Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I went here while I was 15-16 for 3 months 2017-2018.  I will say that it is better than the abusive boarding schools, however you are not being told the truth as a parent. You only get therapy once a week for less than 30 minutes, they made us smile in pictures while we were covered in feces, dirt and throw up and if we refused, our therapist would tell us that we would have to stay out there longer. If we couldn't start a fire we would starve,  Often times kids would "double dragon" (throwing up and diarrhea) as we called it due to disgusting drinking water and malnutrition. If you were injured you wouldn't seek proper care. This is a universal experience at least in there adolescence program. Please be careful where you send your children. Especially in Utah, the laws are messed up.

Please do not send your child.  My son was neglected, abused, left dangerously dehydrated for days.  Was diagnosed with lithium toxicity and severe dehydration (dangerously low levels) and spent 10 days in ICU and hospital at a children's hospital. This was 3 weeks into the program. His feet filled with splinters and blister on top of callused blisters.  Now he has PTSD and on going medical monitoring.  This place is dangerous.  If you receive a call that your child was taken to the local hospital for whatever reason and are told NOT to come out I cannot stress enough you better get out there to make sure your child is getting the proper care.  I flew out to find my son in a bed laying in his urine, struggled to talk, walk, eat.......and all they wanted to do is hydrate him and put him back in the field.

child abuse. if you're a parent thinking about sending your child here, please reconsider. this may irreparably damage your relationship with your child, as well as subject them to abuse and neglect. i contracted shingles here as an adolescent and was left untreated for 3 weeks. my therapist was homophobic. a past clinical director had been reportedly accused of sexual abuse and has been described as "cruel". many founders and notable staff have histories and connections with other, infamously abusive programs.

This place doesn't deserve one star. It doesn't even deserve zero.
I went to Wingate when I was 16.
Staff joined in in making fun of me. A sex addict was the leader for our group of girls. He got mad at me for wearing a bra and underwear into a swimming hole because it turned him on. My group all took a staff members adderall. We were taken to the home of a man who had not had a background check. Staff talked about doing drugs. A group of boys took lsd together. I was made to carry 50lbs of weight at 75 lbs, even though you legally can't wear more than 30%. A girl had been there for 8 months even though there is a legal limit for how long you can stay. A boy broke his leg from falling off a cliff while watching us change. Staff brought in contraband. I mostly just experienced emotional abuse. Staff would tell me I was lying when I wasn't. They would tell the other campers that they were going to leave soon, then tell me that I would be here a while. The other campers stole all of my stuff and the staff allowed it because I was being difficult, and the other campers should have my stuff to make up for it. One staff member was called "jack off jake" for mastrubating in his sleeping bag. Our health was not taken seriously. For the whole time I was there, I was vomiting and pooping blood. I was not ever allowed to receive medical attention. This was a couple of years ago, and to this day, I have digestive issues.
The staff literally told us that the point of the program was to break us to get us to comply
This is only a small portion of everything wrong that has happened there.
I have been to many places and this was the worst. Please do not send your child here. They will not be safe.

I cannot day I didn?t get anything from whetstone, but I also can?t say what I got was good. All positive things I improved on were by my own doing of being so bored by the actual lack of things to do. Anything fun we had was usually taken away and then dangled in front of us as a means of getting us to comply. Then there?s the education, if the price wasn?t bad enough, my family had to spend more money on summer school to catch me up to where I was before. I would recommend just sending your kids to wilderness instead, half the price for twice the effect

The teachers and hands on staff are great but in the administration building are non trustworthy. They will lie to you. Do not recommend

This place is literally aweful all they want is your money the staff are fine it?s the management that sucks

It was six in the morning at my old therapeutic boarding school, Whetstone academy. This place is up in the mountains of south carolina. I was advancing in the program and that's when you go to a "transition house" and after dinner you will go to sleep there and do chores to get you back into a normal living state. So the day before I go see my family for christmas break something wild happens. This is where I almost died.
5:35 pm our staff that takes us to the lake house arrives. My two friends Will and shepherd are staying in the lake house with me. I noticed weird facial expressions from them at the time I hadn't picked up what was going on. I later noticed that Josh was quiet. We all got in the car and Will told me that he thought that Josh was drunk. I was very unsettled at that point in time to hear that the person that was driving the car to the lake house down very dark and rocky roads was drunk.
We all looked at each other with scared looks and Will was getting pretty scared. I noticed that we were going way past the speed limit. Then BAM! The mirror on the passenger side of the car explodes off of the car, sparks fly and at that point I was laughing at what had just happened but at the same time I was about to soil myself. We continue on and Josh does not say a word about the mirror that was dangling off of the car. Will was starting to cry and we all thought we were going to die. Josh keeps driving, swerving back and forth from side to side, we somehow are not dead yet.
We were going down the road and we started driving on the wrong side of the road and we almost hit an oncoming car but luckily the car swerved off of the road to avoid us.We family  got to the Lake House and Josh tries to fix the mirror that was shattered and torn apart from the impact of the mailbox. After Josh unlocked the door to the Lake House he went straight for the bed and passed out. He was one hundred percent drunk. We stayed in the basement of the lakehouse. Upstairs is where the owner of the boarding school lives. I wanted to go and tell him what had just happened to us, but Will didn't want me to. I shoved him out of the way because I knew that we were in a life threatening situation.
 I knocked on the door of the upstairs of the house and the door swung open. It was hard to tell him what had happened to one of his employees but I managed to get it all out. He asked me where he was and I said that he was in the staff bedroom and passed out on the bed. He was glad that I had told him about the situation and he made us go to the other house owned by the boarding school to wait there until another staff member could arrive. We called our parents when we were over there and the owner called and emailed each of our parents. After Nick, our weekend staff member, had arrived we went back into the house and Josh was gone.
After that night I went home for Christmas break and had a whole story to tell my parents. You never know what could happen at any point in time in life. It could end in an instant like it almost did for me that very night.

I have lived here for one year and months and highly recommend considering you options when coming to this facility. My experience was absolutely horrendous. I was not helped when coming to this facility in fact was set further behind and was given less opportunity. There were care specialists that were clearly biased and gave favoritism to other residents. Not only this, I was promised full confidentiality of all treatment information but I was not given this respect and this caused me more troubles. I was put down by other residents and I was not helped by the care specialists. I was discharged unsuccessfully because of failed polygraph in  which I was forced to take by the facility and what was worse is I had been truthful, but had been called a liar. These polygraphs have caused the fall of so many residents and in my entire 14 months of stay,  I saw only 1 person discharge by completion of the program. These residents are undergoing a tremendous amount of stress, I know because of the social awkwardness that I still have today.  The facility also does not have a welcoming setting, I felt I was in solitary confinement . These people will walk out with more mental problems and will likely discharge unsuccessfully. In my personal opinion, avoid this place at all costs. In the mist of all this, they did offer a great christian environment but may be a problem if there were one who was not christian. The care specialists generally liked to show christian movies and shows. One more thing, the school offered had no opportunity, most of the schooling was on computer and classes offered were chosen for you, generally an elective like basic skills or Indiana studies. So complicated classes such as algebra had to be self taught on a computer. Please consider all of your options when coming to this facility, because generally any other residental is better than here.

Fired a good staff member for completely bs reasons and treated them poorly with clear bias for certain members. Not very understanding of staff having to do what they can to keep things under control in high stress situations with zero help from other staff even if it doesn't 110% go the way management wants it to go.

As someone who successfully discharged from the facility. I say, depending on the kind of environment you want your child in, this may, or may not be a good place. They may have good staff, but many staff who work here are power hungry when it comes to position. I would recommend somewhere else, but it is your choice.

• Scott Dumar - Former MO boarding school staffer facing sex crime allegations released after arrest (Yahoo News)
• Julio Sandoval - Arrests Made for Transportation of Fresno County Teen to School in Missouri (United States Attorney's Office)
• Steve Robert Wukmer - Children?s Minister Arrested for 215 Counts of Child Porn Linked to Agape Boarding School (Ministry Watch)