Ethan Schur at the Montana Academy (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 Ethan Schur, who posted the original story on cafety.youthrights.org

Montana Academy
I was told I was going to a summer school for one summer. When I arrived at the Montana Academy I was immediately told to remove my clothing and wear a robe so that I could be searched and my items confiscated. I was interred at the Academy for over 14 months.

Isolation rooms
These are rooms with no light and no way to escape. I was locked in this room for hours at a time, given to option to use the restroom, or escape.

Physical labor
Students are forced to saw piles of wood, dig ditches, haul gravel in wheelbarrows, pick up trees and pile rocks.

Physical abuse
Was dragged out into the snow with no shoes on.

Limitation on communication
All calls are listened to and censored, most often with parents. Letters are not allowed to be sent. Letters are censored. Pictures are censored.

Limits on religious freedom
Students are not allowed to pray on holy days and are limited in diet, prayer times, and freedom of religion.

I personally was not allowed to attend the Jewish High Holy Days. When I complained the lead psychologist screamed at me with rage. After this incident he asserted that it was an "echo of my rage" that he was showing and therefore my fault.

I was told on more than one occasion that I would go to hell for being a Jew.

Escape
Students either escaped or attempted to escape on multiple occasions. I attempted to escape in 1998, I fell into a frozen river during the night and was only saved by trekking to a nearby farmhouse with hypothermia and frozen jeans. I was arrested at that location and brought back to the Academy.

There were so many attempted escapes that they enforced new rules where nightwatchmen would physically touch the leg of every student in their beds every few hours.

Drug Abuse
Students would abuse "cocktails" of prescribed medications either orally or by nasal inhalation.
Students would scrape the inside white powder out of light-bulbs and sniff that Students would "huff gasoline" stored in nalgene bottles students would smoke and huff gasoline until they lost control and pours gasoline on themselves.

Attempted Suicide
Multiple students attempted suicide, on one occasion my roommate cut himself very badly, he was punished and it was not until the next day when blood started leaking out of his wrist as he sawed metal rebar "his punishment" that he was evacuated for medical treatment

Educational Consultants
Educational consultants would get benefits for referring students to the Academy. These consultants once, the students are interred, wipe their hands clean of the situation and do not regularly check on the well-being and treatment of their clients

Sex at the Academy
Condoms were forbidden and during sex education I was punished for taking condoms. Students would wrap plastic wrap around themselves with rubber bands and attempt intercourse this way.

Post Academy
Once a student is discharged, the management could care less about that student. The parents are not paying any longer and they are no longer interesting. Students are left wholly unequipped to deal with their non-brainwashed peers. I know Academy graduates that have been to jail for extended periods of time, drug dealers, rampant sex and general disregard for their well-being.

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