Boy from TB
I just found this sight and it flooded me with emotions and memories (not all bad). That's the problem...Both sides of this argument are pretty extreme...one side says it's all bad the other says it's all good... The fact is we, the "students", had to create some sort of enjoyment out of this horrible place and we did...I became very good friends with a lot of these guys and in that sense have some good memories... I also was very introspective during my time there, and that was positive...
What wasn't was the constant screaming, hitting, raw fish(it still had the freaking skin on parts of it) and the education.
I was 3 months away from completing High School when I was sent down there...3 years after I got out I finally ended up just getting my GED and have yet started college...I firmly believe I would be almost through college by now if it wasn't for that damn program. I don't exactly know how I was influenced by the program. Sometimes I think I'm tougher, sometimes I think I might be screwed up a bit...
It can be good to go to bed at night listening to one of your friends screaming as if he's dying on a fairly regular basis...It can't have helped me too much to have been placed in OP 3 times...It couldn't have been too healthy to not understand why I was somewhere I knew nothing about and not be able to ask anyone I knew about it...I don't know if any of you out there remember the Seminar in, I think June or July, of 1999 in which death metal was played and we all just started beating the crap out of each other for a good 15 minutes...that couldn't have been too good for us...
Boy from TB
TB, it was hell,. . .
i was restrained almost everyday while i was there, for dumb things like talking, swearing, refusing to do something, When we got restrained they would make us scream, twisting are arms behind are back until they touched are head, staff would take ur ankles, place them flat on the marble floor and just bounce on them, they would press your head in to the floor, it was usually 3 or more staff restraning one student . Most of time spent there i was in some small room with a bunch of other kids lying on my face on some dirty ass floor breathing in dirt. watching littl tumbleweeds of pubic hair from everybody just roll on floor. I had to sleep on a dirty used mattress in the narrow hallway, there were bugs everywhere it was gross. and the whole time u could hear other dudes just literally screaming for there mothers while being restrained.
*not enough food, we were so hungry we turned to eating bones, eating watermelon rinds and other fruit rinds, and i know i tried eating egg shells a couple of times, i lost weight there*
Boy from Dundee
I did 11 months at Dundee Ranach Academy in Costa Rica. Ive been restrained plenty of times and left with bruises. Malnutrition is a big thing there too. These programs are out for one thing and that's money. We've had everything from rapes to drug scandals between the staff and students.
Boy SCL
I personally spent over 22+ hours a day in OP or what Spring Creek Lodge (a WWASP promoted program) calls "Special Needs". I would get about 5-12 minutes to walk over to the facility next door and take a shower (if they wanted to allow me to shower that day) all while being watched by one or more staff. Its a pretty degrading experience to strip down naked and shower in front of grown men on a daily basis. I wasnt a criminal, just a teen!
Student SCL
The hobbit is what Spring Creek Lodge calls "observation" which is really a small walk in closet sized room. The rooms have urine stains all over the ground and smell like someone put rubbing alcohol under your nose when you first walk in. When I was at SCL kids would spend over one month straight in "observation" leaving only for bathroom breaks and a shower, and when you showered (if they let you that day) at least one or more staff would sit there and watch you. Bathroom breaks were sometimes used as a reward for good behavior and kids would have to wait long after the first urge "to go". When I was there the "observation" kids would use a portta potty that was never emptied in time so kids would have to squat over the seat. Spring Creek Lodge (WWASP) acts like "observation" is for suicidal, or out of control teens, thats not the case. Most of the staff at SCL didn't seem to have a whole lot of patients, so if a kid got annoying or the staff didn't feel like dealing with a student, that student would be sent to "observation" for days at a time. It might not sound so bad, but imagine being 14 or 15 and being placed in these observation rooms, this cannot be healthy for a teens emotional well being. Although this was over 3 years ago that I personally witnessed this, I still hear similar stories from students just leaving. And for an organization that treats students so inhumane, I could careless when it happened, because it happened.
Boy from TB
when i was there i was in need of serious medical attention but i was called a "faker", typical. and when it got to the point where i was violently ill (yah "fakers" really roll around on the ground moaning in violent pain defecating and regergatating on themselves, would one of you self help teen help jackasses hand me my grammy please?) but really all the staff that was on duty could do was laugh and point while i begged to be taken to the hospital. that is just one example of unneeded shit that wasnt on their ciriculum that happened to me, not to mention the everyday things that were part of the program that got to you, breaking you down spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. and what about the unsanitary conditions, the unnecessary use of restraining, the cruel and unusual discipline tactis(whos the sick fuck who thinks this stuff up??), the screams and yells heard through out the "compound" daily but you could never find out what they were because "students" werent aloud to communicate with each other ever(summer of 97' kids know what im talking about).
Boy from TB
There was no talking; we were not allowed to speak during the daily
schedule. We lined up in our units, and the guards began to count us. The
totals were shouted into the radios to the guard who was working sickbed,
and he tallied the count. The guard working with my unit motioned for us to
head to the shower area.
Breakfast was boiled cabbage and fish. The food itself didn't depress me any
longer. I was used to it. I just wished that there had been more. There was
never enough, and I was always hungry.
There would be a few moments, maybe a minute,
when we could have a hushed conversation of sentence fragments before the
case manager came into the room.
When the unit filled up the room, we all sat around against the walls. The
guard sat outside the door, writing up his shift change report. The young
man next to me asked, through motions and whispers, if I had heard
Litho being restrained last night.
I nodded to let him know that I had heard the restraint. Another guy joined
in the conversation of grunts and gestures saying that he had heard Litho's
nose had been broken, and he was taken to the doctor in Kingston this
morning. I hadn't heard that.
The conversation ended abruptly when the guard stood up to come into the
room. He wanted to know who was talking. We were silent, waiting for him to
leave. His eyes scanned the room, moving from face to face, searching for a
hint of guilt. All of us suddenly became very interested with things on the
floor, or the back of our hands - avoiding all eye contact.
If I was careful, I could sneak a chapter from The Grapes of Wrath, but if I
were caught I would be placed in Staff Watch and on my face for a few days.
Staff Watch was the disciplinary unit of the facility. The average stay was
about one or two weeks. Inmates in Staff Watch spent the day lying on their
faces, not allowed to move. If someone were to move repeatedly without
permission, even to look up, he would be restrained.
His arms would be twisted behind his back, and his ankles ground into the
linoleum floor. This was not a restraint by definition, but more of a
cowardly beating which left no marks or bruises.
It was lunchtime. We went to the cafeteria and grabbed our plates. The guard
put the lunch audiotape on, and we sat down to eat. Lunch was a bun and
cheese. We had some powdered milk as well. The bun and cheese was my
favorite meal. I slowly nibbled on my bun, savoring every last bit of
flavor.
The sewage pipe that ran out of the facility was broken, and sewage leaked
out of the pump and under the clothesline. If a strong wind came, my clothes
would fall into the sewage. It was a risky situation.
When we were finished with our laundry, we headed back up to the classroom
for another period of school. I was able to pull off a few more pages from
the Grapes of Wrath, but the guard was looking at me suspiciously, so I put
the novel away and stared at my algebra book.
Screams broke out from Staff Watch. Someone was being restrained. Other
than one of the new guys, none of us looked up from our book. This was a
normal thing.
I stared at the pages in my book and listened to the screams. He was begging
for them to stop. I could hear them laughing. I wanted to cry, but I knew
there would be trouble if I did. I reminded myself that I was a
machine and that I was not really there. I cleared my face of any
emotion and waited for dinner.
Dinner was pork and pork, was dangerous. The day after a pork meal always
left me feeling as if I had swallowed a cup full of nails and glass. There
was never any meat in the pork, only fat and bone, and I could see the hairs
on the hide sticking up.
I ate all of it, and if I could have had more, I would have. I didn't care
about tomorrow's pain; I was hungry now.
I listened to the dinner audiotape
- A Guide for Building Healthy Workplace Relationships - and memorized a few
key points for the quiz tonight. ?It is always fashionable to wear a smile
on one's face.? I could already feel the pork in my stomach begin to cause
problems.
The evening tape was always the longest and hardest to listen to. It went on
forever, pounding its lessons into my head. I was tired, and I just wanted
to go to sleep.
When the tape was through, we wrote what we learned from each tape and
turned the paper into the guard, who would give it to the case manager
tomorrow morning. She would review my (copy/paste) and mark down in her
book: "Student is making significant progress."
We lined up back in the courtyard for evening headcount. The guards counted
us and yelled the totals into the radio to the guard working sickbed. We
went back upstairs to our rooms and into our beds. Someone in Staff Watch
began to scream. I held back the tears and reminded myself that I had become
a machine and I was not really there.
I hated to go to sleep because I always woke up again in the
morning.
