by your side. If anything was said they didn't approve of, they could immediately jump in, and most times answered questions my parents asked me, themselves, before I had a chance to respond.

We had both. What sickening feelings this brings up!! If we were talking about anything that was real or family stuff the 'counselor' would interrupt and ask my son if he wanted to tell me about his therapuetic accomplishments for the week, or some such. Never had an uninterrupted conversation. Often times I'd ask my son a question and the counselor would start to answer. I'd ask him to let me son answer. Needlessly to say, I was not their favorite parent. I also had one of his counselors violate my confidence, which I have written about here. Then put my son on restrictions for 'manipulating' me.
http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.ph ... rum=41&201