Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Jordan McClure at the Monarch School (From:Youthrights.org)

This story was originally written on a webpage created to provide statements for a GAO hearing in 2007. The address is cafety.youthrights.org and it waits for your statement if you believe that your stay at a boarding school included unfair treatment or even abuse. All rights and credits goes to the author Jordan McClure, who posted the original story on cafety.youthrights.org
  • Facility Attended: Monarch School
  • Dates and Ages attended: February 2006 through May 2007
  • State Facility located: Heron, Montana
  • Reasons for being sent to facility: Poor Grades, overall defiance Residence prior to placement
  • Home Accredited (if known – ie. JHACOA): NIPSA
  • Regulated by the state: no
  • Access to attorney and or advocate: absolutely none at the Monarch School
  • Diagnosis prior to attendance (if any): n/a

Experienced the following:
  • Trauma due to escort services: No
    • Description: Escorted unknowingly by parents
  • Communication and Privacy Rights Violations Yes
    • Description Screened weekly handwritten letters, no negativity about the program allowed. Two monitored 15 minute calls per month Forced ultra specific uncomfortable details about past sexual, drug related information and overall exploitation of past experiences used to humiliate and conform.
  • Mail monitoring Yes
    • Description: manditory weekly letters mentioning nothing bad about the program, screened.
  • Call-monitoring Yes
    • Description: Two 15-minute calls twice per month.
  • Filtered, Restricted or Interrupted Correspondence Yes
    • Description: on campus visits for students not already 100% compliant with program
  • Seclusion Yes
    • Description: 'Solos' on a 14 to18 day outdoor trip, solos lasting up to 2 or 3 days
  • (Seclusion) Self: Yes
    • Description: was forced to stay on a 'work assignment site' digging a stump out of the ground and was almost crushed by the stump as i was instructed to get it out of the hole i dug around it. on bans, not allowed to talk to, make eye contact or acknowledge anyone, even staff, except for the headmaster and Peer Group Leader and therapist all day solo work assignments often, even on holidays
  • (Seclusion)Witnessed Yes
    • Description: others on work assignment
  • Physical Restraint No
  • (Physical Restraint) Self Yes
  • (Physical Restraint) Witnesses No
  • Peer conducted restraint: Yes
    • Description: Peers would put fellow students in stress positions in workshops
  • Forced labor Yes
    • Description: every day except sunday
  • Restricted Access to the Bathroom Yes
    • Description: Had to ask permission, during 'workshops' students could only go on breaks. sometimes 5 or 6 hours inbetween breaks.
  • Scare Tactics Yes
    • Description: self: multiple staff (4 or 5) screaming at the top of their lungs directly at me while the 12-14 other students joined in during group, witnessed this almost every group, had group twice per week, monarch now does it three times per week. pounding it into the kids heads that they 'would be dead' if it was not for monarch. Frighteningly about 80% of the students thought this and talked about it often. during workshops staff would use physical force on students to help put them into a state of hysteria during 'therapy exercises' example: student on hands and knees with students and staff member pushing down on shoulders and mid back and screaming insults and judgements in your ears.
  • Exposure to harsh elements (ie. Extreme heat, snow or rain) Yes
    • Description: wilderness instructor made all students strip down to under layers ie. long underwear, dowse entire body and until full into the second stage of hypothermia (so we could see what it was like, more for us to fear this particular staff.
  • Excessive Exercise Yes
    • Description: work assignments often required heavy lifting during one workshop students would run in place as fast as they could until they absolutely could not stand anymore all while being yelled at and told that they aren't trying hard enough
  • Food/Nutritional Deprivations Yes
    • Description: during workshops kids would be fed cornflakes for breakfast, a cheese sandwich and for dinner macaroni and cheese. kids would be out of it and tired, very susceptible to influence in that state self: denied my vegan diet and was pressured to eat meat, many vegetarian students became meat eaters dude to taunting and harassment by staff.
  • Physical Punishment Yes - forced work.
  • Emotional, Physical, or Sexual Abuse by Staff Yes
    • Description: constant verbal attacks in group as well as other attack therapy techniques. Staff would go off on students in the main hall in front of the entire school and go on and on screaming in the student's face

Education and Mental Health Treatment – [ Please rate: (1) Unsatisfactory (10) Superior

  • Individualized Treatment Plan 1 2 (3) 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    • Description: Basically the same treatment for everyone, some students just had to stay longer if they weren't doing "well" enough
  • Satisfied with training background of staff members who provided: Education (1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    • Description: no training necessary
  • Therapy (1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    • Description: one therapist with a Ph.D, used the Monarch/CEDU/Synanon therapy mold.
  • Support 1 2 (3) 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    • Description: Some of the staff genuinely cared but were tainted by the program. Staff were forced to go through the workshops with the students.
  • Satisfaction with After Care provided: (1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
  • Do you now experience any of the following:
    • Nightmares: Yes monthly
    • Anxiety: Emotional breakdowns, exactly like the ones that students, including myself, were put into during workshops through bioenergetic and primal threapy. they occur under stress. (this is common among people i went to monarch school with)

  • Additional Comments: The staff there are victims as well as the students, this place comes from a long line of places EXACTLY like it, CEDU, Rocky Mountain Academy and now Monarch School. Mount Bachelor Academy, Carlbrook, and Boulder Creek Academy use the same workshop and therapy mold.

References:
Datasheet about the boarding school at Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
The original statement on cafety.youthrights.com

12 comments:

  1. I graduated from Monarch School in 2010, I don't know what the experience was for the previous poster but the statements posted on this site are false. There are no workshops and we are all treated with repsect. I was sent to Monarch School with some of the same issues as mentioned above. If I had been on tract at home my parents wouldn't have had to make such a hard decision to send me away. It seems obvious that if my behavior required such a drastic decision that I shouldn't be somewhere where I could do whatever I want. I'm so thankful for my experience and am enjoying my college experience while maintaining my friendships that I made while at Monarch who are also doing very well.

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    1. I graduated from Monarch in 2005, I don't know how the school is run now, but my experience was exactly as the statements above. It is all true. I have horrible anxiety and panic attacks, nightmares about being sent back. They messed with our heads with those experimental "therapies".

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    2. I graduated Monarch in 2003. I was the 15th student to attend the school. My experience was life changing. I really would be dead if it werent for the work I did while attending the school. Sure, you are always going to have rich spoiled brats that refuse to have any accountability and are do afraid to take a deep and honest look at themselves. Lots of people will never have such an oppertunity to live in the beautiful mountains of Montana and eat awesome food and work in the outdoors. It was almost like a health retreat for me and the kids that bash the school are just the whinny losers that were to scared and spoiled to stand on their own two feet. Privelaged and have it way too easy in life. Nightmares lol.

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    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    4. I was withdrawn from the program in September 2010 and I enrolled on October 29, 2008. I went through the insights that entire period. There's no way you hadn't gone through any insights. I held Monarch in pretty high standing and viewed it as the most beneficial time in my life up until recently; many of the things they practiced there are forms of abuse. You're blind now, but you'll see soon enough.

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    5. Yeah a staff telling me "if you don't succeed in this program I guarantee you will be asked to bend over in jail and i won't be saving your ass then" I did not apreciate this comment as it was personal and horrible coming from my math teacher which I was the only one in his class that wasn't cheating (swear to god and on my life)

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  2. I'm so happy I just came across this. I was at Monarch for 3 weeks in 2009 before my parents finally took me home when they saw how terrible the school was. I experienced everything Jordan spoke of. On top of that, when I tried to write a letter to my parents explaining my concerns, I wasn't allowed to send it. I didn't get to speak to my parents until they demanded a phone call after three weeks of not receiving any letters (letters which weren't allowed to be sent because they spoke negatively of the program). I also experienced a lot of very scary pedophilia on behalf of the staff. AND when I was at Monarch, several of the students were stealing ketamine from the horse stables and taking it. The staff didn't even REALIZE the students were high on HORSE TRANQUILIZERS. My wilderness program saved my life. Had I stayed at Monarch, it would have ruined all the progress I made. When my parents took me out of the program three weeks in, the staff said to me, "We'll have a place for you here when you fail." Five years later and still going strong.

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  3. My son was placed there by his father
    I was opposed , he hired 2 men to take him from his room!!'
    I was in another state at my sister in laws birth
    I hated this place!
    My ex was able to manipulate the staff to his
    Need, while a custody dispute ensued in court
    Could never get a straight answer ever from these people My son is 24 now, still has nighmares!!!! I still have nightmares about seeing him
    He was put on ritalin like mist of tge kids
    I was there when the kids would line up for meds( reminded me of one flew over the cuckoos nest)
    The entire program is about brain washiing
    And the parent chold bond is forever destroyed!
    Its a great moneymaker and you see the actual
    Owner (who was raised in this sort of school)
    Kids and staff are openly humiliated!
    Your constantly told not to do this or that for your kid
    No accrediation!!! That always bothered me
    No happy memories here

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    1. My name is jessica and i went to monarch school from 2002 to 2004 and it was the most difficult challenging scarry and absolutely wonderful experience of my life. I was part of White Raven pier group 4.I was sexually abused as a child for 10 years and started doing meth at the age of 12 I was 14 when I got sent there and it compleatly changed and saved my life. I have been drug free ever sence. I sincerely love Patrick Tim Chuck Steve Dave and all the other staff. I made the best friends of my life there and had the best (even if it wasn't easy) experiences there. I think alot of people are being waaay too extreme about their time there. A little hard physical and emotional work wasn't hurting anyone. All i know is that it truly saved my life and i will never forget it. And it really saddens me to see all these negative comments.

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  4. This program is closed as of 9/15/17.

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  5. My name is jessica and i went to monarch school from 2002 to 2004 and it was the most difficult challenging scarry and absolutely wonderful experience of my life. I was part of White Raven pier group 4.I was sexually abused as a child for 10 years and started doing meth at the age of 12 I was 14 when I got sent there and it compleatly changed and saved my life. I have been drug free ever sence. I sincerely love Patrick Tim Chuck Steve Dave and all the other staff. I made the best friends of my life there and had the best (even if it wasn't easy) experiences there. I think alot of people are being waaay too extreme about their time there. A little hard physical and emotional work wasn't hurting anyone. All i know is that it truly saved my life and i will never forget it. And it really saddens me to see all these negative comments.

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  6. What Monarch is this?? I'm looking at Houston, TX schools. Is this Monarch's program on how to teach behavioral issues?

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