This testimony was made on the survivor message board belonging to the human rights organization HEAL-online. All rights belongs to the original author.
I went to Cedu High School which is owned by the Brown schools.
Most of it is a blur, but I do remember that I experienced a lot of terror. Since my experience there I have nightmares every night involving the school in some way, and wake up with anxiety accompanied by sweats and a fast heart rate.
I recall that while I was at the school I was on a heavy sedative called Remeron for depression, anxiety, and a sleep disorder. It was prescribed to me by a psychiatrist before I went to Cedu, and it made it almost impossible for me to get out of bed in the morning. Our dorms had no air conditioning, even though all of our parents were paying $10,000 a month for us to be there.
The only way they dealt with us was through discipline and scare tactics. I had fallen asleep without a shirt on one night because it was so hot in our dorms. Before the alarms went off to wake us up, one of the upper class students came into my room and pulled the covers off me. She yelled at me "get the f*ck out of bed!" She pulled me out of my bed and threw me in the bathroom and told me to do my morning chores. I did so, in a half asleep state because of my medication, without a shirt on until the girl gave me permission to get dressed. She had been given free reign to do this to me by a counselor, and she did without supervision. This type of humiliation was normal, and went unnoticed.
The fact that I was on a sedating drug wasn't taken into account. The brilliance of their methods was that they turned the other students against you, and promoted their (other students') mean spiritedness to get across the school's message.
When I was caught for kissing a boy later, I was told that I was a "sexual predator" and put on a restriction where there was no singing, smiling, laughing, touching, or talking. It was called a "full time". They pulled me out of my schooling and put me on a "stump". This meant that I was left in the middle of nowhere with a shovel and a small saw to dig a tree stump out of the ground.
There was no staff around to make sure I was alright, and I was forbidden to talk to anyone. Like I said before, no singing, smiling, laughing, touching or talking. The phrase was spoken to me so many times I still have it memorized, 6 years later. This was in the 100 degree weather. I had to wear steal toed work boots, jeans, and a collared shirt. At night time I ate alone and had to write in a restriction booklet.
They would give me assignments and pushed "issues". If your mother was dead, they'd make you write about that. If you had a mental illness they'd make you write about that. For me, considering that I was a christian, they made me write about "how I hide behind God". You couldn't say "I don't hide behind God" or anything like that. You had to submit to the idea given, or you would never get off your full time.
They challenged me on everything. After dinner I was assigned "pots and Pans", which meant I had to scrub the pots and pans that the cooks used to make the entire school's meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. By myself I did this, for about a month.
Eventually I was pulled out of the program early by my parents, but the most sickening part about it is that they don't want to talk about it. It took me until this year (6 years) to get them to listen to what they had put me through. Leaving Cedu was terrible. I feel like I left a piece of myself there.
Their policy was to break down the student and then build them back with discipline. But my experience was cut short, and I only progressed through the breaking down process. I left Cedu feeling like I was a nothing. I was unable to make friends and relate to the people at my school.
My parents put me back into public schooling the next day. I remain bitter about the whole thing. The moral of the story is to not send your kids to these places.
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