Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: Anonymous on May 24, 2005, 07:37:00 PM
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i was there when dan berman was kicked out for molesting boys and i remember he was head of my peer gorup which was in middle school at the time he had been threatening to hold me back for lack of growth - thank god i am a girl! that guy always seemed really sketchy and weird to me but so did some other people. NOT CARL!!!
i hated it that the most crule and manipulative people, at least in my peer goup, were the most rewarded with priviliges that pretty much invalidated the whole program for me. i kind of gave up when all of my friends got kicked out over christmas one year.
i was just a baby when i was sent to cascade i was 14 and i really had not left home before but i was leaving a terribly abusive situation at school and home that i never even talked about when i was at cascade. i really couldn't trust anyone there and i feel like i was emotionally/verbally abused by some people at that school. i really needed someone to be gentle and kind to me but i didn't get that at cascade.
also i think that for a school that supposeadly didn't support medication they sure drugged the shit out of me. i got in trouble for "refusing" my meds, i was WAY over medicated and when i would try to get off of them i would have massive anger problems and self-distructive problems. then this would lead counselors and Dr. Fisher (who is a sweet man and i think he meant well) to strongly encourage me to take meds again. it's now well-documented that you can't give anti-depressants to young teenagers, especially not zoloft, especially not in large quantities, and particularly if the kid responds to the medication by having breakdowns, rage, and thoughts of suicide. now i almost never take any kind of medication, not even advil and asside from a deep-seeded fear of therapy i am a fairly healthy person.
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Well remember that few people working there had any clinical background. I am glad you are doing well without meds. Funny (ironic) that you were in trouble for not taking meds yet the school was very anti-med..
And yes.. this is Carl :wink:
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hey cj,
The school was like that though they would say one thing and then do another. Refusing medication was the same as refusing. The school considered all physical health problems emotional health problems. Everything was so screwed up in there.
I'm pretty sure that no one had any idea what to do with me but they felt somehow compelled to keep me there. Even though I was so young when I was sent there that I was just going to go right back to where I came from. It was pretty pointless b/c I just ended up at home again, with zero real world skills.
I didn't know how to drive a car but I guess that didn't matter b/c no one was going to help me pay for one anyway. I still don't have one but someday I will. I would rather be independent and have my own apartment and go to school than have a whole bunch of stuff.
When I left Cascade I had to take the bus for 1.5 hours to school every day and then for another 1.5 hours home every afternoon. There were other problems too they just set me up to fail and for $100,000 you'd think someone would have helped me. I tried to explain what my parents were going to do to me when I left school to go home and I tried to get someone from Cascade to try and help me but no one would.
My parents were awful they gave me no financial support and they made me work all the time and go to school really far away and I was set up to fail when I left. I was so poor that I was still wearing my Cascade clothes for months and months after I left that awful place. Cascade and the year afterwards was the darkest time of my life, it was like personal hell. I start crying when I think about it. I didn't ever talk about Cascade for years once I left. I never talked about it and didn't bother to keep in touch with hardly anyone. I try to pretend that it never happened.
I have had to work so hard for everything that I have it has made me grateful but I just wish that things had been easier for me. That school had a few chances to make things right while I was there but it never worked out. Cascade closing was really healing for me, since then I have talked about it a little more and thought about it a little less.
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Please email me.. I am not positive who you are..
CJ
funster@mindspring.com