Her parents. They were justifiably concerned about her, she was acting out and her grades plummeted, but she had not been in trouble with the law or been hospitalized for mental illness, that sort of thing. The parents are total Koolaid drinkers, i.e., totally brainwashed by BCA. They will not hear
one word of even a question about the situation. They stopped communicating with us more than a year ago. They only speak regularly with the girl's nana. She, like other family members, believe what they are told. They don't want to believe anything bad could be happening. Really; they can't put their heads around it. Family history has been rewritten; now it's said that "she was always a handful." I ask them to describe a time when they saw her being out of control, and they can't name a time --or they point to some tantrum she had when she was 8. It's unreal.
I've shared a mountain of research with them--reports from, and interviews with, respected experts in mental health, education, child development, law. I send them links to this site, to ISAC (
http://http://www.isaccorp.org/watchlist.asp), to A START (
http://http://astart.fmhi.usf.edu/). My ever-increasing level of alarm seems only to erode my credibility. They think the widespread reports of abuse and death in the programs are in other programs, "bad" programs, the boot camps--"Why, it just it can't be that way at BCA. After all, her father says she's happy and doing well." And, gosh, visits for family members are (always)
just over the horizon--but not now. "
Don't you care about her emotional growth?"No one other than her parents--not even her siblings--has seen or spoken with her in almost 2 years. Many/most of the survivors who post here talk about home visits after 6 months--which is an eternity--but here I am with no contact for 2 years, and I'm just so very, very worried about her. Now I suspect they are grooming the parents for her to go to one of the post-high-school programs, like Innercept (
http://http://www.innercept.net/).
There are a few family members who understand, but we don't have influence where it counts: her parents. We are ready to be there for her in whatever way she needs when she gets out.
That's my sad story, Anon.
Auntie Em
