Re: A Place to Post PV Experiences

[ZenAgent]

by PennyLaneJane, Feb 09, 2007 12:00AM
 
You know what. I think I do know what you are talking about now!  I just remembered something today when I read your last response.

When I was a young 13-year-old, I did not get along with my parents for various reasons.. My mother sent me to a Mental status tests hospital... and after three months of being there I was then sent to a place called ''peninsula villiage'' which is were all the staff tries to break you down and build you
Back strain treatment up...it is so wrong for some kids but works great for others. It was wrong for me, I did not need to be there, but that is a whole other story! They really make your life hell there, screaming at you, psychologically abusing you, and make you do labor such as cutCuts and puncture wounds logs and push wheel-barrows through the woods.  ANYWAY!  OK. When I FIRST got to ''Peninsula Villiage'', I did not have a bowel movement for 11 days!  This was totally not normal for me by the way, and I was eating regular meals and not dehydrated.  I said something to one of the staff, and she told me it was very commonCommon cold (that's all she said, they were short with you there unless they were verbally attacking you).

So, is that like the same thing you are talking about? Sorry for the story! lol

 
 
 
 
Very interesting.
by Jaku, Feb 10, 2007 12:00AM
That sounds like a horrible place! (Although the manual labor reminds me of what's involved in a Zen monastery).  Guess I need to experience it myself in order to understand how it can help some people. 

[ZenAgent]

Survivor's Report #2:  Peninsula Village

By L.C.

 

Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement.  I swear everything I wrote here is to the best of my knowledge completely true and I will be held accountable for anything written here.

I have personally witnessed the repeated abuse of minors at the Peninsula Village facility and would be more than happy to testify or present evidence to this fact. These behavior modification teen wilderness camps are a controversial excuse for therapy at best, they are also exorbitantly expensive. PV costs 500 dollars a night, more if they are "forced" to restrain you, or if you are in STU, the lock down unit. PV costs over a 150,000.00 a year, the kids in PV either have very good insurance or the state, tax dollars, pay for them to be abused. Children’s parents can sign them over to behavioral modification facilities with no court order for “crimes” that no court would convict. The children are isolated in the facilities and have no recourse whatsoever. Many of the parents are abusive.

When I started to research PV I was amazed to discover how completely unqualified many of the daily staff is. The job requirements to be a live in counselor are a high school education or a GED, associate degrees from community colleges are common. Out of the staff that PV shows on it's website, I don't believe I saw one member of the daily staff that actually lives with the kids. Therefore, it is obvious that Peninsula Village turns an excellent yearly profit. I will include the job requirements for PV I found on the Covenant Health website under job search. The purpose of this letter is to officially report and describe the abuses that I both witnessed and was subjected to, in the hopes that it will help the children still suffering under that nightmare.

I was in Peninsula Village from 96 to 98, both my parents and I feel that we were extremely misled as to what my treatment there would be like. I was in the lock down unit for six months on arrival to the Village although I was cowed, completely subservient and did everything that they told me to. I was physically restrained on the first day in a hospital gown by at least 8 large adults for nothing more than pulling my arm away, it was an impulse reaction, when the large orderly woman dugs her nails purposefully into my arm. I know that this was purposeful. I was sitting on the floor in the isolation room looking up at the staff member when I pulled away but only instantaneously as a sort off knee jerk reaction and not violently, she had hurt me. She then stepped back looked at me again and pressed the buzzer staff wears around their neck to signal a restraint. There was absolutely no need to restrain me other than to prove a point, we can hurt you if we want to, which I don’t believe they are allowed to use restraining for. I was already in the isolation room all she had to do was walk out and close the door, I also wasn’t at all violent or had even thought to be, I regarded her as a teacher or some other adult authority figure, you certainly do not react violently to a teacher. I was not in PV for any form of violence. I wasn’t even defiant, mostly I was scared, crying and sitting on the floor of the isolation room in a ball. This was after the intrusive body search and being woken up at 5:30 in the morning by three burly adults who escorted me to Tennessee, it was more like being kidnapped.

While being restrained the Peninsula Village staff applied excessive pressure, I couldn't breathe and kept repeating that I was choking, but they let no pressure off, I was bruised and sore the next day, the restraint went on for hours. I saw one girl with a nasty black eye which they said came from pressing her face into the floor, like that made it better. I saw other cases with bruised arms, wrists legs and faces. There is no doubt in my mind that they could have restrained my totally non-resistant sobbing 95 pound borderline anorexic teenage self between all 1400 pounds of the 8 of them without hurting me. I was not fighting at all, even at first, I was far too shocked. Each held a body part so it was not a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, the individual staff member meant to hurt us. They also kept restraining you long after any fight was gone and even if none was there in the first place. I remember girls being restrained for what seemed like all night, although it was really only about three hours. There was an isolation room in the lockdown unit, nice cold hard linoleum with cement underneath but they would restrain you anywhere, gravel, garden manure, wherever.

They also used a straight jacket called a burrito. I can remember seeing a state kid stuck in that thing for a day or more, they were leading her around. Other girls were strapped to a cot wrapped up in it, given what must have been a lot of thorazine and other drugs, and left to drool. There were about two or three restraints a week often more. I was once restrained because I couldn't stop crying , I really couldn't I would have stopped of course to avoided being restrained, I was about as resistant as a wet noodle and they still held me down choking for hours. They would restrain girls for nothing, for saying in group therapy, I don’t agree with that politely enough , or for sitting down on work detail saying that they felt sick and needed to rest.

We were not allowed to look at or talk to the other girls and we had to ask for permission to do anything, move even, of course go to the bathroom and we had to tell them what it is we had to do, they stood outside the door and timed us. There was no reading, and no free time, Group therapy was more like a denouncement session and began as soon as you were crying, that is later on the first day, after they had restrained you for a few hours and you were a broken puddle ready to confess to anything. I don't believe that many of the staff that actually lives with the girls on a daily basis is especially educated, perhaps some BA's and associate degrees, These are the one’s who actually deal with the children and run group therapy and restrain them, I don‘t believe there is one daily staff member pictured on the internet and they are the ones who actually live with the girls. .

The lights in the lockdown unit, STU, where I spent the first six months, were left on all the time, we slept in cubicles and were often woken by the staff patrolling , they were always standing over us. We were punished constantly, abuse was constant every second for those two years. The cubicles had no fronts and the room was small. We were not allowed outside, until we were ready to move out to the cabins. This was horrible, after sitting on a bed for six months we were suddenly made to do back breaking physical work all day.

We had level systems, I never got beyond the first level although I was completely compliant. I don't think I was as willing to rip into my fellow prisoners as much they would have liked. Group therapy was a cult denouncement experience, it was pure hell, and I am not exaggerating. They would find out your deepest darkest secrets and then browbeat you with them like you were disgusting dirt, we could say nothing to defend ourselves or we would face being PCId/ restrained. They liked sexual revelations and would ask you everything about them, specific details and more details, it was not appropriate, odd and used to induce shame. You would confess to things you didn't do and then they would tell your family. Many of the girls were in there for something that had happened to them, the website, says the Village is an expert at helping abused girls. It was terrible to watch them torture some poor teenager who was in there because she had been raped or molested. Many of the girls had been raped or molested, myself included, and to be held up to shame, ridicule and denouncement in relation to sex at a place that was supposed to help you with your experience was a pure nightmare.

They encourage the girls to pick on each other, to rip into each other during group therapy so bullying is greatly encouraged, in fact the level system is based strongly on it. There was desperation mentality, as we all struggled so hard to avoid being punished and they punished all of us together, I realize now that the punishments were arbitrary, no matter how hard we tried to avoid them they were still going to rain down on our heads. We would pretend to give feedback, their word for harassment and abuse, but how can you tear someone apart after listening to them scream all night while staff held their face into the floor. There were also frequent outbreaks of head lice while I was in STU. Many of us wanted to work with the Village, I personally wanted sane educated adults to help me. It was extremely confusing and terrifying.

It seemed very odd that some of the girls were in a behavior modification facility at all and it was hard to tell how all this abuse was going to help any of them. The treatment did not seem at all relevant to the problems the girls were having? One of the girls was there for telling her parents that she was gay and that was really it. There were a lot of anorexics. Worst of all some had done nothing other than get molested by a close relative, to the horror of their families. The PV website says that PV is an expert at helping girls deal with issues like rape and molestation. I want to know whether or not the relative being accused was being investigated? It most cases I saw it was being somewhat brushed under the rug or almost completely brushed under the rug. There was very limited contact with the outside world, especially for girls who's families had signed them over. It did not seem reasonable that these girls were treated as if they were being punished or were in jail for more serious offenses. I thought too, that a lot of the girls who were in for more serious things were acting out more serious problems in their lives, like the kids who had unfit parents and were in foster care. It is a very hard world out there for a teenage runaway with drug addict, alcoholic, abusive parents. It really is, I lived with them for a long time, the stories were pretty typical. Perhaps better educated staff would have been more aware.

The counselors run all the group therapy sessions and group therapy is the only kind of therapy we had at the Village. We had brief individual therapy once every two months maybe less and group therapy two or three time a day. Some girls were good students, there were also a certain amount of custody battles. The Village likes to add as much social stigma as possible to the teenagers there because it keeps them in business. Some were pretty ordinary teenagers, who were dealing with issues like boys, sex, pressure to drink and smoke pot or being tormented by kids at their schools. I'll include the criteria for admissions to PV at the bottom of the page it is so broad as to be funny if it wasn't horrible.

After the lock down unit with its cramped quarters and barred mesh covered windows for months, we had the cabins and work detail. Work detail was exercise digging up stumps, cross sawing logs, mauling logs, building endless things under the constant abuse of the staff in the hot sun. I believe I was also suffering from sleep deprivation because we were often woken up at two in the morning to go out to the log shed to be shown how much wood still needed to be chop or for some other arbitrary reason, we also always woke up before dawn and didn't get to bed till late because we always had endless chores or punishments to finish. I used to fall asleep standing up, literally on a daily basis. We marched around in lines, or holding on to a rope, and there was still no talking or looking at the other girls, it was very lonely. We had to haul around the Gott, a water jug that weighed so much your arms would feel like they were going to fall off and you'd want to vomit but if you dropped it you knew you were in worse trouble, we carried around many heavy things. The Gott was our water for the cabin.

The cabins have no running water or bathrooms only porta johns. They exercise you past the breaking point and then over a little, and then much more. It was torture, I can't emphasize that enough torture, we did this all day most days, unless we were in school or on shutdown. We had no free time, we weren't allowed to read or anything, everything was tightly scheduled and we would always miss our schedule and be punished although we tried in pure desperation to make them happy so they would stop. Our showers were timed, everything was timed. Hygiene wasn’t that great and there was no makeup or jewelry or of course shaving your legs, only ugly work cloths. I only mention this because it is very dehumanizing for a young girl. We had no free time whatsoever, I did not speak to another girl the entire time I was there, without staff permission, which was rare. We weren't allowed to read, that was the worst for me because I love to read. No books, how are you suppose to learn without being able to read.

School was ok when you got to go, but it wasn't very organized and there was a lot of other stuff going on, we also only went half of the school week, so we could do more important things like dig stumps out of the ground, I guess. Most left with a GED, I think they really focused on GED training, which makes it hard to get into colleges, especially if when they ask for high school credits you list a behavior modification facility. Often if something came up, like we went on shutdown or were sent to STU, the lockdown unit, we would miss school all together. Once they had us sit in a circle with our backs to each other and stare at the wall for five months only to turn around for group therapy and to be escorted to the bathroom. We had no school for those five months and five months is a long time to sit in a circle starring at a wall only to turn around for a denouncement session.

From all the restraining you are probably thinking that the girls were always acting up. I can not stress how completely not true this is. For the most part they were more like zombies than wild teenagers. I’ve done some research on prison camps and abuse and I don't believe there is a teenager girl out there that isn’t going to turn into a limp half dead dish rag in the face of no escape, constant abuse; mental, physical, emotional and sexual although not physically so, denouncement sessions, sleep deprivation, sadistic people four times her size watching her constantly and being drugged. The opposition I saw was closer to nervous breakdowns than violent defiance. There was some defiance but it was only verbal protests of the abuse, that I saw. The girls crossed the staff at the Village in really sad to watch ways, like protesting the denouncement sessions, no being molested wasn’t my fault, or saying I can’t work anymore I feel sick or I can’t stop sobbing I’m trying but I can’t stop, I’m just going to sit here and not move. Saying, “this is wrong” was enough to get you restrained, or showing any annoyance at the abuse. I don’t think I saw anyone physically fight back or even threaten too except by pulling away or as they were already being restrained and this was usually accompanied by a very believable, remember I saw many bruises, you are hurting me I can’t breath. The only time I saw anyone fight, or squirm from underneath eight gigantic adults, is when they were already being restrained. These were usually the girls who had suffered long term serious abuse and it is not surprising they would become upset when being abused again. They staff was far too eager to restrain people and unbelievably cruel and abusive in their daily treatment on the girls. I never saw anything that posed as a danger to staff or the other girls but I sure as saw them restrain people a lot, at least two or three times a week. I also thought it odd that if the girls are so dangerous that they would have them marching around with hammers, cross saws, mauls, axes and other pretty dangerous things.

I believe there is an abusive criteria for staff at the Village that they are told to follow, they show no sympathy and harass the girls constantly. I believe the idea is to keep the level of stress extremely high. There was a good deal of talk about breaking us down to be built back up although I saw no building back up, and I was there for about eighteen months. Also, I believe behavior modification involves rewarding good behavior. The punishments at the Village were completely arbitrary and rewards involved things like being allowed to use salt and pepper on your food. Staff would do things like walk around and mess up your bed and then yell at you while you tried to remake it while being timed, this is a slight example but it would happen, or something like it, twenty times a day sometimes at two in the morning, and was extremely nerve wracking. It was completely odd arbitrary stuff that basically allowed for you to be abused no matter what, and it taught you that no matter what abuse is constant. It was much like living in an extremely abusive family I believe. Not very helpful to victims of molestation, or abuse?

One of the counselors, extremely undereducated, she had a associates degree from a community college, was found on My Space to belong to a community that photographs women in bondage. There were many pictures of young women in bondage on her website. In another instance, a director of the girls side, was arrested for driving extremely drunk, I believe she tried to back down a highway entrance ramp and hit another car. It turned out she was an alcoholic.

Peninsula Village of course, won't let you talk to your parents except after I think it was six months for me, even then just by phone with a family therapist on conference call so if you break out of the party line and say “please get me out it’s a nightmare” large orderlies can appear and march you back for more abusive indoctrination. They also read your mail. They laugh at you when you say you want a lawyer. Your parents have of course been told you are a lying manipulator and not to believe you and that you just want to come home so you can go out with boys and smoke pot. Kids wet the bed because they were too scared to ask to go to the bathroom at night, either that or all the abuse was manifesting in weird ways. I wouldn't believe it except I lived it and I swear on my life everything I said is 150% true.

I have lasting scars from this experience, I have nightmares almost every night, not always about the village just in general, that the world is a horrible place and all the scary fascist people are going to eat me and everything I care about and I'm going to be completely at there mercy. Besides the nightmares sometimes I shake uncontrollably if I am frightened or nervous, it is very embarrassing and is not helpful at work or in school. I have finally gotten over my overwhelming social anxiety enough that I am well on my way too having a college degree and have a life of my own. The Village taught me nothing other than how to be cowed and subservient and to think it was ok when someone abuses me, I still am completely incapable of making eye contact with other human beings. The Village teaches you to give in to peer pressure and let your self be influenced by those around you even if they are going against what you think is ethical. I can’t emphasize enough how bad Peninsula Village is. I was amazed that we had no rights while in there. I asked to speak to a lawyer or someone from the outside, I heard girls ask to have the police called repeatedly, and they laughed at us.  Therapy at PV is a horrible lie. They take abused girls and tell them that they deserve abuse. It's the daily mantra there, how everything is your fault, your rape, your parents problems, your anorexia, your life in foster care. I never got to talk to another girl the entire time I was there, other than with asked permission and staff listening, even then it was just about mandatory things, like, put the piece of wood down here. I can understand how people are taken in by Peninsula Village, from the outside it looks ok, my parents trusted and had no idea that such things even exist in America, they believed as I did that it was a safe and caring program that would help their daughter like most school and health programs. People don't believe that something this insane, this Gulag like, would exist in America. No-one sees it from the inside except the daily staff and the girls really and us they do so much to discredit and keep down that we do not believe anyone will believe us or care. I feel as if I have just recently woken up from Peninsula Village’s nightmare and it has been seven + years. It is an evil, horrible place that should be shut down and they should have any licensing stripped from them and be brought up on child abuse charges.

I am sorry it has taken me so long to report PV but I was still very young when I was freed from there. I was also embarrassed, traumatized and I had no support in reporting the Village. I am still afraid of the social stigma and of the Village itself. It is hard for me not to believe that people can’t show up at my door, proclaim that I have some sort of disorder, and carry me off to a room with heavy doors and no contact with the outside world, never to be heard from again. Your organization is against such things and protects people from them. What can be done to fix this horror? Why is this legal, how can they isolate and torture minors? I know girls are still suffering there! I reported PV to the Tennessee Child Protection Agency and they said that they had heard PV had cleaned up their act. This is blatantly untrue. There are a variety of websites and even a book, very recently written or posted, by parents of PV survivors or the girls themselves that prove PV has changed none of it’s abusive practices, their website itself proves they are up to their same old game. I also reported PV to the local Tennessee police and they completely ignored me. Someone needs to investigate PV and they would see what I am saying is true. Again I officially swear that everything I have said here is completely true to the best of my knowledge and I would be more than happy to swear this in court. I would not be afraid of any form of liable issues because I know what I saw and experienced to be true, I am only afraid of social stigma in relation to my work and school and of PV itself.

Here are the requirements to be a PV counselor I took off the Covenant Health website job search:

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1/20/2007

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PROGRAM COUNSELOR

Job Code: 17673

Location: PENINSULA VILLAGE

Department: Girl's Outdoor Program

Description: Full Time Position: Four days/ three nights.

Requirements: Social services degree preferred, but H.S. diploma with experience will be considered.

Duties: Work in the outdoor setting with patients in a residential facility. Provide safety, supervision and therapy to adolescents in our care. Need extreme flexibility with scheduling and extensive availability.

Covenant Health is committed to a safe and healthy work environment. Therefore, employment is subject to a successful background check and drug screen. Also, a credit check may be performed on applicable positions that deal with handling money. EOE

Education: High School Diploma/GED

 

Here are the admission criteria for PV I took of the Peninsula Village website, obviously girls who are admitted after undergoing sexual abuse or a traumatic experience do not need to be tortured and have daily abusive therapy with counselors who may or may not have a high school diploma:

Admission Criteria

Patients come to Peninsula Village with a wide range of problems, diagnoses and symptoms including, but not limited to the following:

Depression, Anxiety, and other Mood Disorders

Alcohol and/or drug abuse/dependency

Disordered conduct and oppositional behavior

ADD/ADHD

Effects of traumatic experience

Disrespect of adult authority

Inability to tolerate frustration or boredom

Unhealthy self-centeredness

Unwillingness to adhere to conventional values/standards

Inability to behave independently and autonomously

Self-mutilation and/or other self-harming behaviors

Pattern of excessive passivity and clinging dependency in relationships

Eating disorders that are medically stable

Mood disorders

Behavioral disorders

Character pathologies

Difficulties in school environments

Sexual abuse issues

 

 

Exclusionary Criteria

Peninsula Village is unable to help every adolescent. Some problems that we cannot treat are:

Intelligence below the average range (Full Scale IQ below 90)

History of fire setting and pyromania

Sexual Offenders / Sexual Disorders

History of chronic/severe physical aggression including use of weapons

Physical or medical condition that would hinder participation in vigorous, outdoor activities (diabetes, epilepsy)

Homicidal intent at time of admission

Psychotic Disorders

Pregnancy (females)

thank you

[ZenAgent]

Survivor's Report #3:  Peninsula Village

Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement.  I want to remain anonymous for now. I was sent to Peninsula Village back in Sept. 2004  Many things were horrible... just to name a few for now, because I do not want them to know who I am if they read this because I am working on trying to form a large lawsuit against them so yea but here are a few things I experienced there for about 6 months:

 

Being Physically restrained about twice daily on average where there was no reason for it whatsoever. An alarm kind of like a car alarm except much louder would be turned on and about 20 staff would come running into the unit and all basically jump me, throw me to the ground and sit on me to hold me down.... a few times they really hurt me.. I remember one instance in which they performed Xrays on my jaw and wrist from my restraint.

 

I would also be mechanically restrained when I "struggled" meaning when I was trying to escape my restraint because they were hurting me. I would be tied down to a bed and sometimes they would leave me there for hours or just about the whole day. If I had to go to the bathroom they would put a bedpan underneath me. disgusting. Also if I fell asleep they would come kick my bed and tell me to wake up. they said that being tied down was a punishment and not a treat of naptime. But it was a no wonder I was so tired. They had me way over medicated. I was put on Abilify for my agitation.. Every time they would restrain me, they would increase my dose.  I was up to 120 Mg daily. But thats not all... when I was restrained they would give me large dose shots in my ass of Klonopin, Haldol, Thorazine, etc. They would make me so tired I could have slept for days.  We had to eat on our beds, we didn't even get to sit at a table.  Bathroom times were on their terms... If we had to go when it was not bathroom break, we had to wait, and if it was a real emergency they would allow it but then you would get consequenced for it later on in consequence group. Who ever thought of being consequenced for having to use the bathroom?   We were not allowed to talk except in group therapy or if we raised our hand and were actually called on.  You had to sit on your bed with your back up against the wall. If you got off your bed, you would be restrained.

 

There were level systems which always made me feel bad about myself.  When you were restrained they would strip you of your clothing and make you wear hospital gowns until you contracted to move  up to wearing scrubs then contracting to wear your clothes.  The first day i got there I was restrained and in my restraint I vomited and they made me lay in it.  My face was covered in it for about 2 hours.

 

In my stay there i must have been restrained over 60 times and they were all completely unnecessary.  We were forced to participate in their AA or NA groups. i never had an addiction problem but they said I did. they said I liked tranqs.   they were wrong, i never had one of them in me until I came to PV.  i was forced to participate in Medicine wheel groups in which we had to learn and were tested on some kind of Native American Stuff.

 

The director of my unit at the time was not licensed he was actually denied by the board of health so he was misrepresenting himself. He told me once, "if you think you are smart enough to get kicked out of here and escape it here you are wrong"   I would not see my dad for weeks sometimes over a month.  My family therapy sessions would get taken away from me in which I could not talk to my dad much less see him

` if when i was talking to my dad and i tried to tell him how bad it was there they would end the family therapy session right there. they also told him I was incompetent and did not know what I was talking about when he heard me tell him about my bruises.  I was covered in bruises from the head down.  My mail was monitored by staff both outgoing and incoming.  That is all i am going to say for now.

 

The reason i was sent to PV was for PTSD from my mother passing away when i was 14.  If i would cry about it, they told me I was attention seeking.  My PTSD worsened alot from being at PV. to this day I still have nightmares and flashbacks from that place.

[ZenAgent]

Family Report #1

By L.W.

 

Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement.  My granddaughter was incarcerated by a family member at Peninsula Village for six months just before her seventeenth birthday and I can not say one good thing about the place. The week before she went there she visited with her grandfather and me. She was a joy to have around and I can not imagine this lovely child in an environment as abusive as Peninsula Village. We were told that we would not be able to see or talk to her until "her treatment was finished" and that this would be at least one year. We were also told that she would not be allowed to have her cello to play while she was there and that music was not allowed at all. She has played the cello since she was in fourth grade and music has always been a very important part of her life. I did not understand why she (or any child) would have ever been placed in a facility that did not allow music or literature to be a significant part of the program. I did not know that places like Peninsula Village exist in America. I called repeatedly to find out how my granddaughter was and my calls were essentially ignored. I could not get ANY information about her at all.  At one time a man who identified himself as the director of the girls section called me and kept me on the phone for at least fifteen minutes telling me what a great place Peninsula Village is. He would not answer any of my questions directly, and I hung up the phone more confused than before.

 

 I called Covenant Health who owns Peninsula Village after my granddaughter was restrained in front of her mother for "crying too much". Imagine my agony when I saw pictures of adults sitting on her to restrain her. I did not realize Covenant Health is not a hospital. It is a business. I asked to talk with the Administrator and treated rather like an idiot. I was told I would need to discuss this with the administrator of PV and they seem very surprised that the administrator had not returned my calls.  I was told that some one should have investigated what had happened to her but only arrived at dead ends when I searched for an agency that oversees places like Peninsula Village. The sheriff's dept in Blount Co told me that PV had their own security and they could not investigate an assault on a child that takes place there. My daughter also called Blount County to report the assault and was told that they could only investigate if "a staff member of PV was assaulted." I also contacted my senator and congressmen without a reply. Surely there has to be an organization that looks into these matter but to date I have not been able to find out who, or what.  (Webmaster Note:  There are no third-party regulations on these facilities.  There is no government agency regulating the industry.  Contact your representative and as them to support/sponsor House Bill H.R. 1738, The End Institutionalized Abuse of Children Act, it will regulate the industry and be a first step towards stopping the abuse and torture of children and families.)

 

In the end, all my granddaughter came out of PV with is a sad case of post traumatic stress disorder. She and her mother have frequent nightmares now about PV. It is apparent that damage was done during her stay at PV. She will never be the same child.

At quite an expense to all of us she is out and will graduate with her class this June.

[ZenAgent]

Pickett
User

Re:Peninsula Village - 2007/01/05 07:37

I know exactly what your daughter has been through. I am an eighteen year old male who went there at 15 for heroin addiction. During my time there, the staff would continually mess with our heads and our emotions. Most often to get a reaction out of us. My father died 3 months into my treatment, and i was denied the "privelage" to go to his funeral. This has haunted me to the present day. Doubtless your daughter knew the head pshychologist there. In my opinion, the most corrupt of all the staff. I remember an incident where he told a crying boy in group therapy, "Aww, you want your mommy? Well too bad, your gonna be here a very long time." It also occured to me that the kids who had wealthier parents and therefore better insurance, have a much longer stay than those who dont. They gotta pay for the sedatives they shoot in your ass when you question their motives ya know. Not to mention the bed straps. Luckily, my stay only lasted 8 months because my parents couldnt afford to pay anymore. My heart goes out to your daughter and yourself. I know exactly what she has been through. If you would like my number or a way to contact me, feel free to ask.

[ZenAgent]

expvstaff
User

 Re:Peninsula Village - 2007/11/26 06:15

wow...been reading here and on fornitz for about 2 hours. I worked at the Village for several years in the early 90's in both the boys cabin and STU programs.

I oriented new kids to STU, did strip searches, wore the buzzer, participated in group therapy sessions, sat in treatment teams, worked with family therapists, slept in a cabin (hell, I actually helped BUILD one), drove a van to AA/NA meetings, chased down kids who eloped, restrained dozens of kids, and occasionally helped train staff to do the same. I guess I'm the enemy here.

I worked with nurses who abused prescription and IV drugs, line staff who left work at night to drive to Knoxville bars and then came back to work at 3am unnoticed, staff who met upstairs in the YC to screw at night, a counselor with a scab on the back of her hand from the back of her teeth (she got that from sticking her fingers down her throat to make herself vomit), aggressive STU staff who were quick to hit the buzzer to initiate a PCI (one kid called it "Patient Carpet Introduction"), and professional staff who seemed to set up line staff against each other at times, with the end result being a bunch of staff who were just as f&^ked up as some of the kids.

I also worked with incredibly talented and gifted staff members who truly made an effort to help damaged kids understand what they needed to do to turn things around. Peglar was one of those guys. I don't recognize him, from the way a few of you have described him. He was a caring, deeply intuitive guy who had a knack for reaching some of the toughest girls. Of course, I am talking about the early 90's, and he worked in the girls cabin program. Some of those other staff are long gone, as they recognized the tide of changes that came about in the mid-90's.

I felt at the time that much of what we did (I did) was helpful but in the back of my mind, I always wondered what happened after kids were discharged. Some of them made it...we heard from them and trumpeted their successes. I attended reunions a couple of times in the early 90's. One kid actually walked the Appalachian Trail after discharge. Others just disappeared. Sometimes I read about their deaths...two boys that I worked with committed suicide. One was an Army vet who went to Iraq in 1991 and was playing Russian Roulette. The paper said that "it was unclear if ____ knew that the gun was loaded." I thought damn...if you're in the Army, you KNOW if the gun is loaded. He didn't care.

Standards for staff were pretty high until Covenant came in around 1994 or 95. They wanted to save money and if I remember, they cut the starting hourly rate for STU counselors by a buck and dropped the college graduate requirement. This immediately resulted in a less-talented pool of applicants and created tension among staff when they realized that the old guys, doing the exact same job, got paid a dollar an hour more. I left a while later.

I took another job (not in the industry) and a few months later, a kid that I worked with at the Village saw me. I remembered him and said hello. He confronted me. He told me that he was not a bad kid but had made some bad decisions and that the Village had f^&ked him over and it took all he had to get out of there somewhat intact. He was angry but controlled. He made eye contact and measured his words carefully. He really needed to say what he said. I think I mumbled "thanks and I hope things are better for you now" or something like that. That's been 10 years, and I still remember it.

Someone was asking about the placement of the pee tubes. When I was there, the pee tubes were at individual cabins and were rarely moved. I helped a group dig a new site once...the bottom of each hole was covered with gravel, the tubes were placed, and the rest of the dirt was replaced. Occasionally we'd throw lime in the tube to help with the smell. The boys would use the bathhouse bathrooms when we could, and the pee tubes at night. I don't remember ever punishing a kid or harassing them for waking me up at night to go pee. Not saying it didn't happen, but I don't recall doing it myself.

I never saw anything that would constitute sexual abuse by any staff member. There was a program director (the one who crashed her car into a KPD cruiser on I-640) who was gay and seemed to hire a lot of gay women (and once really upset a counselor for implying that SHE was gay) but I don't recall any concerns or allegations at the time (early 90's) about that kind of thing.

That's all for now.

[ZenAgent]

expvstaff

PCI stands for Patient Crisis Intervention. I'm dating myself by using that term because TCI training and certification came in after I left. PCI's were immediate responses to behaviors determined to put a kid in danger to himself and/or others. Sometimes in STU a PCI might be initiated with only 2 staff on the unit, if a kid began assaulting a staff or peer. STU staff wore an electronic buzzer that sounded an alarm to alert staff inside and out of the need to respond. The PCI might begin in a short-staffed situation, but quickly there would be enough staff available to safely secure the patient. We were trained to have one person on each limb and specifically trained to never place any type of force on a restrained patient's back with a knee or by sitting on a kid. That said, I was involved in some restraints where, while waiting for more help to respond to the buzzer, I used my legs to help keep a kid on the ground or laid across him to do the same. There might be only 2 of us on the unit at the time, and that was the best we could do. We knew that help was on the way and so we would initiate the restraint at the moment the danger (or perceived danger) presented itself. We were trained to do that immediately so that kids understood that there were consequences for getting physical. Anyway, once other staff responded, we would move into what you described, with one staff on each limb with another securing the head. Sometimes a patient would bang his head or attempt to bite staff (I received a few of those) and so it was important to keep the head safe.

(Note from Zen: This former counselor is unfamiliar with TCI and describes PV's former physical restraint method, the PCI.  Unknown to him, PCI is still practiced at PV and has been documented - a face down restraint with five counselors involved.  Unlike what the former staffer remembered from his PCI experiences, the more recent documented restraint clearly shows one female counselor squatting on the back of the restrained patient, who was gasping and claiming difficulty in breathing.)

[ZenAgent]

From a PV parent LiveJournal blog

23rd-Nov-2005 06:45 pm - Holiday Bombshell

"I drove a round trip to Knoxville to pick up Dxxx for his Holiday furlough. That went really well. I rented a 5 liter mustang, and I made the 600 miles from my doorstep, back to my doorstep in 10 hours and 30 minutes. That included picking up Dxxx, 2 gas stops, and a lunch stop. Dxxxx and I had some good conversations, and overall it was as pleasant as a 600 mile trip could be.

When I got home, I immediately began to inject the turkeys with seasoning. While I was doing that, I booted up to check my email and got a very disturbing email from Steve Petty, the administrator of Peninsula Village. Here is what it read:

"Kxxxx and Jxxx, I hope you are both doing well and preparing for a nice holiday weekend.

It just occurred to me yesterday that I did not receive a response from you to my October 30 e-mail below, where I made the clarification of my intent during our conversation on Family Day. So I am writing to ask if that clarification was clear to you and if you are planning to pay Dxxxxx’s November and December payments on December 1 as I believe we agreed to. Please let me know.

It is absolutely the last thing that I wish to talk with you about, but if you are not able to make those two months current, then we need to begin preparing Dxxxxx for a discharge around December 5. As you know, our clinical staff does not believe that Dxxxx is ready to come home and we certainly hope that this is not necessary. But if it has to be, then we want to be fair to Dxxxx and begin preparing him immediately. I look forward to hearing back from you today if at all possible."

He didn't even sign off the email with his name.

Here was my response to Lucia, the Family Therapist, who was cc'd on the mail.

"Lucia,

I just walked in 40 minutes ago from a round trip to Knoxville to get this email and the one from Steve.

I am really trying to keep my cool and not pick up the phone, because my response would most likely be too harsh to deliver to anyone on the eve of a holiday.

However, I will tell you that this is the most grotesquely unprofessional business communication I have ever experienced. EVER, and I have been around the block several times.

If Steve Petty had even the smallest indication of possessing a backbone, or even more appropriate, the equipment that should be at the bottom of where the backbone should be, he would have met me at the YC this morning at 9am when I picked up Dxxx. Even that would have been mildly inappropriate, but never the less, at least it would have indicated the absence of cowardice.

I can’t begin to explain how upset I am, and at so many levels. The use of the venue of email, the timing, the content and first and foremost, the misguided attempt to be personal and empathic because of the holiday makes me nauseated.

My first reaction is to not even bother to bring Dxxx back to Knoxville.

This email doesn’t even express my discontent. I am trying so hard right now not to pick up the phone, and to take a deep breath and let my anger subside. But I felt compelled to let somebody at PV know how I am feeling, and quite frankly, you are the only one I trust.

You can forward this to whomever you feel appropriate to receive it. I hope this does not spoil your holiday, because I know you worry about Dxxxx.

Kxxxx"

I have to go to dinner now, but I will log in later and fill in the rest of the details.

[ZenAgent]

Follow-up, "23rd-Nov-2005 10:10 pm - The rest of the story"

Just to lay out some background on the email from Steve Petty. He is not involved in the therapy of the patients, he is the administrator, the money guy that reports up to corporate, Covenant Health Care. Dxxxx's treatment is about 9K per month. We originally thought he would be there about 9 months. He just finished his 14th month. Jxxx borrowed from Sallie Mae for the first six months, sent in as much cash as she could. We had about 60K paid and owed PV about $70K on our PV account on October 30. That was invoiced to November 30th. I sat down with Steve Petty at family day and wrote him a personal check for $15K out of my checkbook, arrange for another 15K in a joint loan with Jxxx and applied for a 2nd insurance payment for $8600. BCBS will only pay 30 days a coverage year for inpatient mental health. That is another whole issue I will address later. Steve told me that if we would keep the balance at $35K by keeping monthly charges up to date until his discharge, that he would work out a payment plan to pay the balance after Dxxx's release. That was agreeable to me, although it is still a painful pill to swallow. He was friendly and mild mannered during this conversation. I followed up our meeting with an email to clarify what we had discussed. That was the last communication until today.

I am absolutely sickened by his email. To send that the day before a holiday, no less by email and the day he knew I was picking up Dxxxx for the holiday was cowardly and inexcusable. To inform us that "if" we did not make a payment, that he was going to arrange Dxxx's discharge in one week is deplorable.

I am unclear about what to do, but I feel compelled to inform him that I fully understand the risk that he is exposing himslelf and Peninsula to from a point of professional responsibility and liability.

I have to sleep on this, but I am going to screw his spineless, sorry ass to the back of his chair. Of course, not literally, but with words and legal positioning. I had every intention of making Dan's bill good, but now, I feel no motivation to do so.

Happy Thanksgiving

[ZenAgent]

girls in PV not! "BAD GIRLS"
Written by PV is a money making scam on 2007-04-29 19:39:21

Here is the list with punctuation so readable, sorry
Here is who I was in with! Hardly hardened criminals or Bad Girls! Again I swear everything I say here is true, to the best of my knowledge. 
 
We had the anorexic pianist, who's mom was an alcoholic;
 
We had the anorexic overachiever asian girl, not a stereotype sorry, but she was, I think she had chemical depression, sad for no reason type;
 
The state kid with good grades on the basketball team with Jehovah's witness grandma, before mentioned; 
 
15 year old girl who lived with aunt and cousins had been molesting her, also no drug use at all. Aunt kicked her out when she told her she had been molested by her sons, nineteen year old neighbor guy took her in, she ran home, aunt turned her over to PV through state. Cousins molesting her for sure. 
 
Molestation case with pregnancy, that was a cute story, abusive family.
 
A seventeen year old party girl someone had told Ruffee's were cool and she woke up naked on a school playground to cops. Again do we notice a sexual abuse theme? a lot of the girls, it was the main problem. 
 
thirteen year old, divorce situation, wasn't doing well in school, had written some odd stuff in diary, father seized custody and put her in PV.
 
thirteen year old ate some aspirin, 
 
two state kids who had run away and ran the gauntlet, the "prostitutes" ones story ended with her having the crude kicked out of her and being left in a ditch.
 
Girl grandfather had molested, parents put in PV 
 
The gay occasional pot smoker with Christian parents, don't come out to the Christians!! 
 
Seventeen year old rich cocaine dealer kind of, in college all ready, an arts school, very very pretty, some old rich guy had gotten her into it, she thought she was cool or something. 
 
The state kid, didn't do any drugs, fourteen I believe, they restrained ALL the TIME, and left in the straight jacket, had already been there like two years, she was normal just had unfit parents and ran away and caused a fuss often, not violent just stubborn upset stuff.
 
Kids with semi unfit parents who had run away from them and foster care, the one would run home then run back to foster care, so they both reported her as a run away. the last time she ran away from foster care, straight home, and they caught her in her bedroom. She always ran home.
 
Another ran away to boyfriends, in foster care unfit parents, she liked Danzig and was practicing witch craft. Danzig is bad but should not be enough to get you put in a prison camp. That really is most of them I can remember, oh chemical depression kid some

[ZenAgent]

WATE-TV's forum on mental health, following the station's segment on PV:

Re: mental health
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2007, 06:48:47 PM »
   
I was in the Hospital when I was younger. A friend of mine was in both the Hospital and the Village around the same time.

I don't really feel like going into the long story of it all, but suffice to say, it wasn't a positive experience. Many people I know who went to such places come out feeling like a tortured prisoner of war or something.

It is a glaring example of how primitive our collective academic understanding of the human mind actually is; that these "qualified", "well trained" "professionals" can take a troubled child and actually make things so much worse.

[ZenAgent]

WATE-TV's forum on mental health, following the station's segment on PV:

lambertfan
Newbie

Re: mental health
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2007, 05:05:49 AM »
   
i know just what you ppl are talking about. my son was in (Peninsula) when he was younger, they lied to us about when we could see him. so after we had not heard from him or them, we went their and demanded to see him. he was scared to death. amoung other things he told us went on there. that place needs to be shut down! particualrly the doc that was there liked to take naked pics of kids! We had it investigated and get this the only thing that was done to the perv was he was not allowed to work with children anymore, oh i won't say his name but i will give you his ints. Dr. D D,maybe some of you will know who i am talking about. and i am not even sure that i believe he was banned from working with children!
it is sad though that thoese places are run under govt. funding!

[stoodoodog]

WATE-TV's forum on mental health, following the station's segment on PV:

lambertfan
Newbie

Re: mental health
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2007, 05:05:49 AM »
   
i know just what you ppl are talking about. my son was in (Peninsula) when he was younger, they lied to us about when we could see him. so after we had not heard from him or them, we went their and demanded to see him. he was scared to death. amoung other things he told us went on there. that place needs to be shut down! particualrly the doc that was there liked to take naked pics of kids! We had it investigated and get this the only thing that was done to the perv was he was not allowed to work with children anymore, oh i won't say his name but i will give you his ints. Dr. D D,maybe some of you will know who i am talking about. and i am not even sure that i believe he was banned from working with children!
it is sad though that thoese places are run under govt. funding!

The part of this story about not being able to see your child is familiar to me. In a recent letter to Congressman Davis, I recounted the story of my first trip to PV on the advice of my attorney to try to visit my daughter. I'll just copy and paste from that.

On June XXth 2006 Mr. Xxxxxxxx told me to take a trip (unannounced) out to PV and to ask to see my daughter. If they told me I could not see her, his instructions were to ask "why not?" I did this and was confronted by Ms Xxxx and Ms Xxxx. I was told to never, EVER show up at PV without notice and something like a visit with my daughter would need to be scheduled in advance. I requested a visit with her for the following day. I was then told by Ms Xxxx that a visit would need to be scheduled "at least two weeks in advance". When I asked if she was okay, they both giggled at me. I ventured then to ask if she were alive, and the giggling became even more intense. I stood in the FT's office stunned that I was being treated this way by two adults-two adults who were supposed to be professionals and an integral part of my daughter's "treatment" and the "treatment team". Xxxxxxx had only been there for three days, but I was beginning to realize that Peninsula Village was NOT the summer camp style facility run by a qualified and highly trained team of professionals that I had seen on their website, it was in fact a form of evil that I could not begin to imagine.

[Anonymous]

This was posted by Jersey Girl over on Cafety on page 10, here is the link to Cafety, it also has a lot of good info

http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... 11&id=1008

or you can just Google Peninsula Village, the Cafety site is just a few down

I thought this survivors post had some good description of just what goes on in PV

 "My admission day to the village, from the beginning i knew i was in for a wild ride.
It started with being escorted to the Village. I arrived in Knoxville and had one of those bad gut instinction feelings.
I knew before I walked in this was not going to be pleasant.
I was taken to the nurses station where I met with a nurse and then was brought up to STU now known as GAAU ((girls admission and assessment unit)). the place in itself is depressing.

 You walk through the doorways of hell. I was shoved into a metal chair in front of the staffs desk.
 I signed my life away. when i went to ask a question, i was shut down.
then they said that I needed to be strip searched. my immediate reaction was fuck you you pervs.
They led me into the bathroom where I had to strip all of my clothing except my underwear.
Then they told me to pull my underwear to the side, bend over and cough to see if i was hiding anything in a territory that was private.
I was crying and was told to quit being dramatic.
 I sat my practically naked ass on the cold floor when they told me to stand up, strip completley and take a shower in which the shower stall had half of a shower curtain.
 they told me it was to moniter me. this shocked me.
 i had never had anyone monitor my shower time. 

with that i guess it infuriated them and two of the staff grabbed me by the arms and led me straight into the time out room.
the room was bare. i had seen this shit in the movies but never actually experienced one.
 little did i know that that would become very familiar.
I was told to sit with my back against the wall and not to talk. i needed to think about my actions. i was panic sticken.
my anxiety was going through the roof.
I threw up all over the floor in there which i was later made to clean up.
then they asked me awhile later if i was willing to cooperate.
i shrugged my shoulders and they showed me to my cubicle aka my bed.
I was told once again to sit up straight with my legs crossed and not to look at anyone.
If i could not follow this i would be escorted back to time out.

Well I was exhausted, so i leaned over onto my elbow. Some fat chick who was a patient and apparently one of the "trusted" saw me do this. she asked for permission to confront the new girl for laying down.
I was like uh so what?! she was granted permission and she called a group.
everyone stood. i was shocked i didnt know these robot patients were able to move.
everyone was like a zombie. I didnt stand, for lack of this phenomenon not being explained to me.
i was barked at the stand whenever group is called.
she confronted me and said thats all.
 everyone sat back down simultaneously. Drones i tell you.
Later on, i didnt give a shit so i laid down. fuck that fat bitch.

Staff came over and grabbed me by the arms and escorted me to the time out cubicle this time instead of the room because apparently the room was occupied.
I was told to sit there not move and not talk and to stare at the wall of the cubicle.
 Well after awhile of sitting there, they gave me my meal which i ate on the floor.
when i finished eating i stood up to go back to my coffin of a bed.
 Next thing I knew, I was grabbed, kicked in the back of the knees and fell to the floor.
an extremely loud, obnoxious alarm went off.
I was panic sticken worse than ever. what the hell is happening???
down on the ground I lay, face down with people sitting on me holding me down. one or two holding my legs, one on each arm, one sitting on my lower back, and one holding my head down when i tried to lift it up to breathe.
I thought i was going to die.
Felt my lungs collapsing.
Still in shock, I vommitted once again.
my face shoved back into it. ugh.
What seemed like forever, they then picked me up, about 10 people.
they carried me like some animal back into the forbidden time out room.
 i was stripped of my clothes by the staff and then dressed into hospital gowns with old blood stains on them.
this is all while still being held down.
 later on, i was released and sent back to my bed. then there was group.
 i had to introduce myself and tell why i was in gowns.
i had no idea why i was so i made some shit up.

later on there were showers and then some other sort of groups.
 i was told to make my bed just like every one elses.
i didnt know what the standards for intricate bed making were so i made it like i did at home.
 i was yelled and criticised for that by some 23 year old counselor.
finally after other bullshit, we went to sleep. if only i had been aware that bed time was the only semi peaceful time i would experience for the next 6 months.
damn


what a day what a day
 
Jersey Gurl"
 
 
For the record, as another PV survivor, everything in PV is timed and monitered, i.e. watched closely
bathroom time, shower time, getting from point A to B
there is no free time at all
the teens have no time to read, or do anything but be abused 24-7,
no free time at all!
everything is scheduled and over scheduled
they use going over time as an excuse to abuse the kids
the times are so short that someone always goes over,
everyone is punished together
it's just another way they keep the level of stress at non stop
you get very little time to use the restroom and you have to tell them what it is you have to do
to quote Jersey Gurl over on Cafety again

"there is no such word in PVs vocabulary such as privacy.
 It is completely invaded and is taken away from you.
For instance and I know this is a nasty subject but it seems important, when you had your period, and you used the bathroom, you had to wrap up your used feminine product and then show it out the stall door before you could flush your toilet.
That is just fuckin wrong man.
Our bathroom times were on their terms to and timed.
Before you went into the bathroom you had to hold up either one finger for peeing, two fingers for 2, and some weird hand gesture if you needed to also change your feminie hygiene product.
Jeez I dont know but being timed on your time to piss or whatever you needed to do, thats just flat out ridiculous.
you had 1 minute to pee, 2 minutes for #2 and an extra 30 seconds if you needed to change."
sorry for the grossness but it is important"

Here is another quote from a survivor called Milkblood over on Cafety:

"I was in Peninsula Village for 8 months in 2003-2004.
I was in the lockdown unit for the first 4 months and in the cabins (in the winter) for the remainding 4 months. The lockdown unit is one room with 12 beds in it.
 You are not allowed to look up from the floor at anyone entering or leaving the unit.
 You are not allowed to look at other patients or talk to them.
 You have to sit in the middle of your bed all day, back to the wall, no sleeping, eyes open.
If you are seen by another patient breaking a rule (which i never understood as you aren't supposed to be looking at other patients) you are then confronted by the whole group and are given a consequence.
When I was on STU (the lockdown unit) I was restrained countless times.

The very first time I was restrained on the bed, I had these huge mitts on my hands to keep myself from picking at my fingers. I will not deny that I had been harming myself by picking at my fingers.
 The nurse on charge put bandages on all of my fingers.
 As I was in my bed with these huge mitts on and bandages, I was touching the ends of my fingers to see if the blood was still flowing to the tips of my fingers as the bandages were way to tight.
A staff saw me doing this and literally jerked me onto the floor as those horrible sirens went off.
They hoisted me up onto the bed after about 5 minutes of holding me down (I wasn't resisting as i was terribly frightened).
 As they were strapping my legs and arms into the bed net I remember (and will never forget) the words that the staff said to me.
She said "We are not doing this to hurt you." ALl i could think about at that time was why am i being strapped to this bed.
I will never forget these moments.

In the cabins we live in a small cabin with 12 bunk beds.
We slept in our own sleeping bags as it was winter.
There was no electricity in the cabin.
There was one lightbulb over the staffs desk that was lit by a car battery.
The cabin was heated by one woodstove in the center of the cabin. We were forced to clean every place we visited, (the YC, the bathhouse, the cabin) numerous times.
If there were over 5 specks of dirt found in the location, we were made to clean it all over again.
Repeat process if more dirt was found.
Sometimes we spent the whole day cleaning the YC while the staff sat in the chair and watched.

One patiend that was there was always vomiting her food up.
She thew up in the woodpile and they made her clean it up.
She even resorted to vomiting in the vent in the school bathroom.
 After a month it was discovered and they just ended up giving her a grocery bag to carry around and vomit in whenever she wanted.
IF she vomited in the bag she had to carry it around with her until the staff said she could dispose of it.
Is this sanitary??? NO.
 Eventually this girl passed out in the toilet and was taken to the hospital, probably from severe dehydration.
Girls were put in straight jackets and walked around all day.
We had to carry around bags of sand as a consequence.
Our consequences as a group got so backed up that we had to wake up at 5am and do over 200 push ups for weeks.
 I was pretending to be asleep one night and I overheard the staff making fun of a few patients.
 When i told my mom about this in treatment i was brushed off by my therapist as being manipulative and lying to get attention.

there were so many things that happened at PV that i would love to forget, as they still give me nightmares to this day.
I am 20 years old now.I have No doubt that Pv is life changing."
 
here is one from Socleansara, also from the same Cafety site:

"I went to PV in 2004. It was treatment or a girls home due to some trouble i had gotten into.
 My mom told me to play up my drug use to the judge so he would give me the option of choosing.

I went to PV and was on STU for 6 MONTHS!
not because I was a risk or because I refused the program but because I didnt have anything to talk about.
 I never had any dark seeded desire to hurt myself or run away. None of that.
I come from an upperclass family in the suburbs of Memphis... Finally after months and months of being on STU they sent me to the cabins because they needed the room on stu for someone else.
I went to the cabins and once again had nothing to talk about.

I was put on "Permanent Silence" and wasnt allowed to talk to ANYONE for months because I didnt have anything "worthwhile" to say.
I was put on question cards which they tortured me with making me use a question card to ask for extra time in the restroom and with only 3 questions a day... I didnt ask for extra time very often.

One day we were making a trail from one cabin to another and all the sudden I wasnt able to breathe.
I started having terrible chest and back pains and couldnt move.
They made me walk from one side of campus all the way to the other just to have nursing say i was fine.
Shortly after I started vomitting and was unable to hold food down for quite some time.
Once again, nursing said I was fine with out doing any tests or bloodwork.
They wrote it off as test anxiety due to my upcomming ACT test.
 My teachers tried to explain that I wasnt nervous at all and that something else could be wrong.
NO ONE LISTENED. I turned 18 and DCed AMA.

I came back to memphis and within weeks I was hospitialized on the verge of LIVER FAILURE.
I had gall stones that had come out of my gall bladder and were blocking off the duct that my liver uses to expell waste.
So all that TOXIN couldnt go anywhere.
 The doctor that treated me said had I waited a week, my liver could of ruptured and I could have gone into some kind of shock as my body poisened its self.
 Why wasnt I given the proper medical attention that I needed? Didnt my parents pay enough money?!
They told me repeatedly that if I signed myself out and left that I would "relapse" and DIE within months.
 How encouraging right!?!?! When in fact its the opposite.
 Had I stayed any longer I quite possibly could have died.
Obviously Im still very much alive. I just started my 3rd year of college, I hold down a full time job, at a bar I might add, I have my own apartment and my own car and I take care of my own bills.
A far cry from the hopeless drug addict they made me out to be.
My parents probably would have be interested to know all of these things but my family therapist didnt allow me to talk to my family often and when we did speak it was very brief and social.
I wasnt allowed to write my father at all and all of my letters home we read very carefully.
After going through them recently I have found that ALOT of what i was was blacked out with a marker.
Its only obvious that they knew from the get go that PV wasnt for me but the $$$$$ that my parents forked out was well worth the cover up.
My parents sent gifts for both of my birthdays and I never recieved them. Infact the cake she paid for for my 17th on STU was givin to everyone but me.
I was on "black out" again for not having anything "worthwhile" to say so everyone else including staff ate my cake right infront of me and I was never offered a piece. During my 14 months there I was never assisted or restrained. I never posed a threat or threatened to run. I never caused a problem for ANYONE. Why was I there for so long??? $$$$$$$ plain and simple. Im angry at the way I was treated. If there was something I could do about it I would in a heartbeat."

Here is some stuff I wrote, also over on Cafety, again just trying to give everyone an idea of what daily life/hell is like in PV, I'm PV is a money making scam over on Cafety, I also gave my statement to ISAAC, which I wish everyone else would do too.

i was thinking about the hard labor
i'm not sure anyone went into in great depth yet
it was what we did most days once out in the cabins, in STU you don’t go outside at all just sit on your beds,
We had work detail three days out of the week, two days of school with no homework.
and work detail all summer, we didn't go to school in the summer.
It was back breaking
We carried around an enormous Gott water cooler everywhere, it took two girls to carry it, i wonder how much it weighed? i looked up Gotts and the biggest one I could find on Amazon was 10 gallons, which full, i did the math, gallon to weight, would weigh about 85 pounds. That's a lot to carry around all day. I couldn't lift the thing full by myself.
it was our water supply for the cabins, again the cabins have no running water .
We cross sawed logs with an actual old fashion cross saw and were timed and punished.
It?s really hard to cross saw a log with an old fashioned cross saw.
We also mauled wood and dug stumps out of the ground. We did this a whole hell of a lot.
We had to cut enough firewood for the winter because the cabins also have no electricity, only a woodstove.
We had quotas for wood, which were ridiculously high, and we would be punished if we did not meet them
If you stopped working saying you were tired and felt ill you were consequenced then restrained.
We built things as well, and put in a big garden.
This was hard because the garden area was a mile or so away so we had to carry all the gardening tools and wheelbarrows full of manure and such out there. Don't forget the cursed Gott!
We dug up stumps and did all the grounds maintenance.
On weekends, when we weren't doing our normal forced labor schedule
We would clean everything,
Again we had no free time to read or relax or sleep in or any of that normal stuff.
we were made to exercise as consequences all the time, there are a lot of consequences in a day at the Village.
Pushups a lot, over a hundred a day at least, on a good day.
I, a thin small boned girl, had back muscles, pronounced scary back and neck muscles,
there was all this digging stumps out of the ground and turning over garden beds with pick axes, this was not your mothers gardening.

They had my group build a two story big work shed building
and tar and lay shingles in July, nothing like training anorexics and foster kids to be roofers. In July no less! It was a mess and so hot.

On the weekends, instead of work detail, they had us do aerobics.
Really hyper nonstop aerobics for hours until you felt sick as hell.
the aerobic were again on weekends.
They wouldn't let us go to sleep after working like this all day until we finished all our consequence pushup or other exercises,
I can remember standing against a wall with my knees bent till I fell over at like midnight.
I also remember having to do 200 pushups before bed, and I hadn't even done anything. Staff was just picking on me.
I was pretty cowed throughout, because I didn't want to be abused.
The exercise hurt like hell. It was torture and they used it as such.
I was really really really exhausted the entire time there.
I used to fall asleep standing up and as soon as I sat down, and I would get in all sorts of trouble for it.
Cleaning was top to toe carry all the mattresses outside scrub down the entire floor cleaning, the whole campus, every weekend.
Everything is timed of course, getting from point A to B, with a wheelbarrow full of tools and manure or roofing tiles or wood or going to the bathroom or showering or cross sawing and so on, all timed.
It was really hard work and they made it as unpleasant as possible.
It wasn't work therapy it was just work detail and it was horrible and abusive and it hurt like hell.
we were covered in dirt and sweat.

we woke up very early.
I believe 5:30am
we didn't get to bed till late often
so certainly not a full eight hours of sleep.
and they would wake us up sometimes to be drug out to the wood shed to be shown how much wood we still needed to chop or something random.

If you asked the staff to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the porta potties are a good twenty feet from the cabin, you were sure to have an unpleasant day.
this is additionally cruel as many of the medications have peeing often as a side effect.

they would with hold anything other then basic foods,
no condiments and such,
as punishment for not meeting work quotas.
staff would hype it up and brow beat us with it, it was arbitrary like everything else there really anyway.
I don't think food as a reward is an appropriate way to treat anorexics either, especially tied in with making them work past the point of all sense and abusing them
who comes up with such things?
cold showers were also a consequence and really short showers,
staff stands right out side the shower curtain too when you shower,
they also watch you dress, like they stand right there,
it's supposed to keep the anorexics from vomiting in the shower, but as they let them carry around bags of vomit, it ends up just being another way they totally invade every private aspect of being human,
like being timed and watched in the restroom.
i say the above because staff thinks they have a right to watch you in the shower so they really do, it's not they just stand there, some were worse then others in this respect, some are practically on top of you, others just keep an eye on you. Either way they stand right there.

They also very much encouraged us to become angry and look down on peers that they were picking on too.
They punish the entire group for the actions of each individual and try to breed as much anger towards the individual as possible.
often it would have no reason at all,
jill is not cross sawing fast enough, or something, we all must beat up on Jill?
Poor Jill would be cross sawing pretty damn fast too considering because she didn't want to draw staff attention!
it was just a way to keep the level of trauma high
for some reason PV thinks it needs to keep the level of trauma at non stop
they go on and on about breaking us down and such.
never saw any building back up though.


here is what I wrote about sexual abuse in relations to PV on another site
it needs to be said I think

oh and again
PV staff are Nazi sadistic monsters
and what they do is an insane stupid farce
they know this too,
having foster kids who didn't have much by way of education go to school TWO DAYS out of the week! and not letting them read for years
not to mention all the rest of the sick pointless crap that goes on in PV
it is a scam to make millions of dollars duh, you think

greed makes the evil peoples dreams come true

i can abuse foster children teenagers physically, emotionally and pretty sexually too, and make millions for it!

PV is so into sexual abuse, the emotional sexual abuse is certain, and a lot of the stuff is pretty off,
it seems like they are taking some restrained girls clothes off a lot in survivor accounts and there are real strip searches and people standing out side of showers and bathroom stalls always
Jersey gurl says in her strip search that they told her to bend over naked and cough! How is that not sexual abuse!
this is to some girl who was in PV because of PTS because her mother died!
they stand right outside the stall door, which you have to leave open
 every time you go to the bathroom and time you and you get consequenced for going over your time
could that be anymore Nazi abusive degrading and horrific?

the teens have no privacy, any privacy they have is invaded completely rightly away, third or fourth day all the girls have a complete gyn exam, this is after being restrained for a few hours and strip searched and made to shower with staff standing right out side the curtain and treated more abusively then you ever have been before, shower curtains at PV are your typical see through pink plastic ones,
staff saw us all naked everyday,
they stand in the bathroom as you change and do all the other things people have to do without clothes.
Not to mention you sleep on wooden cubicle cots with no fronts in a medium sized open room with staff there breathing on you all the time, it's horrible, and so sexually abusive, not to mention the verbal sexual abuse in group.

It's like if some adult was able to watch you sleep, shower, go to the bathroom and beat all your secrets out of you, keep you completely isolated and locked in a small room with almost total power over you.
and of course brainwash you into thinking you deserve the abuse.

again for the millionth time some one from FOSTER CARE or the police needs to get a court order and go in and interview the girls in STU right now

sorry about how horrific the above is
and it needs to be seen for how bad it is so it can be stoped

who ever came up with the entire scenario, definitely is a very sexually abusive person
there is such a total horrifically abusive invasion of every private aspect of just being human, every aspect
and it has no point, kids who are anorexic or something, that level abuse did not help them, if you take someone who is depressed and torture them they become really depressed
i think most of the girls, were really suicidal after a few months in PV

i was right we did go to school Tuesday and Thursday
not Monday Wednesday and Friday
i thought so but i read another girls post and she confirmed it
what the hell is that, they go to school two days out of the week!!!?
i knew I remembered that we always worked on Mon, Wed, Friday
we worked a lot,
and we didn't go to school in the summer
and we didn't go when we were on shut down, we were on shutdown for four or five months
although they brought us work but not that regularly,
maybe it was just on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
that's not often really
school was certainly not in the foreground at PV
it was sort of a uncommon thing,
Especially when some other trauma was going on
Which, like with all abusive situations and people, there is always trauma
they would pull us out of school too if something happened?
we also had no real take home homework
which really prepares you for college!!
not to mention listing a behavioral mod. facility as your high school
with all the school shooter hype going on right now,
makes it very very hard to get into affordable colleges
trust me I have fought my way through hell with it!!

also Jersey Chick, when I was in we saw a psychiatrist, the real doctor who prescribes medications once every six months right?
for about a minute to discuss medications?

then we saw the therapist in group once every six weeks maybe
sometimes he decided not to show or put it off for a week or two extra?
was this the same when you were in?

i had no private therapy only group therapy
i don't know why, i had good insurance?
the every six week therapist was this creepy guy with bushy hair.
very in your face and they made a big deal about it when he would come by.
I wasn't overly impressed, although levels would be changed oh wow
and then taken away again among more sobbing
there was a hell of a lot of sobbing

the rest of the time it was group therapy two or three times a day with regular daily staff, who you don't see on the website"

Also by me:

PV promoted food issues
most girls were not anorexics or bulimics but if you had thrown us a pint of icecream we would have decended on it  they focus on food as a reward every work day
its one of the only rewards we were given
it was again pretty much the only thing talked about during work detail, which is what we did the majority of the days at PV
they made a big big deal over it,
"YAY you guys earned condiments pass out the ketchup salt and pepper, good job group, reward yourself with food."
It was nuts now that i think about it.
"you guys were bad bad horrible teens and didn't earn your food today"
they did this every work day,
it was the main focus
"If you meet your work quota you get cake or sodas, cake and sodas"
cake and soda, cake and soda, cake and soda, again they repeated if you make your quota you get dessert or sodas or condiments throughout the day continously, it was pretty much all that was talked about by staff on work detail days "your not going to make your quota you bad horrible teens, no condiments if you don't make your quota"
"smack no cake and soda your a bad bulimic anorexic bad"
how the hell is that "treating" anorexia and bulimia?
seems more like torturing the anorexics and bulimics
they also took us on a field trip, a very very rare event, to Golden Corral of all places, we went on a field trip to just Golden fricken Corral, nowhere else.
everyone hit the buffet like a bunch of tortured teens out of a prison camp where they use food as a reward, they let the girls who were in there because of food problems pile their plates at the buffet too
it was nuts, 
I'm not anorexic but I was dreaming about food and I hit the fridge like one when I got out
 we were all weird about food in there. it probably killed a bulimic or anorexic or two.
it was very effective

we met the work quota's well enough to be allowed dessert rarely
i felt like Pavlov's dogs put it that way
"here cake dog cake don't you want some cake"
"well now that you mention it yes yes I do"
"no cake bad dog"
i kept waiting for them to hook up electrical wires to soda cans to shock us while they took notes.
"the teens, when presented with the proper inticement, seem willing to attempt to reach the soda even inspite of the shock up to 3.6 times, then they resort to the use of crude homemade tools, very ineresting, also it is fun to watch them twitch when shocked, hah hah hah hah"

I'm sure they would have if they could have gotten away with it.
if social services ever decided to show up for even a staff led tour it might have seemed odd. Plus why resort to shocking people when you have so many other slightly less obvious ways to abuse them."




Here is a statement from an ex PV staff members
also from the same site

"wow...been reading here and on fornitz for about 2 hours. I worked at the Village for several years in the early 90's in both the boys cabin and STU programs.

I oriented new kids to STU, did strip searches, wore the buzzer, participated in group therapy sessions, sat in treatment teams, worked with family therapists, slept in a cabin (hell, I actually helped BUILD one), drove a van to AA/NA meetings, chased down kids who eloped, restrained dozens of kids, and occasionally helped train staff to do the same. I guess I'm the enemy here.

I worked with nurses who abused prescription and IV drugs, line staff who left work at night to drive to Knoxville bars and then came back to work at 3am unnoticed, staff who met upstairs in the YC to screw at night, a counselor with a scab on the back of her hand from the back of her teeth (she got that from sticking her fingers down her throat to make herself vomit), aggressive STU staff who were quick to hit the buzzer to initiate a PCI (one kid called it "Patient Carpet Introduction"), and professional staff who seemed to set up line staff against each other at times, with the end result being a bunch of staff who were just as f&^ked up as some of the kids.

I also worked with incredibly talented and gifted staff members who truly made an effort to help damaged kids understand what they needed to do to turn things around. Peglar was one of those guys. I don't recognize him, from the way a few of you have described him. He was a caring, deeply intuitive guy who had a knack for reaching some of the toughest girls. Of course, I am talking about the early 90's, and he worked in the girls cabin program. Some of those other staff are long gone, as they recognized the tide of changes that came about in the mid-90's.

I felt at the time that much of what we did (I did) was helpful but in the back of my mind, I always wondered what happened after kids were discharged. Some of them made it...we heard from them and trumpeted their successes. I attended reunions a couple of times in the early 90's. One kid actually walked the Appalachian Trail after discharge. Others just disappeared. Sometimes I read about their deaths...two boys that I worked with committed suicide. One was an Army vet who went to Iraq in 1991 and was playing Russian Roulette. The paper said that "it was unclear if ____ knew that the gun was loaded." I thought damn...if you're in the Army, you KNOW if the gun is loaded. He didn't care.

Standards for staff were pretty high until Covenant came in around 1994 or 95. They wanted to save money and if I remember, they cut the starting hourly rate for STU counselors by a buck and dropped the college graduate requirement. This immediately resulted in a less-talented pool of applicants and created tension among staff when they realized that the old guys, doing the exact same job, got paid a dollar an hour more. I left a while later.

I took another job (not in the industry) and a few months later, a kid that I worked with at the Village saw me. I remembered him and said hello. He confronted me. He told me that he was not a bad kid but had made some bad decisions and that the Village had f^&ked him over and it took all he had to get out of there somewhat intact. He was angry but controlled. He made eye contact and measured his words carefully. He really needed to say what he said. I think I mumbled "thanks and I hope things are better for you now" or something like that. That's been 10 years, and I still remember it.

Someone was asking about the placement of the pee tubes. When I was there, the pee tubes were at individual cabins and were rarely moved. I helped a group dig a new site once...the bottom of each hole was covered with gravel, the tubes were placed, and the rest of the dirt was replaced. Occasionally we'd throw lime in the tube to help with the smell. The boys would use the bathhouse bathrooms when we could, and the pee tubes at night. I don't remember ever punishing a kid or harassing them for waking me up at night to go pee. Not saying it didn't happen, but I don't recall doing it myself.

I never saw anything that would constitute sexual abuse by any staff member. There was a program director (the one who crashed her car into a KPD cruiser on I-640) who was gay and seemed to hire a lot of gay women (and once really upset a counselor for implying that SHE was gay) but I don't recall any concerns or allegations at the time (early 90's) about that kind of thing.

That's all for now."

Here is something I wrote again:


"Here is is a quote I got out of my ethics class about rape, domination and pornography, I thought it was interesting in the context of how PV treats the kids ie. it tries to dominate every aspect of their lives and minds.
"According to MacKinnon pornography celebrates and legitimizes rape, battery, sexual harassment and the sexual abuse of children. More generally, it eroticizes the enforcement of dominance and submission that is common to all of them" ( MacKinnon 45).
If you look at it like this and watch TV for a while you realize just how sexist society today is as well.

The things that people are taught they have to be in a society have great influence on how they have to see themselves.
 It also allows them to believe one thing and do something else completely.
The way these programs work allows for sexual abuse but also allows the abusers to be competely guilt free and even respected in the society while they are allowed to put all their shame on the teens they abuse.
They disserve it because they are bad teens. I am not watching them in the shower i am disciplining them because they disserve it.

all I'm saying is legitimizing watching teens change, go to the bathroom sleep and shower while enforcing complete dominance over their ability to do anything, stand up or lay down for example, falls pretty well into the psychological reasons people rape.
PV batters the kids, it sexually abuses them, it even legitimizes rape and celebrates it.
what counts for therapy in PV far more qualifies as a sort of sick celebration of the behaviors that PV says it treats.
It promotes suicide very much in this way, it does nothing but talk about suicide in this insane cult like way, with horrible abuse and the same with drug use or self harming behaviors.
PV's "treatment" of these disorders instead promotes them, making them cult like and ritualistic.
going into long details repeatedly with bulimics about buying the food they were going to use to purge for example.

PV legitimizes rape by saying the girls who were raped or molested were responsible for it and by abusing them horribly and telling them they are worthless and bad in relation to it.
PV and all of the programs that use these sort of criteria are sexually abusing the teens in their programs.
and using the programs to justify their sexually abusing them to themselves.

rape psych 101 the rapist always says,
they were asking for it
they really like abuse, PV says this a lot
and they disserve it
Also rapists want to dominate others
hmm what does PV say about the kids it restrains constantly and watches in the bathroom, shower and changing?"

[Anonymous]

Here is a link to the Congressional Committee hearing on abuse in these facilities from the Cafety archives. Make sure to read the statement by Paul Lewis father of the victim child, victim child is dead, not just unhappy. Like I said, no over site until there are more than a couple bodies. I like how the guy to the right of Chairman Miller makes sure to point out that juvenile delinquency is very bad. That seems to be the party defense in relation to there being horrific abuse and no over site. Pretty brazenly insulting to the dead kids father sitting there, also completely outside of law. Supposedly, and this is being thrown out everywhere in the US, our government does not simply say it’s a criminal you can do whatever you want to it, cruel and unusual punishment all around. Especially not in the case of minors who were not even convicted in a court of anything. As far as I could tell from the victims father’s statement, the boy had probably been smoking pot and breaking curfew and hadn’t gotten into any trouble with the law, the parents just decided to send him off to a nice happy Utah “summer camp” with some therapy and anti pot stuff to get him back on track. Now he’s dead.

http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... &Itemid=35

Here is a list of who I was in with, people allways seem to come back with the they are bad psycho kids or something, so here is who is really in PV.

1. anorexic pianist, very nice talented girl, had developed anorexia after her alcoholic mother left the family

2. a foster kid, she was in because foster care had placed her with her aunt, girls cousins had been molesting her since she was five, she finally told her aunt, the aunt turned her back over to foster care, foster care put her in PV to help her deal with being molested, PV bills itself as a place to help the victims of sexual abuse then beats them, tortures them and brainwashes them into "taking responsibility" for the fact that they were abused

3. two foster kids who had run away from group homes back to their homes, group homes are bad, the kids would always come in with lice, foster care would also sometimes give them back to their families when a parent sobered up for a while. the one girl had run away from her family as well so they put her in PV. This is the one who ran away to her boyfriends, and was practicing witchcraft. The other girl they caught taking a shower in her moms house and put her in PV, she ran away from the group home back to her parents house were she lived half the time anyway.

4. a girl who had slept with two guys at school and the other kids were calling her names and tormenting her, she was also drinking, that was pretty much it. She's the one who jumped out of her parents car on a return trip to the Village. She was so afraid to be brought back to PV she jumped out of her parents car on the highway, she broke her hip and arm and was a one big scab. Her parents had her fixed up at the hospital and brought right over to PV anyway. I was in the lock down unit with her in all her casts, she couldn't walk. She was a normal nice ordinary girl, again she was in PV for drinking, or being drunk that was it. She wasn't doing well in school either, she wasn't suicidal before being put in PV. it was like a horror movie or something, rather than be taken back to the serial killers house the girl jumps out of a moving car, only to be taken back there BY HER FAMILY no less. poor thing, her family were a bunch of rich abusive creeps. It says how bad PV is though that this kid was willing to jump out of a moving car rather than return, i can't believe the famiy didn't take that as a indication that perhaps she wasn't just being "dramatic" or "manipulative" when she said pv was a nightmare. I think the family was a bit psycho off too.

5. anorexic over achiever asian girl, sounds like a sterotype but she was, both of her parents were very sucessful and and I think she felt extremely pressured, she was a cutter too sorry forgot. I think she had chemical depression, she was lucid and smart, she just seemed like she fely bad a lot.

6. a 15 year old little, she was short, african american kid who had gotten into an ordinary, not FOX news, fight in a group home, the other kids were really bullying her, no drugs good student, parents were drug addicts foster kid, and the state put her in PV. she was a very nice girl. she was actually doing well in school inspite of all of it before PV,

7. a little 13 year old red haired foster kid who's father had been shot in a drug related thing, mom was an alcoholic drug user, the state took her away and put her in PV, not because she had any behavior or substance abuse problems, the kid had never even drank, but to help her deal with her PTS from her father being shot. The state also left the girls toddler sister with mom, the 13 year old wanted desperately to go home so she could keep an eye on mom and the baby sister, apparently mom used to go on a binge every month on the anniversary of dads death.

8. 13 year old who had eaten about ten aspirin, also no drug use. I still remember very clearly PV staff viciously attacking this little kid into taking responsibility for her drinking because she had at one point tried two beers that she drank up in her room at her parents house. I can remember a big sobbing horror fest over if it was two or three beers.

9. two foster kids who were not in my group, the “prostitutes” I was just in STU/ the lockdown unit with them, who had run away and been through hell and back, one was molested and beaten up and left in a ditch, when I say the foster kids had no business being put in PV for running away from group homes, by no means do I mean they should be out on their own! It is a hard world for disenfranchised young girls from families bad enough the state actually had to take them away.

PV likes to make everything as lurid as possible and it had some influence on how we were taught to listen to each others stories. they also made the kids who were molested by relatives go into details a lot, I heard the story of how the one girls grandfather had raped her way too many times and it was a horrific story.

10. A girl that someone at a party had told rufees were cool, and she woke up naked on a playground to cops, she did drink and smoke pot with some other drug use, ie. she did take the pill someone had given her earlier in the evening and her shrink thought she needed more help. Interestingly, the friend had gotten the pill off of some creepy old lech type that was hovering in the backround among all the teenagers. Hmmmmm. The cops found the girl, but her parents and shrink, she already had a shrink left over from again her parents very recent very nasty divorce, hmmm another theme?, had her wisked right over to one of the holding type psych facilities.

11. another girl 17 was doing cocaine, from rich family in New York, parents had just been through the divorce from hell, mom was trying to get PV to find evidence of the father molesting the girl, girl was very very pretty, PV found none but convinced the girl he had anyway for fun i guess and because the parent paying the bills told them to. This one again, was getting the cocain off of a rich old guy, there was nothing going on and like a normal kid she seemed oblivious as to that he might have ulterior motives, but as an adult looking back, yet another hovering letch around a very pretty young girl.

12. a little 13 year old kid, also a divorce situation, father had seized custody of the girl with the help of the shrink saying she needed to be in PV because she was depressed. She had dyed her hair black and wrote weird stuff in her journal, which her father read, and was a goth or something. I really liked that kid, i slept across from her for my initial six months in the lock down unit, they sent me back for another two later

13. a girl who had told her parents her grandfather had molested her, she had done nothing else, she didn't drink use drugs sacrifice small children or blow up school buildings, or the world trade center, her family freaked and had her kidnapped to PV, the case against the grandfather was getting very much brushed under the rug, again I didn't speak to any one from the outside world other than my parents the entire almost two years i was in there, and i believe the case was dismissed on lack of evidence. After hearing the story of the molestation/rape add nausea literally it was a horror story, PV feeds off of horror stories, the girls grandfather had raped her when she was 11, no doubt what so ever


I think that is most of them?

oh rich girl, good insurance, a cutter ooo ahhh the freak, actually she was very sane and normal, bit of a suck up`which was sad because I watched staff treat her like crap and restrain her for sitting down on work detail saying she felt sick and needed to rest, they had her on a potent drug cocktail, her pill cup was full put it that way, but i watched them retrain, sorry typo restrain her in garden manure and gravel . I watched them restrain and torment her a bunch of times.

and finally this foster kid, who's mother had also died, she had been opositional in a group home or something, she was only about 15 and she had been in treatment facilities for years and PV for two already when I first got there. They used to restrain that kid all the damn time. She was this nice goofy looking normal young 15 year old, they would treat her like she was dumb but she wasn't they just hadn't let her read for two years. they restrained her all the time. I saw no signs of mental illness and i did live with her for months. They would restrain her for anything, I never saw her do anything violent except maybe squirm out from under eight large pigs as they squashed her into the floor for hours in a restraint. And they would retrain her for hours. anyway, poor kid. She was freaking out kind of, they would torment her and she would cry or get agitated. I saw a lot of bruises on that girl, nasty ones black eyes and finger prints and such.

Oh I forgot the gay girl, the last kid in my group was in for being gay. She had come out to her parents, that was pretty much it, she had smoked pot too. OMG, pots not a great idea overall but it should not land you in a prison camp, a real live evil prison camp. But she wasn’t in PV for pot, she was in for telling her parents she was gay and for just being gay. She had a girlfriend and everything and was short plump 15 and had big owl glasses.