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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

No, it starts July 13, 7/13 not 6/13.

The first work hour I got was for not taking a shower every day. One girl had recieved over 20 work hours when they decided that they weren't working. So for a couple weeks they didn't have any puishment to give us, which I thought was funny. Then they went to a check mark system where for every three marks you got 1 work hour. If you got over a certain number of marks in one week you got lower phase privileges for the next week. They also made a rule that if you were cought leaning back in your chair you had to pay a 2 dollar fine out of your checking account.

We also went through a phase of having to eat 3/4 of everything on your plate. Which when we had really gross things like salty beans or zucchini casserole I would pile everything into 1/4 of my plate and try to get passed the staff. They usually stood by the garbage cans to check the plates. We also had a rule that if you left your eating area dirty or put your elbows on the table you had to sit at the Miss Manners table with the staff. They picked how long you had to stay there. Whenever they put me at that table I would complain the whole time, which they would threaten to keep me there longer but I never cared. Sometimes there would ba a whole group of us that sat together anyway and it wasn't much different that sitting any where else.

There was certain things that happened that have definitely caused problems. This is kind of a long story and hard to explain but I will try.
This was after I ran away in December. It was in February I started shaking my leg or when I was walking my arm and rocking back and forth or pacing. They took me to the doctor to see if there was anything wrong with me and there wasn't. So my therapist Katie at one point said she wanted to hypnotize me but she didn't do it at that moment. She thought that I was having repressed memories coming back to me. I had therapy one day and she did this thing where she took 2 fingers and waved them back and forth in front of my face and I had to follow them with my eyes. The first time nothing happened, then the second time I saw myself as a little child sitting in my room tucked into a ball crying and then I started crying and she stopped. For the next few days I couldn't speak very well and was inside my head. Nothing I can really explain. Then whenever it was noisy I started crying and rocking back and forth. I finally started to speak when I went into Prescott to get my blood drawn. I think part of getting out of my head was being in the real world. I could barley sit through meals because the dinning room would get so loud and I would start crying. From that point I was the indicator of the room being too loud. A couple times even for one girls b-day they made eveyone have a silent meal because I would start crying and rocking. It had gotten better but I still have problems if people yell especially at each other or in my ear. I went to a Demolition derby about two years ago and didn't think anything of it until I was there and I had to plug my ears for most of the time.
It wasn't until about 3 years later when I was reading an old issue of the Family Therapy Networker about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) that I realized that was what Katie had done to me and obviously had no idea what she was doing.
I have not mustered up enough courage to see anyone about it to see if they can reverse what she did.

I have one friend and that is beacuse we were at Dancing Moon together and we live by each other. I am horrible at making friends and I am scared to have them because the last people who I thought were my friends screwed me over. I also don't like to tell people about my past or I tell them to try to keep them away. I am very ashamed and don't think that anyone will understand what I have gone through.

Being in a place where everyone wears the same thing, speaks the same way, and tries to be perfect it is a hard adjustment to the real world. I know that I will never go up to someone and say my experience of you is or tell them how I feel about them and then ask them to repeat what I said back to me. I think I have become a stronger person and I know that if I ever had a kid I would never send them away. My mom tries to say that some things I have done I would have never done if I wasn't sent away which I try to tell her you can't say that because you don't know what would have happened. She told me we were afraid you were going to kill yourself even though I tried to kill myself a month before I turned 18. I was so scared of the real world and I had no experience of how to handle it being sheltered for 2 and 1/2 years.

I never had a little sister. I did have three big sisters and they all graduated while I was there. The third one was in my generation.(We had generations by who you went through the first training with.) I gave speeches to the first two at their graduations. I was going to give one to my third sister but I was back on phase 1 and they didn't think I was the best person to give a speech.

When I first got there a girl had run I don't know how far she got. My third big sister ran before I got there and spent a week in Prescott with some people who picked her up hitchhiking. The first Christmas I was there two girls ran to the bottom of the hill and then called the staff because they were scared or something. Two girls ran two weeks before I ran and they made it Las Vegas where they were picked up for playing around on one of the elevators in a casino. They went to see a boy that one girl had met when she staffed a training at Sunhawk Academy.

My story of running away is pretty crazy and I'm sure some of the girls didn't believe it. I ran away on a Sunday. I stayed in Pheonix for two days becasue I didn't have enough money to take the Greyhound to Texas. I was walking along a street with my luggage which I am sure looked wierd but this black guy stopped and said if I would give him money for gas he would take me where ever I wanted to go not that I had any idea where I was or where exactly I was going. She driving with him I made up this story about how I was 18 and I came to see my boyfriend and we split up. He said he would let me sleep at his place but he didn't have any furniture I was like I don't care. So he took me back to his apartment and I went to sleep and he left. He woke me up the next morning and there was two other people there and a big pile of mail in the middle of the floor. He told me to go through the mail with the other people and seperate the checks and money orders out on throw the other stuff out. So I did and a couple times he sent me out to buy food and cigarettes which scared the shit out of me because I knew they were looking for me. He took me with him when thet went to cash the money orders and he bought crack and smoked it. On Monday night he told me if I wanted he would set me up in an apartment and get me an id so I could start working for him or I could move on. So the next morning I told him I wanted to visit some friends in Texas so he bought me a bus ticket. He gave me money for food and said he would want me to call him when I got there but he didn't have a phone. I think he was a nice guy, obviously doing alot of illegal stuff but a nice guy. Jeannie thought he was going to hurt me or something, I don't think he would have and she was convinced they had gone through my stuff when I went to do errands. When I got to Texas I took a cab to Shawna's house (the staff) a man and woman were sitting outside, the woman went inside and I asked the man if Shawna was there and he said no, then the lady comes out and hands me the phone, I was like what the hell, so I said hello and Shawna said Kati and I said no She said Julie and I said yes she was like what are you doing I said something I really shouldn't be doing, then she made me promise I wouldn't go anywhere and she would be back in a hour. She was a little suprised to see me. The lady who called her recognized my picture because Shawna had it in her room. She came home and we wnt out and ate at a gas station. I told her it was my year date she shook her head. She asked me if I wanted to call Jeannie or if she should, like hell if I would call anybody. The next morning she took me to the airport and I flew back to Pheonix where Jeannie picked me up.

No, Jeannie did all of what we called "trainings". The second training we had to dance or do what ever we were assigned to do and you had to go until everyone stood up and agreed you were being real. I was Miss Teen America and I had to dance to 2 songs, strut to one song, give a 5 minute speech about what its like to be miss teen america and answer questions that the other girls and Jeannie asked. Do you do the boat exercise where you had to tell the other people whether they lived or died?

I was kicked out of the first training because I refused to do the exercise where you walk across the room in a different way then anyone who has gone before you.

When my parents went through my mom almost wasn't let back in because she and the other parent she went to lunch with were late one day. My mom didn't like the part were they had to share there issues with their parents. She didn't have any with her dad so everyone thought she was lying or holding back.

Sonja was my second therapist out of three, I would have to say she was my favorite. My first was Chip Coffey and he was only mine for the first 2 months I was there then he left to Black Canyon the juvenille detention center. He said he would come back every weekend, most of us never saw him again. I don't think Jeannie would have allowed it though. Some of the girls saw him when they went to Black Canyon to play volleyballs with some of the girls there. They also did a training down there once.

I had Sonja for for 5 months. She always threatened that if I wouldn't talk to her she wouldn't be my therapist, which I tried not to have a therapist but that never worked. The session before she told us she was leaving she was asking me all these questions about wether I wanted her as a therapist and stuff, then when I found out she was leaving I was like what the hell why ask me all these questions when you know you aren't going to be my therapist anymore.

Then I had Katie Freeman who I liked a first but then did not like at all. I told one of the staff one day that I was mad at Katie and she went and told her. Katie was like I'm glad you told someone you were mad at me and she said she thought she was the best therapist for me. What a crock of shit, I was in therapy since I was 9  I think I know what kind of therapist I need. Katie also ruined my emotions/brain when she triend to something that she obviosly had no idea what she was doing.

I went to Sequoia's group one day he reminded me a little of Chip. I didn't like him he was really wierd. I remember this girl Kati had him and she told us that Seqouia was going to work with her to let out her anger and what that actually entailed was her sitting on the floor and him putting pillows all around her and asking if she was good. She was like what is this supposed to accomplish? He didn't seem like he really knew what he was doing and I thought he would work better with men not teenage girls.

On 2005-05-04 18:03:00, spots wrote:

Quote

"I'm not sure if I'd call flip-flops in and of themselves 'abusive".  A whole lot of the world calls them their only footwear.  What I WOULD call abusive is the fact that the kids are told over and over that they wear flimsy sandals for the specific, sole, and punitive reason that such footwear is issued just so escape becomes very difficult or nearly impossible.  Sort of like wearing shackles or hobbles...is that abusive for a prisoner going to court?  No.  Is that abusive for teenagers going about their twisted life in the gulag?  Yes."

If they got flip-flops they were lucky we had to wear soft-soled slippers, no exceptions. In the rain and the snow. The first seminar I went through I remember having to walk outside back and forth from the dorm to the training room while it was snowing and the ground was covered in slush and sitting all day with soaking wet slippers that didn't dry overnight. I already had feet problems before and was suppose to be wearing corrective orthotics in my shoes but I went without shoes for 7 months, which I do think is a factor in why my feet are worse today then years ago.

On 2005-04-30 16:28:00, Anonymous wrote:

There's a process in the Focus seminar, in which the people are asked to pretend they're on a sinking ship. They are given popsicle sticks, told that the stick symbolise their lives and shit like that. Then, each one of them is asked to choose 5 people to "throw off the boat". They are asked to go around the circle, yelling in people's faces, "you're DEAD!". Then, the popsicle sticks are taken from the "dead" people."

We didn't have popsicle sticks we just had to go around and say you live or you die. In the training when our facilitator was explaining this exercise I started laughing. I thought are you serious? I almost got into the boat and would have if I had voted for myself. Like I would ever vote for myself. In the training I staffed almost all of the girls were crying, which I thought was really weird. They took it way to seriously.

I was kicked out of the first one because I refused to do an exercise where you have to walk across the room in a different way then anyone else. There was a girl who went through the first one three times beacuse she refused to hit the chair.

For the most part you could move up to phase two without completeing the training but you definitely never get passed that. There was one girl who got on phase three without going though the second training which I thought was amazing.

_________________
Spring Ridge Academy 97-99
SUWS 99
Dancing Moon Ranch 99-00

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