Here I will give account of the things done to me and other students that in my eyes were fucked up.
1. "Special Meals"-
I was placed on something termed by the farm as "special meals" for a month and a half. I was feed a can of beens (a can of some type of vegetable for dinner) and bread a piece of fruit and water everyday for a month and a half. SHF claims this is a healthy vegan diet. It just does not taste good because it is punishment.
Vegans eat a much much wider variety of foods in order to get the vitamins and protein their body requires. They usually take some type of vitamin or supplement as well.
2. Child in river- There was a student at SHF who would wet his bed. Without getting outside medical advice from an unbiased professional doctor, or psychiatrist. Instead they assumed the child was just wetting his bed out of disobedience and in order to cause havoc. Their cure? Make the child strip to his underwear in front of all his peers and bathe in the river. It was extremely extremely cold outside. He would then be made to carry his mattress a mile up hill to wash it, with or without help from staff or peers.
Also, they made the kid wear a diaper. I do not know if they forced him to or not but I remember seeing him walking around in nothing but a diaper. Students would make fun of him calling him "Gandhi" because he looked like a skeleton, wore a diaper, and carried a walking stick.
3. Horse allergy- I am allergic to horses. One day a counselor made everyone ride horses. I told the counselor that "I would like to, but I am allergic to horses", the counselor said "No! You just do not want to participate! You will ride the horse or you will receive a swat(paddle)". Being threatened I got on the horse. I broke out in hives, students and the camp nurse said I looked green and I was having difficulty breathing. The counselor apologized but that does not change the fact of what was done and the danger he placed me in.
4. Paddling- Students were spanked with a paddle. Some had bruises that lasted a week or more. We would be spanked for anything from asking "why?" after being told to do something or saying "no." If we did not hug Trace after he paddled us we would receive another swat. Why would someone want to hug someone that just hit you?
5. Brainwashing- They would take our books or not allow us to have them if they were deemed in appropriate. This includes mainly religious texts other then the bible or anything christian and nearly any type of secular book. They completely controlled our sensory input. They admitted themselves that they were brainwashing us, “brainwashing you in the lamb of the blood!” yuck and weird!
6. Contacting our parents- When arriving to the farm we were allowed no contact with out parents for the first few months whatsoever. After this we were allowed to write letter and receive them from only our parents. However they would be censored before coming in or out. They would read them and tell us to take things out or change things if they were deemed inappropriate,
7. Children building unsafe structures- 13 year old kids with no construction knowledge were made to build unsafe structures to live in. We would cut the trees down ourselves with hand saws and axes all without electricity or running water.
8. Tuition- Our parents paid a tuition that was higher then the tuition to most universities in the U.S. Yet we were feed food they got from food banks for free or next to nothing. I remember the counselor taking us to the milk plant nearby, where we would be given crates of their day or usually two day old milk for free because it was expired and going to be thrown away. We were then given this milk for food/drink. We had no running water, no electricity, lived in wooden huts we built with our own hands without electricity and with rusty hand saws. Not to mention the special meals, which were even weaker.
9. "School"- Their "school" is now accredited. In their "science" classes we were indoctrinated with the christian story. We were forced to watch Kent Hovind videos, as if he and all his "theorys" have not already been debunked. We were taught the world was 2000 years old and created by God. That is as absurd to me as teaching in a science class that gravity does not exist, but is actually god holding everyone down with his finger . I also at one point had to explain to my science teacher what plate tectonics were. He had never heard of such a thing, and thought I made it up...until another student said she learned the same thing in a real school.
10. Absurd accusations- The half way house at the farm was covered in flies during the summer. One day Trace wanted to talk with me one on one outside of the half way house. We sat and talked about Christianity. I of course was extremely dirty , sweaty, and smelly. After all I had been living in the woods and doing hard manual labor all day, with a shower twice a week. Trace on the other hand lived in a house and looked and smelled as if he had just come out the shower. He asked me if according to biblical terms would I rather be called a fool or a wise man? I replied a fool because the bible is rubbish to me. He replied " Ya know John, it's very interesting to me that all the flies are landing on you and none on me. Do you know that the devil in the bible is called Beelzebub-the lord of flies!" Later on when Trace had every student in the program and every counselor in a room together he was preaching to us. He went on and suddenly started to describe our private conversation to everyone. He said "John willingly would be called a fool instead of a wise-man." He then told everyone about the fly thing. He said that he believes I could be possessed by demons or Beelzebub. This was humiliating to say the least, and hardly humble at all on his part.
Later a counselor came to me and told me that he thought the fly thing was absurd and silly. He said the flys were landing on you John because you live in the woods, haven't bathed in days and are extremely dirty..unlike Trace.
11.Queers, homos and fags!- Trace would very often make jokes about gays, and homosexuals and "going to brown town” (saintly words, I know! He sure is the next St. Nektarios!) that I assume would be extremely offense to homosexuals. He taught it was sinful, wrong, evil and unnatural.
12. Medical misinformation- It seems to me and everyone else Trace has been debunked on his Anhedonia claims, and insists on providing dangerous medical misinformation.
13.Prayer instead of medical attention- A child once was being disobedient. The child then suddenly collapsed and had what appeared to, my eyes, be a seizure (I do not know for certain, I am no doctor). The staff simply held him down got in a circle and prayed for the demons to leave him. Later the staff told us the student had green (or some color) foam coming from his mouth as he convulsed. The student soon stopped and went back to normal. Prayer cured him, we were told. This sounds similar to the story that has been in the news lately. The one where the child had diabetes and the family got around and prayed for the child instead of calling an ambulance, except in this case the child died and the parents were sentenced to prison.
14.Parental alienation syndrome- Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), consisting of the manipulation of children by the custodial parent, who incessantly tries to turn them against the other parent by arousing in them feelings of hatred and contempt for the target parent, as explained in the book Marital Conflicts, Divorce, and Children's Development (Conflictos matrimoniales, divorcio y desarrollo de los hijos, edited by Piramide), by professors Jose Canton Duarte, Ma Rosario Cortes Arboleda, and Ma Dolores Justicia Diaz, from the Department of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology of the University of Granada. This was repeatedly done to students. Thank God the students usually took great offense to this. We would be told our parents had failed us or had enabled us to make us even worse. We were told most of our parents needed to be in the program just as much if not more then we did. Trace also acted as if my mother was insane because she placed such a big influence on humility within the Christian religion. Reference:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/94733.php15. Medical attention- My parents requested that I be taken to a dermatologist for my acne outbreaks. Months later (much to late) I was then talked out of taking acutane, by the camp “nurse”. My acne got much much worse, without the acutane. When I left the farm years later I had acne and scars all over my face. My mother took me to a dermatologist who told me that I should had taken acutane years before and I wouldnt have any scars. He then prescribed me acutane and I have not had any acne outbreak in years sense.
