A kid posted this on the heal website
3. [time detained: 9/07 TO 8/08]
4. [Abundant life academy manipulates the student along with parents, and lie, and take advantage of the parents and how much they should know.]
I give HEAL permission to use this statement. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on march,8, 2009.
Abundant Life academy, a “boarding school” where staff often do unnecessary take downs. The take downs have included choking, slamming a students head into the ground, along with other unnecessary moves, which some staff were not licensed to restrain. All phone calls were supervised, and if you said something to your parents about the program that the program staff didn’t like, they would hang up. Sometimes we would not get to go outside for a week at a time. We were all punished together depending on the person/reason. We would have to do A lot of exercise, and if a kid was over-weight or to weak, and couldn’t keep on track with the exercise, we would have to start over. Some kids would just stop because they couldn’t do anything more. I remember one time it was so painful just to walk from doing so much “Exercise”.
Abundant life academy IS a bad place to have a kid at. Staff and director’s do damage to the kids, mental and physical health. I remember when one staff told me “ Your just a retarded kid with nothing to you.” Which is not something Jesus would promote, even though on the program shirts they gave us, said “Jesus is the only answer”. The staff would go on power trips. I remember one experience when they made me sleep out in the hall because I wasn’t laying down, but instead sitting up. After I laid on my side, a staff told me I wasn’t laying down, then “restrained” me even though I was not a threat to myself or others, or property. One staff banged my head against the ground, then put his knee into my head, then after I wouldn’t let him grab my hands knowing he would hurt me more, he started choking me. After I told him “ I cant breathe” he kept on choking me. I wasn’t sure if He would keep on doing it until I passed out or even died, but I wasn’t going to take this anymore. I hit one in the head, and kicked the other two, which where trying to grab my hands, even though I wasn’t fighting back until I started getting choked. This place is no place for anyone. It’s gross. Kids have tried to commit suicide there. How safe is a place where a kid would take his own life to block out so much pain?
