As far as Happiness Hill, I was there for about 8 months, after the previous home I was at was shut down under state investigation. I think the Palmers may have had their hearts in the right place, but some of the staff was horrible, and they were who we usually interacted with (not all, a few of them seemed really nice, and that may be why some people there at the same time had good experiences and others had bad ones). There was one woman there who would make her own rules, even what words to say and how to come your hair, and make the rules/punishments harsher than they were. I spent a lot of time on "confinement", which meant talking to nobody and keeping your head down, and Debbie would make us keep our chin touching our chest, which hurt real bad to do all day. We also had to do so while going to church, even on the bus - I'm almost 30 now, and still have trouble keeping my head up or looking people in the eyes, instead of looking at the ground. She was also big on making you kneel with pencils under your knees (they hurt/bruise) and holding Bibles up on your hands for hours, which makes your whole body hurt, and then would end up with licks (spanked with a board, sometimes to the point of bruising, and more than once to where it bled) for disobeying when you couldn't keep it up. We were also cuffed to the beds at night, and if you peed or anything you were stuck there in it, then punished for making the extra dirty laundry (again, not sure if this was a policy or Debbie being too lazy to get up at night for bathroom breaks). The point I'm trying to make is the way things run all it takes is one bad staff member to really mess people up.
If you're thinking about sending your child there, or supporting them, I wouldn't unless things have changed a whole lot. Any of these homes that don't let parents visit whenever they want, that listen in on phone calls, and that censor mail going in and out are just so subject to abuse and so easy for abusers to hide behind. If you're dead set on supporting or sending someone to a place like this, I can say that I had a decent experience at Victory Village in KS, and the Cowells really seemed to care. They did use discipline but not abuse, and not all the psychological games that other places did, and they seemed to care about us and have love, not just think we were horrible like other places said. (eta: This was my experience, it may have been different for others, but it was much better there for me than the other 2 places I'd been, and I don't think I've heard any bad stories from there like I have from some other places). Also, be careful what curriculum they use for school if you plan to have a child graduate there. I was sent home early enough to graduate from a public high school (I think my mom told them I was going to Christian school, but didn't want to pay the money), but one of my friends who graduated from another girl's home that used ACE had to get a GED to qualify for her job because they didn't recognize it as a high school diploma.
I know some people support all these places no matter what, and want to discount anything someone who's been there says, because they paint us as the bad, evil girls, but that's not always the truth. I was there for running away from hope, because my mom let my sister's boyfriend move in and he kept trying to mess with me - then my sister ended up in another home soon after, and apparently he'd gotten her pregnant. One girl I knew at HH was there just because her dad didn't like her dating a black guy so he said she was into all sorts of other things. Some people had really bad problems, but a lot of girls came into the homes loving God and knowing they'd messed up, but the way God was portrayed and the things done in the name of God probably turned more people away from Him than it helped turn back to Him. I ended up with a lot of baggage from my time in some of this places, and it took me years to ever want to read the Bible or set foot in a church after getting back home, because of all the time being forced to and having to fake everything. Many others can't separate God from their abusers, and are living as atheists and hating God because of what men have done to them.
Sources:
- Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)
- The original testimony (Fundamental Forums)
