Aftermath of a stay at the Discovery Academy

This testimony was found on Reddit. It covers mostly the aftershock of having been placed in a institutionalized environment. All rights goes to the original author.

I started smoking meth at age 16. I grew up in a decent home, but my ma is crazy (neurotic i think), was emotionally absent as a mother and left when I was 15 for a man she reconnected with thru AOL. I had a hard time fitting into society in Texas and went down the wrong path way too early, having being given independence from my parents, but not much guidance. Everybody says I'm "book smart", but I had no idea what I was getting into as that little girl.

Meth was great for a while, partied on and off. Had awesome crazy sex, got my homework done, room was clean, and I'd tweak out and do artwork. I didn't get caught til I was 17, when I was nearly kicked out of high school for selling Xanax to support my meth habit, but was only caught with a weed pipe.

I was sent to wilderness therapy, which sucked but was cool. Following that time in the woods, i was immediately taken to an institution called "disovery academy", a therapeutic boarding school, aka lockdown for rich kids. The effects of institutionalization have never left me. If jnterested, see Erving goffman's "total institution".

That school was a few states away from my home state, but on my 18th birthday, I left because they couldn't legally hold me for therapy anymore, I would have to check myself in, and I refused, being able to see the program for its exploitative, harmful nature. My father and his new wife (who had encouraged sending me away so there would be no obstacles to her wedding) refused to let me stay with them. My mother wanted to send me to another state to live with her sister. Mind you, before all this, I had just been a high school student with no responsibilities. Now, I'm 18, and I'm gonna have to pay all my bills, find somewhere to live and try and stay sober with no support from my family, who were busy with their new families. So I tried. I went to the other state. It didnt work. I came back to texas and did ok for a few months. I paid rent at my mothers husbands house. I paid my phone and my car insurance and found a good job in literally one week. I started community college eventhough I never technically finished high school, I flew under the radar with great SAT scores.

Well I couldn't hold it together. My family were acting terrible, and I had no life skills for handling responsibility. My stepdad kicked me out, due to his anger/control issues, eventhough i was as straight as possible (only a little beer/weed after work). So i reacted and I made some really bad choices and spent a few months in a terrible period of my life, freshly 18y/o girl spun out in Dallas. The things I have seen and the people I have met are the worst. It kills me to think that people have to grow up in those families. I have lasting damage from being raped several times, starting before the meth use, and during this period the sexual exploitation was the worst. I now live in a state far away from my loving family partially because of this period in my life. There are a few people-- mid level suppliers and gang bangers who I absolutely do not want to run into. Then there are my scummy former cohorts, white trash from my hometown who I let pimp me out to the threat above. I strive to live a beautiful life these days just to spite them. In a few short months of constant meth use I experienced: beatings (the worst my ex smushed my face into a parking lot), three times people tried to steal my car, I was roofied, I was banned from motel 6 because I had a threesome over a pile of dollar store stuff that we dumpster dived and we left the room trashed, I was pimped out at the end of a five day long acid trip to a scary ass dealer and now still fear that they will come after me for not taking a trap they set up, I went thru five phones and two blackberries, had another threesome and ruined my friendship with my best gf, got chlamydia/hpv and possibly herpes, was arrested and jailed for five days and then had to do the whole probation/court dance, I was chased by gang members and had to hitchhike forty plus miles to safety, I was nearly beaten for the accepting the help of a black stranger and really, I came out better than most. After I lost my car and therefore place to live, I begged my mom to let me stay at her stupid husbands house again and got myself into state college ASAP.

College was going great until I transferred to Austin. I never really dealt with my issues eventhough I had quit meth for good. Was stil young enough not to know how to even feed myself nutriously. Got depressed, started partying. Made the huge mistake of doing heroin at a party, cause I'm into uppers right? Got hooked instantly, as you would expect from someone who started smoking meth at 16. Spent a year terribly addicted to heroin, hiding my junkie abusive mooch boyfriend in my tiny college apt with fiveroommates listening to our drug use/domestic violence. Well, I eventually broke up with him, couldn't kick the habit and got a sugar daddy, as I was reading Lolita at school, shudder. Just as I went back and fucked the first boy who raped me (who was a 15 y/o high on meth when he did it, but it was before I started using), I went back and fucked my sugar daddy again when I by chance reconnected with him clear across the country after I got completely sober. Confusingsentence but point is, lasting issues.

To conclude, I haven't used heroin in three+ years or any opiates and it has been a huge struggle. My ex got hep c. I have a thousand dollar ambulance bill because I fainted at work from the blood test I had for hep c. I am neg, but it is karma. Everyday is a challenge not to do drugs, and normal life is always slightly less enthralling, kind of dull. I still yearn for support. I have a normal 8-5 and no one even knows, because I moved several states and I have an "honest face" and dont want to expose my past. I often feel that if it hadn't been for that goddamn meth so young, I wouldn't have such intense opiate cravings. I also still crave meth after having not touched it in 6+ years and knowing it is foul poison. And like I said, I came out relatively unscathed; if it hadn't been for my family coming around eventually and being decent in the first place, I wouldn't have been able to bounce back as easily as I did as many times as I did.

Sources:

• The original testimony (Reddit)
• Factsheet about the school (Fornits Wiki)

Video testimony about Ironwood in Maine

This video testimony was found on Youtube. All rights goes to the original author.



Ironwood was founded in 2006. In the start some former employees from Turnabout Ranch in Utah helped the management to establish the school. They have since developed their own program. The profit seems to finance the owners interests in horse breeding.

In 2014 a former employee was charged with child sex assaults. He fled the state before the investigation was finished and it is not known if the charges had anything to do with his work at the facility

Sources:

• My poetic experience, juvenile camp age 17 (The original testimony on Youtube)
• 181. Ironwood Maine (1000 places You don't want to be as a teenager)
• Ex-police chief accused of child sex assaults worked at Maine teen facility (Portland Press Herald)

Kevin Duffy at Darrington Academy

This testimony was found on Topix.com. All rights goes to the original author known as Kevin Duffy

I went to Darrington Academy. I was at Carolina Springs for 14.5 months, then at DA for another 5 months. The following two paragraphs are concerning Darrington Academy only.

Sexual abuse? Students were once forced to jump up and down wearing only a towel, to ensure they weren't hiding drugs in their bowels. The headmaster himself (if that's the title Richard Darrington went by) lectured me once about masturbation after making the rest of the students leave the room. I'm sure the school kept a tight lid on the incident where an 18 year old boy had sex with a 14 year old girl in the laundry room.

Physical abuse? Literally bursting at the seams. I've seen students thrown against the walls of the shoddy converted trailers we used for activities. I mostly kept out of the way of physical harassment myself by staying quiet, but I was hazed when I first came to Darrington by other "upper level" students. I was forcibly held down and duct-taped to a chair. I responded with the quick and decisive violence one might expect from a 6'3" football player, and was able to remove myself from the chair, though I lost most of the hair on my left arm.

Don't even get me started on the staff (at either facility). The only competent individual I encountered was an outside contractor who provided real psychiatric care to the students at CSA (at additional cost). Any of the other staff could be easily manipulated to serve my needs, provided that I wasn't obvious about it like some of the less intelligent students.

Please feel free to contact me at (Email removed)if you have any questions or comments. Also please not that I do not care to be harassed by program parents. I am aware of all facets of the programs. Maybe sensitivity training is what your child needs; maybe your boy needs someone twice his size to beat him senseless and restrain him using incredibly painful pressure points that don't leave bruises. If you want to talk, I'd be happy to talk, but blind harassment is pointless and will be ignored.

The academy closed some years ago. A police investigation was started looking into claims of abuse at the school


Sources:

• The original testimony (Topix.com)
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)