Rebecca at Spring Creek Lodge (From wwasp-survivors)

This testimony was found on the WWASP-suvivors website. All rights goes to the individual author.

Memoir: Thompson Falls Montana

Maybe you’ve heard of those schools where they pick you up in the middle of the night and you disappear. They picked me up in the middle of the day. I called my sister and told her that some people are here and I don’t know where I’m going. I packed a few books for the road and got into a car with two ex-cops. It was a two day drive to I didn’t know where. They told me not to run. My last meal was an egg mcmuffin. That morning we drove deeper and deeper and higher and higher into the forest on a mountainside. There were signs everywhere that said “private property” and “no trespassing”. I wished I would have run sooner. I soon learned that I could not call my parents. I could not talk to boys. I was on lockdown; I had no rights and could not leave. The behavioral boarding school was called “Spring Creek Lodge Academy”. There were eight giant, two-story, log cabins on campus with a communal cafeteria in the middle. Each cabin was divided into four dormitories. Mine was ground level on the girl’s side appropriately entitled: “Serenity”. I was assigned a “family” and a back-stabbing bunk buddy. There were twenty bunk beds in our dorm all along the walls. It was attached to another dorm by a door, but we weren’t allowed to talk to the girls living there. There was also a large bathroom connected to our living space with several sinks and small showers.

I then began my life in “the program”. It was a cross between a military school and a cult. I also like to think of it as an Orwellian concentration or internment camp for minors, but I suppose the term “private prison” might be less offensive. I was introduced to levels and a complicated point system. Something like an automatic twelve points a day, minus twenty-five points per “consequence”, and one-hundred-and-fifty points to get to level two. At the end of the day I was always in the negative and never got past level one. This was accomplished mainly by talking. Whenever we went outside we had to march around heel-toe and “in sync” in lines. If you talked in line it was a T.O.S. (talking-on-silence) infraction. I also got in trouble for talking to other level-ones as level-ones can only talk to their buddies or level-threes and higher.

I grew somewhat accustomed to the monotony, floating through the same day over and over and over again. The bell in the morning, the five minute shower, the ugly uniforms- khaki and maroon. They wouldn’t let me keep any of my belongings. I was strip-searched upon arrival. This included the confiscation of my black and purple polka dot underwear. Only white cotton undergarments from now on. They took my Dostoyevsky and even my Calvin and Hobbes. Our rare trips to the little library (which I was usually barred from attending) were depressing. The selection consisted mainly of Goosebumps and other preteen literature. With no access to telephones or computers, my only connection to the outside world was through letters to my parents.

It eventually became clear that they had become almost as brainwashed as some of my peers. My pleas to come home or to be allowed to move in with my best friend in Los Angeles were met with program lingo i.e. “work the program” or you will be there until you turn eighteen. I was fourteen. I tried to comply once against my better judgment. I decided that the level two privileges of butter, sugar, and a weekly candy bar were not worth it. I saw level sevens crushed because they lost all their points for a trivial reason. I saw the special treatment given to girls that had been there too long in order to speed up their graduation.

The futility of compliance with a nonsensical, arbitrary set of rules where years of confinement are worth more than good behavior led to daydreams or what they refer to as “run plans”. Staring into space is categorized as either looking-at-boys or planning to escape. Although I was often penalized for the former by the upper level girls, I was usually doing nothing except not looking straight ahead of me. We would often have to stop in the middle of marching from place to place to accommodate other lines or stop at the restrooms. Instead of standing in formation, I’d sit down and start a conversation considering I stopped caring in the least about points. I made friends with girls who felt the same way.

We shared rumors and strategies to get out. One day we heard that two boys managed to leave. They were upper level and took advantage of their good standing to make a run for it. Supposedly they ran, stole a car, and stole a boat before being caught by the police and put in juvenile hall. Whether or not there was any truth in this, it inspired me. During our P.E. we would jog around in circles in our fenced area and discuss whether or not we thought that there were guards, dogs, or just upper level boys waiting for us if we tried to run. My friend Jennifer and I decided we would find out. There was an emergency button we could push to get out of our cabin. The only problem was that our shoes were locked up at night, so we only had flip-flops. We pushed the button and ran for a bit, but the boys were faster. They caught up in our pathetic attempt and put us in “intervention”, basically a little cabin with lavender walls where they put you on time out. We were isolated from any houses or people way up there, and didn’t have any food to bring with us anyway.

There were small victories however, occasionally vicarious ones. We could only eat three meals a day, plus one snack, so when we snuck extra pop tarts for friends that was a triumph. There was also this one time when a girl from one line saw her boyfriend from home walking in another line and they ran to each other and kissed. The same girl headed a mini-rebellion consisting of some girls from her cabin breaking out and running around the campus naked. In the end I had my own successful demonstration of defiance. I couldn’t convince my group of friends to do the same- at that point they couldn’t talk to me. One by one they were participating in the program due to fear of their parent’s threats of leaving them there. I was also afraid of having to celebrate my sixteenth birthday there, of finishing high school in another state, of having nothing when I finally got out.

In any case, I staged an individual silent protest. I stopped talking and listening until they didn’t know what to do with me. At first they put me in intervention for long periods of time in solitary confinement. They threatened to send me to a facility in Mexico or Jamaica where there are even less regulations. They tried to restrain me, prevent me from sleeping, and other methods of unpleasantness. Finally they kicked me out. It was completely unexpected, I didn’t get to say goodbye, and I was permitted to return home like I wanted. When I got home I looked up the school online. Their website recommended that parents watch the movie Thirteen to understand what horrible things their teenagers are doing. In 2009 Spring Creek was closed. Other schools like it have also been shut down for similar reasons including suicide/attempted suicide of the students and lawsuits thanks to allegations of child abuse and neglect/ human rights violations.

The facility was closed in 2009 as a number of lawsuits were close to be decided. Also a girl lost her life there as the employees failed to see obvious signs of suicide attempts.

Sources:

• The original testimony found on wwasp-survivors
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

A stay at Spring Creek Lodge Academy (From: CAICA)

This statement was given to the human rights organization. All rights belongs to the author who wants to be I was there from 1999 to mid 2001.

I was picked up at school by an escort service. I was put in hand cuffs and driven straight to the airport. I was told I was going to a two week campout in Montana, where I would get to go horseback riding, skiing, camping, talk to girls and have a great time all awhile working on my drug problems.

The first week I was there, a student named Chris was playing around after shut down. Laughing and talking, just being a teenager. The “Calvary” was called in to take him to the hobbit. They yanked him off of the top bunk and slammed him on the ground. Two staff held his legs and two more held his arms, and one lay down on his back. He was struggling and cussing. The shift leader proceeded to put his hand around his neck and push down. He started to plead with them that he couldn’t breath and to please let him up. When his cries became more desperate it seemed like the harder they tried to hurt him. The staff ignored his complaints about not being able to breath, and so three of us including myself jumped off our bunks and started to pull the staff members off of him.

They called for even more back up and when they got there we were all restrained in the same manner. We were taken up to the hobbit and we didn’t get breakfast or lunch the next day.

A student by the name of Gabe was viciously restrained in front of the trailer at Spring Creek Lodge. Another student had flicked the back of his ear while standing in a heel toe line, he stepped out of line to tell the kid to quit, and was given a Cat 2 out of area. He started to walk off, and a staff member got him in a rear bear hug. Gabe said a few choice words and stomped on the foot of the staff member. The staff then proceeded to lift him up and slam him down on the asphalt face first. It cracked a few teeth and busted up his lips pretty good.

A young boy of the age of 12 was in the hobbit. He had quite a mouth on him, and he was spitting everywhere. He would spit on staff, on myself and all over the hobbit. The main hobbit staff came in there and told him if he spit on any thing else he was going to mop it up with him. The boy looked up at the ceiling and spit a large one. The staff grabbed him by the crotch and the neck and climbed up on the top bunk and sure enough mopped him up with it and then slammed him down on the tile floor from the top bunk.

The young boy was pretty shaken up by the whole thing.

One night after shut down the cabin was awoken to a blood curling scream from the next room over. Not caring if I got a shut down violation I went next door to see what was going on. Jeff had apparently gotten a piece of glass somewhere on the facility and proceeded to slice his arm up from where your arm bends at the elbow, all the way down to his wrist. Not just one or two cuts, but he went up and down his arm repetitively. On the wall next to his bunk, in large letters written in blood he wrote “FREE ME” then took his bloody hand print and slapped it against the wall and drug it down. It was gruesome. They made another student scrub the wall to get it clean.

There was a young man there who had obvious mental problems. Our case representative told us it was paranoid schizophrenia and I am sure some other ailments. We were having a facility meeting where Cameron Pullan just talked to us about this and that and Daniel kept on blurting out extremely random things. He would interrupt Cameron to ask him when he would be going home, and just really off the wall things. Cameron asked me and another Jr. Staff to get him out of there and take him up to the hobbit. He also told us if he gave us any problems or tried to run away to “Kick the shit out of him”.

Well we knew he wasn’t going to listen to us, and of course he didn’t. We took him up to the hobbit and as we were walking in he suddenly bolted for the woods. The other Jr. Staff and I tackled and restrained him. We got him up in the hobbit and he made numerous attempts to get out with little success. He claimed that he had to go to the bathroom, and there were no bathrooms in the hobbit. The students would have to go out side in a Porto potty that was rarely ever emptied; we the students called it the “Blooper”.

There would be times that it was so full that human waste would be leaking out of the toilet seat and fecal matter was all over it. He went to the bathroom and as soon as he came out he bolted for the woods again. We tackled him pretty hard and on the concrete.

We didn’t know what else to do; we weren’t trained for this kind of thing. To make this long story short, the young man ended up getting pretty beat up from all the times he tried to run.

One time a student was in the hobbit and he asked to use the rest room. They took him out to the “Blooper” and he refused to come out. So the staff working the hobbit in turn dumped the Porto potty over on the door. The young man was covered with a weeks worth of human waste and tampons.

Cameron would have us do some pretty wild stuff just for his amusement. He would call facility meetings and have us all line up on the court with our family’s in a heel toe line (this all being in the middle of winter) and he would randomly tell people to go and jumping the frozen pond right off the side of the court. They would have to break the ice over the pond first. Sometimes he would take students, blindfolded into Thompson Falls, and make them jump off a bridge in to the river. If the students didn’t want to jump, they were pushed.

Towards the end of ones program you must go through a process called trail of lights. It starts off with a big meal and then goes into a strenuous workout. Pushups, jumping jacks, sit-ups, running, and what ever else they can think of. After a long day of jumping jacks, they blindfolded us and started leading us through the woods. They would walk us through creek beds and into trees. The staff was laughing the whole time at our discomfort. They had us climb up a very steep rockslide still blindfolded; several students fell down and rolled all the way down to the bottom. At the end of the night every one had cuts and gashes all over their body from running in to trees and walking through thorn patches, and rolling down rocky hills. It was one of the most pointless processes I have ever been through.

The seminars were horrible. They would make you tell you’re deepest and darkest secrets only to have them rubbed in your face the rest of the time you were there. “My dad molested me when we were younger, my moms boyfriend raped me and she knew about it and didn’t do anything” stuff like this and they wouldn’t let it go. If you didn’t tell them things about you, they would kick you out of the seminars and you couldn’t go back until the next month. You need the seminars to advance in the program to go home.

One seminar in particular, called Accountability would have kids walking around and using all of the knowledge of kids problems, try to tear them down. This pushed a lot of kids to the edge. They would have Jr. Staff standing against the walls as security, so if anyone went out of control, they would restrain them.

Kids restraining kids, kids handing out consequences to other kids. It’s all abuse. If a Jr. Staff member didn’t like you, they could consequent you for absolutely nothing. It is basically up to the Jr. Staff to decide when you are ready to move up and go home.

Parents don’t really know what is going on up there and if the students tell them in letters, the letter won’t reach them and we were punished. The place doesn’t work. I still smoke weed, and drink like a fish. I still have anger issues. People are killing them selves because of this place. Cory a student, who graduated the program and was in my family, ended up killing himself when he got home. A young lady on Oct. 4 of this year hung herself in the cabin; Jeff tried to kill himself because he couldn’t stand being there. These people are not helping any one out, other than the parents who want to get rid of their kids.

The facility closed 2009

Sources:

• The original testimony (CAICA's website)
• Factsheet of the facility (Fornits Wiki)

Sean Hellinger at Spring Creek 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 Sean Hellinger, who posted the original story on cafety.youthrights.org

My name is Sean Hellinger; I was shipped off to Spring Creek Lodge in Thompson Falls, Montana, on March 12, 2003, and I remained there until September 2004.

Since Spring Creek Lodge is a WWASP facility, I am currently in the Turley lawsuit against them. It's a class-action lawsuit that already has over 100 plaintiffs, and it is estimated that there will be a few hundred more. Doesn't that say a lot right there?

Unfortunately, my involvement with the lawsuit means that I cannot go into detail on what I went through. What I can do is refer you to the next best thing:

George Orwell's "1984" is probably the best description of the way WWASP facilities work that you'll ever read about it a so-called "fictional" book. No, I'm not exaggerating. I wish I could go into more detail and prove it.

What I'll say is, WWASP has everything, from Big Brother to the Thought Police to the proles/Outer Party/Inner Party to the Ministry of Love to the... get it?

If somebody commits suicide, they're "vaporized." You can't ever mention their name again. If a riot happens in, we'll just call it "Dundee Ranch," you're not allowed to even utter the name of the facility, because the "Ministry of Truth" wants to rewrite history.

Just as Oceania had the "Two Minutes Hate," WWASP has seminars that are designed to stimulate mass hysteria and groupthink. Seminars were applied to both captives and parents alike, albeit with modifications made to the parental seminars.

You're basically required to use Newspeak, I mean WWASP jargon, if you want to get by. The logic behind this is the same as the logic for Oceanians having to use Newspeak.

And if you're serious about wanting to make it out with your original self intact, you'd be wise to take up "doublethink," because the Thought Police can almost always tell when you're lying, and being convicted of "thoughtcrime" would be "doubleplusungood."

So, yeah. If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, I urge you to read 1984. I consider it the most crucial reading I've ever done in my entire life, and I doubt that it will ever be topped. Not only does it describe a system that is VERY similar to that of WWASP; it describes the HOW and the WHY. Suddenly, you see the crude, idiotic, and pointless system for what it really is- a highly sophisticated, brilliantly designed machine that thoroughly and efficiently destroys the personalities of its prisoners. Oh yeah, and it makes a lot of money off of gullible people as well.

That's all I can say; I may have already said too much. I really don't know. All I know is, it's 2007, and yet America still hasn't gotten over slavery. In a country that calls itself a democracy, we have thousands of people who have NO freedom of speech- whether it's freedom to speak one's mind, or to speak at all!

If you don't start regulating (or better yet, shutting down) these facilities at once, I propose that we redesign our flag to include a hammer/sickle/red star design and rename our country "The Soviet States of America." At least then we'd have the balls to admit how oppressed we actually are, thanks to a government that has so far done nothing at all to protect those who need protection the most.

I'd like to conclude with this quote from 1984, which is perhaps the most succinct description of the system that the novel has to offer:

"The ideal set up by the Party was something very huge, terrible and glittering—a world of steel and concrete of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts, wearing the same clothes and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories. He seemed to see a vision of London, vast and ruinous, city of a million dustbins, and mixed up with it was a picture of Mrs Parsons, a woman with a lined face and wispy hair, fiddling helplessly with a blocked wastepipe."

Sincerely,
Sean Hellinger California

Spring Creek Lodge Academy closed sometime in 2009

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

My 2 years at Spring Creek (From Antiwwasp.us)

This story was originally written on a antiwwasp.us. All rights and credits goes to the author Twack, who published this story on antiwwasp.us:

I was 16 and going to an alternative art school and had been doing drugs for a year or 2, running away and what not. My parents tried inpatient and outpatient rehab and that didnt work. One day i had come home and was awaken at 3AM by 2 large escorts. They told me they were taking me to a new school and that if i tried running or anything i would be shakeled hand and foot, so i didnt feel like trying anything.

On the drive into Spring Creek i was blown away at how far it was from anything. I was told by my intake staff that it was impossible to run and no one had made it succesfully, so i never really saw that as an option. Lower levels was pretty much uneventful, I felt cut off from what i called home so i had a hard time finding any motivation to move on. But after a year i was pushed to move on, so i went up to jr staff. For me this is where the crap started to get bad.

Jr staff not to mention the whole program started to get over populated. they were stuffing kids where ever they could. they shut down offices and just put kids in there. Lower levels in the lower facility. I moved to the 18yo house off campus but that lasted only a couple weeks before it was changed to an upper level boys house that was no longer a privilage. They crammed a minumum of 30 kids in a double wide trailor! It was super cramped. One of the water heaters broke and they didnt care at all to fix it. The heaters that worked ran out after 1 shower, so we all had to shower in the nastiest water that was freezing. They had filters for the house but never changed them, i had to sneak around and do it myself in order to get the water better. Some nights we wouldnt even leave the facility till midnight then have to go home do night jobs, shower, get to sleep then wake up supper early to make the drive in.

My real problems were with 1 staff Mike Terri. He was Jr staff staff and was 1 of 2 staff for the off campus boys house. He was power hungry with zero compassion. For no reason on day he dropped us off miles from the house and made us all run arm in arm back to the house under the threat of loosing our levels. Then one kid had a medical issue from it and i had to run ahead back to the staff letting them know their little excersice made a kid collapse. We were told to not talk about the incident. That night i didnt care about my level and flipped out on mike and cussed him out about how he cant just treat people like that just because he feels like it and look what it caused. Somehow i kept my level but from then on me and mike were in a battle. Whenever mike had a moment to humiliate me he would, all the time acting like it was in my best interest laughing it up with the other staff. He at times would make me hold push up position for hours on end in front of the whole facility if i talked back to him, again not allowing me to talk to other staff about his bogus treatment.

One day i was on level 5 working as a runner and i saw staff running to the therapy office which was above the laundry so i went to the kid working the laundry room what happen, because if it was a runner i was going to get in on the chase. the kid working looked up with bloodshot eyes, i was like wake up dude you dont want to get dropped for sleeping on shift. he said he wasnt so i asked him if there was a runner and he was like just leave so i did confused. later that night mike calls me in and asks me about the situation i told him about the kid sleeping and asking if there was a runner. He said there was a girl trying to kill herself, I had no clue. He said he was dropping me for rumor spreading. I flipped out on him again. He told the other staff he was incharge of this drop and that i was not allowed to discuss it with other staff. I tried fighting it so hard but couldnt do it. The big deal was that i had a off grounds visit in 3 days and i was going to PC2 in 2 weeks and then starting my transtion to go home. I had done nothing wrong and they just wanted me to stay longer. In the end when my mom came they had a meeting for my drop. Because my parents had tickets bought for PC2 they asked my parents what to do about the situation and i told them i hadnt done anyting, but they had my parents programmed and they said "we trust the program and will support whatever the program decides". So i stayed dropped and missed PC2 and was set way back.

During my program I never pulled any crap. I just never cared to. I was just living my life trying to let the time pass. I got dropped twice, the one bogus time i just told you and again right after christmas and someone planted something stolen on me and rated me for it. The program didnt like my progress without messing up so they had to keep dropping me for no reason, it was bogus like there was no real way to get home.

I feel sorry for kids who ran. The rules that were told to the jr staff were " what happens in the woods stays in the woods" meaning anyway you can stop a runner you do it. And it happened. I feel sorry for the lower levels as a jr staff we were told to make their lives hell, and we did. It sucks but its what we had to do to go home.

Medical treatment was a sad joke there. I have sever sinus problems and never got any treatment while i was there the many times i was ill. I went to the school doctor and he gave deconsol and neproxen for EVERYTHING i mean EVERYTHING. Never did anything i was sick a lot. He wasnt even a real doctor he was a bone specialist or something. Then i stepped on a rusty nail and was told to soak it and that i wouldt get medical treatment because it was the week end. The next day my foot was massive and black and blue. After a huge fight they finally decided to do an emergency transport. They messed up my tetnus shot records and gave me a terible anti biotic that didnt do much. I was forced to go back to my familly and hobble around on it. Ive always had good teeth and never had a cavity but somehow when i was there i had to have 4 drilled and filled but never had one before or after and my dentist now say my teeth have always been perfect, no need for fillings. When i arrived there i was taken off a very strong perscription sleeping medication at the recomendation of the program, cold turkey. That was pretty rough.

I guess you can say i was lucky, i wasnt abused physicly, but the mental stuff was pretty bad. A lot of humiliation, and dropping for no reason. Making issues over nothing and terrible therapy, my therapist was a fish of an alcoholic and worthless. The program was vastly over populated and crammed kids in. Kids got dropped to keep tuition. Lies, false and real threats were told to us and parents, and the education we got was a joke. I worked the program in the end just because i didnt see anyother option, i didnt want to take a hike to missoula and i was told i wasnt welcome at home if i didnt graduate so i decided to work the program.

My relationship with my family is really good. It was that walking on eggshells but ok when i first got out. We did great together but we didnt go to deep. When i left for college and moved out for good it did miracles for us. Allowing myself to live by my rules and values taught me to grow up in areas and realize whats important and what is just B.S. I talk to them a lot now and trust them with most anything. When i first got out it took a little while to get the brainwashing out of my mind (prowassp) then i was mad about it for awhile and let them know that pretty good. Then we just had to agree to disagree on the topic and let it drop for a few years. Now im over being mad at them but i do feel it important that they know where i stand on the topic and i do tell them some of the antwassp happenings. Now days they are uncertain, at that time in their life they thought they had no choice, and trusted in all the hype they heard and saw. There was things they liked and things they didnt like but they had to have faith and believe what they were told. My dad hated focus and thought it was B.S.. Looking back at it all they dont know what the right thing to do was. I asked them, knowing all that you know now would you still trust in wassp and send me there, They told me no. To me that was all the closure i needed from them. But that took 5 or 6 years to get there.

The boarding school closed early 2009

References:
Link to the original story
Datasheet about the boarding school from the Fornits Wiki database

Josh's WWASP Article (From antiwwasp.com)

This story was originally written on a webpage called antiwwasp.com, which sadly is not online anymore. All rights and credits goes to the author Josh, who posted the original story on antiwwasp.com.

Antiwwasp.com has been relaunced as antiwwasp.us. Unfortunately without the testimonial part and as a message board only.

Much like a war, or a tragic event, I look back at Spring Creek Lodge Academy. Like a bad dream or chill of fear down my spine, I remember. No matter how hard I try, forgetting that two years of my life is not possible.

I was fourteen and I, one of few, gave my consent to go to Spring Creek Lodge. At the time, I just wanted to leave home; I could not imagine a place that could have been worse. I was wrong, and I soon learned that. My dad told me three months; he was wrong, and I soon learned that. I was one of the youngest ones there, and got picked on, of course. Being picked on at Spring Creek equated into a loss of points, which led to more time there. Soon I got into some trouble, and was sitting in my small booth staring at the wall, when my family representative told me that my parents had already signed a twelve-month contract. Having been the day after my fifteenth birthday, I felt hopeless. A year later I would find that it was a lie; however, I would not leave until I graduated from Spring Creek Lodge.

I went crazy, I wanted out. Helpless, hopeless, and alone I decided to wait until I was eighteen. I went to “the hobbit.” It was a small building with urine and feces on the walls, floors, and bunks. It smelled of bleach in a sad attempt to clean the repulsive mess. The other two rooms were full of other kids that were being unruly. I sat quietly until about four of them came into my room. They brought pillowcase that had knots tied in the ends of them, there was no hesitation to hit me with them. I heard the staff in the background “ hey guys knock it off,” when they finally did, everything hurt; I was bruised and weak. Next time just one of them came in. He told me to get on my knees in front of him. I said “no,” at seventeen he easily over powered me. He pulled me off of the top bunk, and hit me until I was on my knees in front of him, then he unzipped his pants called me many names and punched me in the face. It happened again with another guy. I left the next morning bruised dirty, and beaten. I would be made fun of for that night the rest of my program, mostly by the staff. My parents were never told, until I had to eight months later.

It was just a sign as to what was to come. I soon realized I would rather die than stay at Spring Creek. Of course, they stopped me; however a year later, one girl would succeed and hang herself by her own belt.

We were encouraged to share about our life and problems. They said it was safe and confidential. I did share, and was criticized by the staff that ran the place. I shared about having been molested when I was younger. I had been molested physically; now, Spring Creek was molesting me mentally. The only way-out, it seemed was to turn eighteen, or to be sent away to Tranquility Bay, Jamaica. They told me that they would beat me, and I would never get out, I will never know.

It was time to try “working the program.” To do this, you had to turn on the same people that were in the same boat as you. I did. Being assaulted became a daily occurrence. I tried to find balance. It was up and down for many more months, the hardships got harder, and the day came when I was seventeen years old, that I would leave Spring Creek Lodge.

It left me in pain. While I was there, I developed the most alone and helpless feeling. After twenty-five months, I would go home to very much, the same household. I missed much of the maturing stages of my life, I left afraid and unsure. Having grown up in Spring Creek Lodge, I could not picture life without it. I knew nothing about the outside world anymore, I had not talked to a girl in over a year, and I did not even know whom the president was.

Now I think of how I was used, manipulated, and hurt. The pain I felt, even wanting to die, if it meant leaving that place. Spring Creek, and some events, I would regret my whole life. After getting out and seeing how little had changed, even in other graduates, I felt even more lost. Institutionalized, all I knew, I hated. Now, almost a year later, I am still afraid and alone. Still running, and still hiding. That fourteen-year-old boy is a distant memory, but his pain will forever be a part of me.

That pain, every person at Spring Creek felt, in all W.W.A.S.P programs. Not only does it not work; it destroys lives, hopes, and dreams. Being home, nothing has changed, but compared to Spring Creek, things are great. Every day, I feel different than everyone else. Like I had a lobotomy, something is missing. The worst pain, came from what was “fixing,” me.

Spring Creek Lodge Academy closed sometime in 2009

References:
Datasheet about the boarding school in Montana from Secret Prisons for Teens
The original story (Cached version of antiwwasp.com - may take a while to load)