I posted this a long time ago on the "Straights Testimony" forum, but the forum was taken down. Fortunately I saved it so I didn't have to re-type all of this! For those of you who missed it, this is (in as short as I could possibly make it) my story of how I got in and out of AARC.
"My name is Mylitta and I was in the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC) for a little over one year. My mother's aunt and uncle had put their child through Kids of North Jersey, and even though she was freed from "Kids" by the police her parents continued to support the program. When Miller Newton tried to bring his program to Canada they offered their help, and began holding "Rap's" in their basement, which were run by Dean Vause. This is where AARC began until they were given funding to buy a building in the industrial area of Calgary.
When I was 13 I smoked pot about 30 times (probably less) and took LSD about 10 times. I did this because I attended the high school with the highest drug population in Canada at the time and drugs were "normal" there. After using drugs for almost a year I became bored with them and I had negative effects from LSD, so I stopped entirely. When asked "why did your parents put you through AARC" I've come to understand that I was in AARC because of Munchausen by proxy (MBP), which is what my mother had.
My mother claims that the 9 months she spent in a psychiatric unit after slitting her wrists was the "happiest time" in her life. She claims to have been cured of schizophrenia while in there. I'm aware that she has a head injury from childhood which caused her brain damage, but not aware of any diagnosis she was given in the psychiatric unit. I do know that she moved to another country and changed her first and last name, and I believe that there is a possibility that she was under Witness Protection. After much time questioning her I've come to suspect that she'd slit her wrists while on LSD which was her "schizophrenia" and also why she focused so much on me having taken it.
When my father began seeing other women, the only thing that would bring him home was if my sister and I were very sick. So I spent most of my childhood in hospitals and she even pulled strings to make me the poster child (literally) for a disease. I was heavily medicated for reasons I don't understand and on a weekly basis I was coaxed into situations with doctors where she would tell me what my symptoms were and if I were "good" I would tell the doctors. I was even burnt and cut as a child to go to the emergency room. I was lead to believe that they were accidents. Even as a small toddler if I had a bad dream my mother would tell me it was a hallucination and drag me to a psychologist where she would tell them I had schizophrenia.
When I was 14 my father was spending the mortgage on prostitutes. My mother spent time with the aunt and uncle involved with AARC, and soon decided that she needed to send me there. Her and my mother both spent time in Calgary attending meetings at AARC, which I was unaware of. When they returned they were increasingly crazy. It was summer time and I was spending a lot of time with my friends, hanging out at the beach, coffee shops, etc. I was not using drugs, being promiscuous, or doing anything "at risk". I was emotionally struggling, but that is a given considering my home situation. Once they began attending AARC they made a rule that I could only leave the house for 1 hour a day. They didn't chose a home with a bedroom for me, so my home was under the dining room table. After a week of only exciting the dining room table for an hour a day I began running away from home, often being dragged back (physically) by police or my parents. As a run away I spent most of my time in friends home, and met a woman who began fighting for legal custody of me, but unfortunately I spent a small time homeless because my parents were knocking on the doors of my friends homes and threatening their parents. During this summer my mother had me physically restrained and taken to a rehabilitation center in the states. I was soon released and social services (I learned years later) decided to watch me and arrest my mother if she continued with this.
Eventually, after my "normal" life was being torn to pieces, my parents told me that they'd found a foster program in Alberta that had space for me and that they would be willing to let me go if I chose to live with that foster family. I said yes, believing it was the only way to stop the fight with my family. Two days later they took me to the center where I'd supposedly meet my family, and I was in AARC.
Being this the most bizarre experience of my life it will be hard to keep the explanation of AARC short.
At the time the industrial garage AARC was in was mostly cement walls and floor, with some areas having painted gray walls and gray carpets. The only decorated part of the building was the front portion where staff had their offices and curious parents learned about AARC. Also everything beyond the front of the building was not heated during the winter and the air conditioning was turned up in the back during the summer. We weren't allowed to wear our coats in Rap's and only allowed one sweatshirt or sweater and a few t-shirts, so I was always freezing and had cold sweats. The blinds were shut so that we didn't get any sunlight, and we were not allowed any outside stimulation such as newspapers or any literature for that matter that was not AA literature, or any contact with people not directly involved with AARC. When I left AARC I was unaware of major events such as the Oklahoma bombing.
Many of my civil rights were violated. I wasn't given the right to partake in ceremonies of my own religion and I was even forbidden to speak of my religious beliefs because they differed from AARC's. Mail that friends sent to my mother she'd hand over to AARC and they would open them and read them, but not tell me about them. I discovered this as an “Oldtimer”. I had no way of contacting anyone for help because I wasn't allowed to use a phone, have computer access, or write letters. The only time I was allowed to speak to my parents was with Oldtimers and staff monitoring us.
AARC staff told us that legally they could keep us until we were 16 and could sign ourselves out. Anyone who attempted to leave while under the age of sixteen was physically restrained by staff and Oldcomers, including being sat on for long periods of time.
The process of rap's was traumatizing. What had an even worse long term effect on me was being denied time to be silent in between Rap’s. I had to be busy and talking at all times between Raps, otherwise I’d be accused of thinking something bad.
Clients had to tell "incidents" during every rap, so I don't know what was made up for the sake of an incident, or what was real, but I heard awful stories of incest, sexual abuse, rape, physical abuse, things that at that young age (15) I was unaware of and did not want to be forced to hear extreme details of every day for hours at a time for one year. "Girls Rap" was intended for purely sexual discussion. It was usually run by a man and it was held in a room built with a viewing room behind a one way mirror which continues to disgust me. I remember Girls Rap's where girls told stories of being raped, and instead of being counseled to understand that it was not their fault they were told that their "disease" lead them to it. One 14 year old girl was told that because she’d attended a high school party unconsciously to search out alcohol and feed her disease, so therefore she’d set herself up to be raped. There were child prostitutes (as young as 13) who had been court ordered into AARC and even though these girls were recruited by gangs, drugged and raped, they were still taught that they became prostitutes to support their addiction. Anyone who had homosexual thoughts was told that it was because of their "disease" and they could not progress to the next level in AARC until accepting this and changing their behavior.
All of us spent time undergoing "blast raps" or being the "target" of regular raps, which involved everyone (staff and clients) calling you names, telling you that you're a worthless druggie, for hours and hours at a time, and the only way to make it end is to agree with them which is called "accepting powerlessness". If you didn't accept powerlessness for a long period of time you were put on "The Zero Club" which meant that an Oldcomer was assigned to control even your basic functions, meaning that you had to ask permission for each spoonful of food you were given and the Oldcomer was allowed to deny you. You had to ask for one square of toilet paper at a time, and again the Oldcomer could deny you.
Undergoing this caused me to being having altered states. I had to have a private place to go to where they could not reach, and I had to have a personality that was acceptable to them. I bounced in between these at all times and by the end of AARC I could not control bouncing in between the real me as a 15 year old, and the AARC me. When I "graduated" I behaved in a perfectly acceptable way to AARC people, but to the rest of the world I was totally out of place which the more I tried to merge into the real world the more obvious this became.
I wasn't eating enough to sustain a healthy weight during my first half of AARC and therefore was in pain all over. Normally clients were taken to a doctor who was a friend of Dean Vause's when first in AARC. Their visit was supervised by staff and the purpose was to check for STD's, lice, and scabies. I wasn't given this doctors appointment, probably because my poor health was too risky. When I became an Oldcomer and had a Host Home my mothers MPB became beneficial. She found that I had a cyst forming from spinal tissue, which needed to be operated on. I was operated on and quickly escorted back to AARC where home nurses visited me 3 times daily to care of the open wound, which soon became infected. A "Clinical" once told me that the home nurse had told her that I was making it all up and didn't need any help, therefore she was no longer letting the nurses in. Meanwhile I could barely walk and had a two inch long open wound and infection in my spinal tissue. My mother found out about this and quickly had the situation changed long enough for me to heal up.
I Graduated AARC by doing my best to abide by the rules and change myself to their ways. I would have been in AARC for much longer than year if it weren’t for one staff member who was dedicated to standing up for me. She helped convince the others that I was one of them, even though I think she knew I never would be.
Immediately after AARC I found a wonderful therapist who helped me start to recover from AARC. She reminded me that I could have my own opinions and that all of the things done to me and the other kids were not for a good reason. It was still a few years before I cut contact with AARC because I continued to bounce between the real me and the AARC me, and I was afraid that maybe outsiders really were evil, and maybe I really would be "dead insane or in jail" (as we were told) if I separated from AARC. I also continued to support my mom and her MBP until I turned 18, at which point I felt free legally that I couldn't be dragged into a rehab, hospital, or cult. I moved away and limited contact with my immediate family.
The most surprising things to have learned about AARC for me were first of all that the rule of turning 16 and signing out was false and that AARC at the time did not have the legal right to keep me or restrain us, which means that I was actually kidnapped and illegally held. Also we had called Dean Vause "Dr. Vause" because he claimed to have been a psychologist to us, while professionally to the outside world he referred to himself as "clinical director". I was shocked to find that he is not a psychologist and had undergone his training at Kids of North Jersey. Also I began reading about cults and cult recovery, and it feels to me that AARC's program is so alike all descriptions of what makes a cult, that it's possible they designed the program intentionally around the makings of a cult. I could not believe that these books about cults worded exactly what I went through.
At 20 I had gotten my dream apartment and had married my husband who helped me put things into perspective. I'd still say some AARC things or refer to myself as "sick" in the way that both AARC and my mother would, and he'd ask me why on earth I thought those things. I realized that I was not ill throughout my life mentally or physically. At 22 I'd moved even further from my family and researched my mothers history where I was able to fill in some blanks. I felt safer to have a clearer understanding of my life. Around that time the MBP became clear. Living in fear of AARC, or "deadinsaneorinjail", seeing myself as a bad or dangerous person was gone. I was able to be a woman with her own life, her own values, and no more bouncing in between who I was and who I was told to be. I'm now 25 and lead a full life, although it has been much harder to get here then it is for most people.
When I listen to my friends talking about their lives I am always amazed at how different our stories are. I am often jealous of students who were able to stay with their parents while attending school or who have a safety net if they can't make their rent one month. I've had to do everything while working overtime, and I've never had that safety net to fall back on (until in laws came along). At 19 I was exhausted all the time, working around the clock to make it, knowing that if one little thing went wrong, like if I got a sick and had to take a week off, I might not be able to pay my bills and I'd be on the streets. Also, I am always aware of how much someone can torture an innocent person, which is something I know that most North American’s don’t live with every day. The pain that my parents brought is very minimal in comparison to the traumatic effects that AARC had on me, and I lost any innocence because of it.
I saw my family recently. My mother is now unable to care for herself, I don't know exactly what the reasoning is. She is starving herself and so underweight that she could probably die any second. I don't think she is doing it for the sake of vanity, I think that now that she doesn't have someone to make sick, she has to do it herself. She typically sees a doctor once a day, and again I don't know why.
From what I hear about AARC these days they have dressed the building up and worsened the situation for its clients. I don't believe that there is any way to improve AARC. The amount of violence engraved in the staff members is too powerful to cure. I'd tell you that the only people who should end up in this place are the worst of criminals or rapists, but I remember a situation where a boy had raped one of the girls in AARC, and he did not have to "make amends" to her while she was being taught she was the problem. I feel that there are probably many kids out there who were abused enough in AARC to press criminal charges, but they are either too afraid or too confused about what happened to talk about it. Most of the victims I speak to are working so hard to change their lives and get away from anything involved with AARC that they simply say "I just can't deal with it right now."
I will always live with the knowledge that I lost one year of my youth during one of our most developmental years. When freed from AARC I heard about a local man I'd known who was arrested for sexually assaulting his 2 daughters (both under the age of 12). He spent only 3 months in prison where he was allowed all civil rights, time to himself, and outside contact. Meanwhile everything had been taken from me and I wasn't even allowed to speak about the people I'd loved before AARC. I strongly disagree with any “treatment program” that does not offer a fair trail before sentencing someone. But I also strongly disagree that AARC or any of its like programs should continued to be called “treatment”. “The AARC Family” is a psychological/religious community, and should only be seen as such."
