RedNettle in a wilderness program and residential asylum

RedNettle is my tumblr name and I am reblogging this to tell you:

I went to programs like this.

Things like this are VERY REAL. While my first program was not as horrible as the original poster’s (I went to Second Nature Wilderness Program, one of the ones she mentioned where you hike around Utah for 3 months) and while my program was not forcefully religious I would like you to understand things like this actually happen.

It happened to me. While I hated my time at my wilderness program at first I later enjoyed it. Like the original poster my problem was a severe bad attitude. I was a liar and a manipulator and even threatened my parents with SS without reasonable cause. But did it really warrant this kind of action?

Please listen.. While my first program was a bit extreme they treated me well and I always felt safe or taken care of. Not all of the wilderness programs are like this.. and after my wilderness I was sent to a “Therapeutic Boarding School.”

It was hell. My therapist was wonderful but the rest of it has left me traumatized. Many people who have worked there (very likely my past therapist as well) will say I am exaggerating but I am not. I came home after a year and a half at Provo Canyon School (in Orem, Utah) with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

You know why? For nearly 2 years of my life (this includes the wilderness program) I was not allowed to touch another human being. You might thing this is such a little thing but it isn’t!!! A human’s development depends on it and I was still a young teenager. We were not even allowed to high-five other girls. Now some say that isn’t a rule there.. That was another problem. The rules were always changing. Different staff would have different rules and in an environment where you are “Guilty until Proven Innocent” you live in constant fear of reprimand. Punishments included “Taking a Chair” where I was sometimes told,

• “You’re here because your parent don’t want you.”
• “I don’t care about you. I’m gonna go home tonight and eat my dinner and I wont even think twice about you.”
• “Look at you. You will never amount to anything.”

The punishment itself was not excessive, but the verbal and mental abuse we were subjected to was horrible.

For a truly big offense (often fighting) we were sent to “observation.” A concrete room with towering walls, a steel door and a tiny window at the very top of the room. Some girls were left in this room for weeks (runaways and girls who refused to admit to doing wrong.) You can not tell me that’s not horrible.

The only physical contact I ever got was on Family visits. Since my family is very affectionate I was incredibly lucky to get this attention. My brother and sister lived an hour away from the school and I was able to get more visits than other girls. Other girls were not so lucky. They went years without ANY physical contact.

On one visit with my brother I got sick and ended up puking. At the school you had to prove you threw up by showing the staff your puke and even then you were subject to scrutiny in case you shoved fingers down your throat to make yourself. So I brought my brother over and showed him after which his wife took my temperature. I had a fever of 101.3 Sadly the visit was over and they brought me back to the school. On check in my brother told them of my ailment and from there they took me inside and brought me back to detention as I had hours to finish. I could barely keep my head up and when I put my head down I was told to take a chair. Even on the chair I could barely keep the required position and eventually put my head against the wall.
Because of that I was sent to observation. The giant concrete isolation room. For “bad behavior.” I was being punished for being ill. The next day my therapist yelled at me for ‘acting poorly after she gave me the privilege of a family visit.’ I was in tears. I told her I was NOT faking. I told her to call my brother as he took my temperature and I was legitimately sick. She said there were no nurse records of a fever and I told her “that’s because nobody took it.” I could have been deathly ill and they still would have left me in that cold concrete room all night. How is that ok?

I can not stress the horror of this enough. I and other girls there were verbally and mentally abused. We lived in constant fear of doing wrong and getting in trouble for it. (Bending your knees when you stood in line was punishable to some staff.)

Why did I develop PTSD when that is something soldiers in war get?

Constant fear.

Verbal/mental/emotional abuse.

Lack of touch.

Neglect.

I lived in ‘survival mode’ for nearly 2 years. Other girls had been there far longer. These practices are inhumane. I survived and have since had to deal with many mental and emotional complications. Am I a better person now? Yes. But that did NOT happen because of neglect and abuse. It happened because I wanted to change as I grew up. They did not have to destroy my worth as a human being to make me better.

These schools are horrible. They need to be shut down.

Sources:

• pleeease repost this if you can. signal boost, anything. this isn’t just my story, it’s important. (Testimony from Tumblr)

Mshiloh at Eagle Ranch Academy

This testimony was found on Merchant Circle. All rights goes to the author known as Mshiloh.

Self-Esteem Loss and Emotional Trauma

I was been through many trials and painful events (varying from sexual abuse to physical torture), however, the darkest and most hopeless time of my life was the 11 months I spent in Eagle Ranch Academy.

When I left the facility, I was reduced to a raw, traumatized, pathetic creature. I say creature because that's the way I was trained to view myself while there. I have never felt so worthless. They practice degrading and humiliating disciplines that still haunt me from time to time. I've been able to heal from the emotional turmoil and abuse I experienced at ERA through years of therapy and self-esteem development. I now love myself and am functioning normally, but Eagle Ranch took what little self-worth I had at the time and dissolved it with sick treatment and twisted methods of "behavior modification".

Eagle Ranch restricts communication content with family members with a term called "manipulation". Any communication outside of the facility involving negative comments about the program and their treatment is immediately intervened. Once a week, 10 minute phone calls are monitored and terminated if the we mentioned the abuse. We were allowed to write a limited amount postcards to our families. They chose postcards as stationary so they could review the letter and ensure there was no "manipulative" content.

From an outside perspective, some of the rules and practices of the facility seem normal, but much more is revealed from the inside that only former ERA residents are able to describe. The people in my "pod" and I had to play a role in order to be released from the facility. We had to, as we called it, "fake it 'til we make it". Many of the staff who were sincere quit their jobs there because of the abusive environment.They would tell us that they cared about us, but just couldn't support this facility and its tactics. I have kept in touch with my former ERA residents, and EVERY SINGLE ONE has testified of the abuse and pain from the program. Most have relapsed on drugs, alcohol, and/or other risky behaviors. Those of us who are emotionally stable today, accredit NONE of it to Eagle Ranch Academy.

The program is a waste of your hard-earned money and a damage to your child's self-worth. Please, please don't send your child to Eagle Ranch Academy. This is a genuine plead. I am an intelligent, insightful person, and I can honestly say that this program has caused me a degree of permanent damage. I thank my family and loved ones for listening and helping me to recover as much as I have. If you love your child, which I know you do- otherwise you wouldn't be considering treatment programs, seek other options.

I pray that ERA will be brought to justice, but until then, I pray that my testimonial will help parents look into other programs/treatments and other former Eagle Ranch residents to speak out. Thank you.

Sources:

The original testimony Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki) Staff list (HEAL-online)

Untold Story of Elan, pt.2

Here I am pulling again, watching a new kid in The Corner. “Pulling” is Elan-speak for “staying up all night” aka working the graveyard shift. There are a couple different kinds of pulling. I am pulling on the SP, which is short for Support Person. Every time a child is sent into isolation then another kid like me is assigned to his SP. Since The Corner is 24/7, someone needs to be assigned to stay up watching him at night to make sure he or she doesn’t try to escape or get into anything they aren’t supposed to be doing. I guess we can’t just lock him in the room because there are windows that they could escape from. Not to mention the suicide risk of leaving a Corner student alone. If the kid kills himself, how is Elan going to collect his “tuition”?

The Corner is a chair is shoved where the two walls meet in a room isolated from the rest of the population. You are placed in the chair. You are inches from the wall, just enough to keep your knees in place and to make sure you don’t try to do anything that you aren’t allowed to do. You cannot talk, slump in your chair, move around, stretch your legs, or stand-up. You sit in the chair all day. At midnight your mattress is brought from the dorm and thrown onto the floor of your isolation room. You sleep on the mattress while an SP pulls on you in a desk-chair blocking the door. The next day you are woken up at 7am and brought down stairs to quickly shower and brush your teeth. Then from 7:15am until midnight you are facing the corner of the room again. If you try to do anything you aren’t allowed to do then your SP calls CHIEF and you are restrained and often times put into zipties. The worst thing about being ziptied is that is makes it much harder to eat your lunch or dinner when it arrives. Being in The Corner is hell, at least 1/3 of the people in The House have been there at least once. The usual time is a few days, but being in for a few weeks is not uncommon. Being put in for a few months happens as well. One or two people have been in for the better part of a year.

When your Corner time ends, you are taken into the Dining Room to receive a General Meeting. After the GM you are returned to the population as a Shotdown. A lot of kids resist, react, or “act out” during the GM so they are taken right back up to The Corner after everyone “gets their feelings off”. This process can go on for months and months. The thing about the Elan Program is that you won’t get kicked out. And there lies the real power of The Program. Everything that you can possibly do will be dealt with by the system. Once you get into Elan, don’t expect to be released.

Another form of pulling is called “Night Owl”. That is a kid chosen to keep count of everyone in The House, all night long. Since we have both boys and girls here, there is one Night Owl for each gender. And since Elan is not stupid enough to allow a boy and girl to be alone together while everyone else is asleep, an adult is brought in to break up what The Program calls a “1-on-1”. This adult is called the Night Guard and is paid by Elan to come in every night. We have 3 or 4 Night Guards who all come in on different nights. The Night Guard calls a “run” every 10 to 15 minutes, from 1am until 8am. The boy Night Owl stays in the boys bathroom all night. When a run is called he pops out and goes in and out of all the dorms counting the boys while they sleep and then shouts his “count” to the Night Guard who records it. The boy Night Owl then switches with the girl Night Owl, who is guarding the back door Zone of The House all night. He guards the Zone while she goes through the female dorms and counts them. She shouts her count and then goes back to her Zone. Since the Night Guard sits on the Zone guarding the front door, him and the girl Night Owl have both exits covered all the time, all night. The boy goes back into the males bathroom until the next run is called.

The “run” consists of walking into each dorm with a flashlight to count the sleeping bodies. You are required to lift the covers off of everyone to make sure they are not wearing shoes or clothes. This makes getting a decent night’s sleep in Elan very difficult and you eventually learn that if you wrap your feet in the blanket, you will be woken often. The Night Owl also shines the flashlight into the closets to check that no jackets or shoes are missing. Lastly, they walk over to the window and see that it is closed and they give the screen an examination to make sure it hasn’t been cut. It is also important to check the heaters in winter. They need to be clear because someone may try to cause a fire as a distraction to make a get-away.

This process is then repeated in every dorm.

When someone is in the Corner and another kid is on his SP all night, then the Night Owl also has to climb up the steps as part of his run and physically see us and add us to the count. I am that SP right now, and that is why I have the time to write my story into the margins of this book I am pretending to read. But every 10-15 minutes, I have to listen for his approaching steps so I can hide my pen and pick the book up to my face. If the Night Owl came up and caught me sleeping on my post then I would be in a lot of trouble. He would wake up another High-Strength to take my place and I would retire to my bed in the dorms. When I woke up I would be shotdown. Falling asleep even for a second while pulling SP on the Corner is a very serious breach of security.

Shotdown is the lowest position in The House. The only person lower is the Corner student. If you are a shotdown (verb) and a brand new resident gets thrown into The House that day, then even he or she gets to eat before you do. As a Shotdown (noun), your job is to scrub a small section of the floor with a sponge all day. Shotdowns are chosen to do all the bad things in The House: scrub trashcans, showers, toilets. All day, every day. For days or weeks straight.

So falling asleep is not an option for me. Even a long blink at the wrong time and I am screwed if the Night Owl catches it. In Elan, you are always being watched, even in the middle of the night while you are forced to watch someone else.

During the day there is a system called Headcounts. Every ten minutes, from 9am to midnight, there is someone running through The House with a clipboard and a Headcounts sheet. The Headcounts sheet has the name of every single kid in The House. It looks like a piece of graph paper, with the names going down the side followed by a string of boxes. We have codes for every part of The House: SC for the Service Crew room, BO for the Business Office, X for the Security room, DR for Dining Room, etc… Headcounts goes through the entire House in about 6 minutes, records where everyone is, and then gets his run signed off by the Chief, COD, and Staff, in that order. Each may decide to double-check the run to make sure it is accurate. An inaccurate run could get you shot-down. Most New Residents have no idea that Headcounts is running all day.

As part of Headcounts, every so often the Coordinator-on-Duty calls HOUSE IN THE DINING ROOM and the Zones echo the call. Everyone, except Corner kids and their SP’s, are expected to immediately flood into the dining room and enter their chairs with military precision. During this time the Expeditors are also paying close attention to anyone who moves too slow or anyone not looking directly up front or slouching in their chair and this is all Guilt. Once everyone is in their place, which should take about 30 seconds by Elan Program standards, the Coordinator-on-Duty (or COD for short) reads each name and each person says YES after there name is called. This naming ritual happens 10 or more times a day, reminding everyone that running away is not a smart idea.

Headcounts runs from 9am to Midnight. From Midnight – 1am, runs are made the Dorm Night Owls. 1am – 8am, runs are called by the Night Guard and carried out by the Pulling Night Owls. From 8am to 9am, runs are called by the COD and carried out by the Pulling Night Owls. In Elan, you are never NOT being counted. For as many years as you are doomed to stay here.

Besides a 24/7 system of counting the children, 24/7 Zones that protect every exit and entrance, and an entire caste system of people with clipboards observing you all day; lets pretend that you do manage to get out of 1 of the 2 doors that lead outside. The only place to run is directly into the Maine wilderness. Deep wilderness that is covered in snow most of the year and guess what: you don’t have a jacket or boots. You were dressed for the Dining Room because that is the only place you are allowed to be dressed for. Every single morning a Strength with a clipboard records what every single kid is wearing. Wearing too many clothes is not allowed and if you do it you are called a “split-risk” and taken back in the dorms to change instead of eating breakfast. Wearing dark-on-dark is also not allowed unless you are a High Strength who has earned those privileges. You don’t even have enough hair on your head to keep warm because Elan only allows long hair to High Strength who have earned it!

But it doesn’t matter if you split in Winter or split in Summer, there are another set of guards in the woods around Elan. I used to think it was a scare-story that the Staff told the Strength and the Strength blindly passed on to the non-Strength. Until I reached a position that allowed me to pull and I could watch these guards exit the woods in full camo, get into their cars and then drive home when their replacement showed up. Also, the Night Guard has a walkie-talkie and I can hear him constantly chatting with them. It must be just as lonely waiting around all night in The House as it is waiting around in the forest. Anyways, the point is that 24/7 forest-guards do exist. So even if you can miraculously make it out of The House, you now have a new threat to deal with.

Anyone who tries to run away (or in Elan-Speak: split) from The House, is punished with The Corner and GM’s upon their capture. If you try to resist capture after making your escape them you will also be charged with breaking the “No Violence” Cardinal Rule and you will end up in The Ring.


Elan School is now closed

Sources:

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

Untold Story of Elan, pt.1

It has taken me almost a year to reach the point where I can safely write this. I have a lot to get off my chest and before I explain anything else I really need to unload what is on my mind. I am in a place called The Elan School. It is located in Maine, deep in the forest. I am writing this in secret and I have to be careful because (even at 3am) there is a boy coming up the stairs every 15 minutes to check in on me. He is just another kid like me, barely 16 years old. My job right now is to stay up all night watching another child who Elan has placed in total isolation. He has been in isolation for the better part of 7 months now.

I am not a writer and I may not use proper punctuation and I will probably ramble on, but the story I am going to tell is unbelievable in every possible way. It is hard to organize my thoughts as I scribble these notes into the small margins of a book I grabbed earlier. The kid checking up on me assumes I am reading the book, because why wouldn’t I be? The truth is that it is the only place I can safely write. Everywhere else is compromised! Afterwards I will slip it back into the shelf amongst the hundreds of other books. I pray nobody finds it. I chose the book with the most uninteresting title I could find. If anyone finds it they can match it to my handwriting.

But if nobody does then when I finally escape this place I will bring it with me to show the authorities or anyone who will listen.

Elan is a horrible place. They make the kids here fight each other in a ritual called “The Ring”. They put the kids into isolation and they stay there for weeks and months, until they barely act human. These are kids! Some as young as 13. They have a thing called a General Meeting where they force our entire House of around 60 children to scream and degrade one poor unlucky kid chosen by the Staff. It is called a GM for short. It should be called the 30 minute hate. We have all been chosen for a GM. Sometimes The House has 4 or 5 in a single day. All day in Elan is just screaming. Kids screaming at each other in Groups, in GM’s, in Dealing Crews, in Blasts, or screaming and cheering when a kid is getting his ass kicked in The Ring.

They get away with it because all of our communication to the outside world is censored. I was not allowed to write letters for a long time and when I finally “earned” the privilege all of my letters were read and sometimes sent back to me with edits for a mandatory rewrite. The first letter I was allowed to write my parents was called a “Guilt Letter” and it was supposed to be a list of all the bad things I had ever done. No “Hi Mom and Dad” intro. No explanation of why I was writing it. Just a straight up confession of everything wrong I had ever done. And I mean everything. My first was a couple pages but after being threatened with a GM, I eventually turned it in with over 20 pages. Some kids wrote over 50 pages! Staff then read my Guilt Letter and told the other kids in the program about the content. They are encouraged to use the information against me, it is all part of “The Program”.

And I cannot tell anyone outside of Elan what is happening. All of our phone calls are monitored. Your first phone call to your parents is scripted and you work it out with Staff for weeks before you are allowed to make it. When you do it is over speaker-phone in a conference room full of the adults who run The Program. If you make any mistake or go off topic they end the call and bring you back for a GM and you get Shotdown. And then you can’t earn your weekly phone call. Even when you do earn it another kid in a higher position is always there listening to what you say. They will hang up the phone if you try to tell your parents how things really are. Sadly, I have hung up other kids calls when I was assigned to be the “Support Person” (or SP for short). It is all part of The Program. I had no choice.

I have been forced to do a lot of horrible things to the other children here. Scream and degrade them daily, monitor them and write reports on them to give to the Staff, beat them up in The Ring, beat them up when they are put in isolation. We call isolation “The Corner”. It is all a part of The Program and if I refuse then those things will happen to me! None of us ever know when we can finally leave Elan. Some kids have been here for almost 4 years with no end in sight.

Sometimes we have three-House Rings and three-House GMs. There are three Houses in Elan and I am in House 8 with about 60 other kids, both boys and girls. We never see people from the other Houses but sometimes they bring all of us to House 3 (because they have the biggest Dining Room) and all 120 people on the complex give one person a 3-House GM. A 3-House Ring means you get beat up and 120 other kids watch and cheer for the people fighting you. You see these things even once and you know you are no longer in America. You know that Elan can and will do anything to you and get away with it. That nobody will ever come here and stop them. And that you do not have the resources available to tell anyone about it. Sometimes I feel like nobody will even believe me when I finally escape from this place. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

The entire Elan system is run by children. Staff oversees everything like Gods but The Program is strictly based on “peer accountability”. All of the children are in different positions like the military. Every House has two kinds of people: Strength and non-Strength. The non-Strength are not allowed to talk to each other. They are not even allowed to look at each other. They are kind of like the slaves of The House. Whenever one non needs to talk to another non, they have to find a Strength and ask them to “be aware” of the conversation. Being a Strength isn’t easy either, one mistake and you will get demoted back to non-Strength.

The non-Strengths of The House have to shower at night instead of the morning, sleep in top bunks instead of bottom bunks, and they cannot do anything without a Strength around to watch them, not even use the bathroom. All day they have to clean The House and since 60 of us live in this little House, it is always dirty. They also have to get their food last at meal times. Even us Strength are hungry all the time, everyone who comes to Elan loses weight. I go to sleep hungry every single night. But when I was a non-Strength, it was even worse.

This is how everything in Elan is set up. But even amongst Strength you have different levels. I am at the rank of Department Head in The Program. So while I am a Strength, I am not a High Strength. High Strength positions get to eat before Strength and they get chosen every month to go out on special trips. Everyone wants to be a High-Strength but a lot of people will never reach that level. The best High-Strength position is called Coordinator. There are higher ranks than Coordinator but most kids will never reach them. Everyone wants to reach Coordinator because if you can hold that position for 6 months or a year then you can ask Staff for Graduation dates. Every once in a while we have a Graduation in The House and we all say goodbye to him or her. There is a big ceremony and it lasts 2 hours or more. It all focuses on that one kid and how well he or she did in The Program and about all the good things they are going to do when they get “out there”. Everyone here calls the real world “out there”. I remember thinking it was strange when I was a New Resident but now even I use the phrase. I remember during one of my first meals, a kid at the table asked me “What is it like, right now? Out there?” That was a weird moment. That felt like a lifetime ago.

Everyone in our House is in different ranks but we also have different “Crews” that run The House. We have the Service Crew that basically deals with keeping The House clean, ordering new supplies, dealing with the New Residents. We have the Communications Crew that deals with how people are communicating in The House and Encounter Group rosters for the week. We have the Business Office that deals with various paperwork that needs to be done and distributing materials throughout The House. We have the Kitchen Crew that deals with meals and getting the plates/cups/utensils on time from the Big Kitchen. And we have the X’s Crew, the X is slang for Expeditor. Basically the X’s deal with House security, making sure people don’t run away, setting up people on Zones, and making sure The House is secure. There is a kid called the Chief Expeditor and they are basically the Chief of Police. Everybody in The House is scared of the Chief because he or she can basically do whatever they want. If they deem you a threat then they can order people to tackle you on the spot, restrain you with zip-ties, and then haul you off to The Corner.

When people in our House get scared they yell “Chief!” as loud as they can and the Chief and a bunch of the High Strength show up and someone usually ends up on the ground. Communication in The House is built on the concept of different kids who “echo” calls. They stand at strategic points throughout The House that we call Zones. So when someone in any part of The House yells “Chief!” then the people at the zones echo the call but add the place where the call came from, like “Chief Dining Room!” or “Chief Service Crew!”. And The House is not so big so kids in the high ranks can respond to any part of it within a matter of seconds.

But the Zones also have another, more important function: they are the guards. And I cannot stress this enough: these are kids on the Zones. The entire Elan Program is run by children. We are the ones who guard each other. We are the ones who order supplies for The House. We do everything. Too many things to list right now. Anyways, we have Zones placed strategically around The House and obviously only Strength are allowed to hold them. So every door is blocked or overseen by a Strength. Every entrance or exit to another part of The House is blocked or overseen by a Strength. And we only have 4 Zones. I told you our house was small.

Really, being in this place with 60 other people is a living nightmare. It is always so loud. It is always so dirty. Someone is always screaming or freaking out that day, usually a few people. Everyone is always running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Some kid is always watching you from a Zone. People are everywhere, holding clipboards and their job is just to fill up the clipboard with "Guilt" and suspicious things going on. I know because I used to do it, it is the rank before Department Head. And it is not an easy job. The position is called “Expeditor”.

There are usually a lot more people in the position of Expeditor than any other position in The House. It is the first Strength position and one of the most demanding, so it usually takes a kid a long time to earn the next promotion to Department Head of a Crew. I have seen people stuck in Expeditor for 6 months to a year. The most crucial part of being an Expeditor is completing your “Clipboard Packet” every day. If you do not you will be punished. All Expeditors are required to carry around a wooden clipboard and the other Strength are always trying to steal it from them, like a game. If you can take an Expeditors clipboard when they are not paying attention, you are actually praised because you have shown a hole in the security apparatus of The House. The idea is that if a Strength can manage to get one then a non-Strength could too. And if a non got a hold of one it would be a serious security breach.

Every Expeditor carries a wooden clipboard, but attached to the piece of wood is a packet of paperwork and that is called the Clipboard Packet. It is kind of like a test, with answers that need to be filled in and given to the Chief Expeditor at the end of every day. Weekends are no different. Surveillance in Elan never ends. The Clipboard Packet contains different sections. One of the pages contains something called an Attitude Report Form (ARF for short) and it names a non-Strength that you are assigned to for the day. In order to complete your ARF you need to talk to the kid and ask him questions and pretend to just be “having a chat”. In reality you are building an evaluation of them based on questions listed by the Staff. How do they feel about the program? How likely are they to run away? How many friends do they have in The House? How many are Strength? What do they talk to the Strength about? What Coordinators do they look up to? And lots of other questions that the target has no idea about, they just assume you are being friendly.

Another example from the Clipboard Packet is the Dining Room “Guilt” section. There are 3 or 4 blank pages with circles on them representing the table layout of the dining room. Using small handwriting, Expeditors are expected to fill in those pages with Guilt that the people in The House are “acquiring”. Most of the day, people are in dining room and almost everything in Elan is deemed Guilt, so an average Expeditor can fill up those pages in a day while a more ambitious one will ask for even more pages to fill up. Since Expeditors are now Strength, they are trained and put on Zones for the first time. So they are standing at the best vantage points of The House. Guilt can be doing anything from glancing out the window to taking an extra bite of your lunch after the meal time runs out. Acquiring Guilt is like breathing in Elan, everyone is doing it all the time and The Program requires that you “cop to it”.

About once a week you are handed a blank sheet of paper by another kid and told to “cop to your Guilt” and when you hand back that paper it had better be full. Sometimes Staff asks you to write down your own LE’s (learning experience) = punishments for your Guilt. So a lot of people actually end up “shooting themselves down” or being demoted to Shotdown, the lowest and most miserable rank of The House.

Guilt is a big part of the Elan program. We have three “Cardinal Rules” and they are: No Sex, No Drugs, No Violence. But since we are in the middle of the woods and in a House with constant surveillance, these rules take on a different meaning. “No Sex” is the first Cardinal Rule and it is taken so literally that even glancing at the female side of the dining room during dinner will get you in trouble. If anyone in The House were so bold as to pass a note to a member of the opposite sex they would not only be demoted, they would get a General Meeting, maybe thrown into the Corner for a while, and undoubtedly would have to “restart” the program from scratch. I have seen people in The Program for a year or more get caught passing notes and they were sent back to zero as if all the previous time never even existed. Even having a crush on a member of the opposite sex is Guilt and as Staff knows we are teenagers who cannot help it, we are constantly having to cop to our Guilt and if we DON’T name names of who we have a crush on, then that is an even more serious sign of Guilt: deception. And a sure sign that you have a whole lot more Guilt below the surface.
The next Cardinal Rule is “No Drugs” and is also taken to the extreme. We are in the middle of nowhere and getting drugs here would be next to impossible. So people do crazy things like steal the shaving cream bottles to separate the nitrus canister from inside. During Spring a kid once hid some fruit in the pockets of his Winter jacket which was hanging in the closet with the hope that it would ferment throughout the Summer months and become alcoholic.

Some kids cannot stand that we are always hungry and they secretly hide bits of food. When they are caught they are shotdown and given a GM or two. Staff will say things like “Food is your drug. And you are an addict! You are breaking the Cardinal Rules!”. It is amazing how a couple rules can be twisted so out of proportion to make our lives a living hell.

The final Cardinal Rule is taken to the extreme just as badly as the first. “No violence” is defined as anything aggressive, even a gesture or a look. If a High Strength feels threatened in any way, even imaginary, they can call CHIEF! and the person (usually a non-Strength) will be physically confronted and most likely tackled to the floor and restrained. Since the word of a High Strength is much more credible than the word of a non-Strength, there needs to be very little evidence, if any, to prove the threat. Residents are not even allowed to shake hands or give each other high-fives. Nothing physical because this is considered an act of violence by Elan. Bumping into the wrong (powerful) person in the hallway could be construed as a violent attack and lead the offended person straight into The Ring.

Elan School is now closed

Sources:

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

necolumen at Discovery Academy

This story was originally written on the message board called the Fornits Home for Wayward Webfora.

----
I think its time for me to jump in here, as I graduated Discovery Academy in 2005. All the staff their thought I was trustworthy, believed in the program, and was 'cured' from depression, which in of itself is a dubious claim. None of that is true of course.

Side Note: The Facility is ran by a Brent R. Hall, and is owned by the ASCENT CORPORTATION which also owns 'RED-CLIFF ASCENT' wilderness program.

I have recently learned that i am a manic-depressive, and I do have a better hold on it now, almost three years later.

I truly hate that place, I faked my recovery from depression. They tried to slow down the rate at which I blowing through their school curriculum. They initially made it so that I had to get a 96% to pass a test or I had to retake it. I will personally testify, in court if need be, that they are actively defrauding the accrediation system. but enough about that.

I graduated as a level 4, the highest 'level', which is a measure of trust, in their 'program' their was only one other 'level 4' after I and a few others, graduated. So I have been Through the program, faked it, and know its ins and outs. Not only that, but because of my level, I was privy to information, discussions, and general musings of some of the staff.

I am a highly intelligent individual, no boasting; IQ, memory, psyche, and standard tests continually back that up. Some of the more intelligent staff, being a majority college students, were eager to engage me in conversation. I learned a lot.

Below is part of an e-mail i sent to someone in regards to their son's plight at discovery academy. I tried to make it as factual as possible. And include much about the inner workings as possible.

Well, I can tell you that it won't actually help the kid if he has actual problems. Most of the kids their when I was their were kids with drug problems or problems with the law. Its essentially a lockdown school, cant leave campus by yourself, alarms on all the doors, daily chores, it a like a step up from a military school. The environment their is controlled by 'therapists' and two people in charge of the boys and girls divisions respectively, Alan is the guys, guys and girls cannot normally interact at the school. You get punished with 'reflection points' which are similer to demerits. A reflection point is an hour of work. kissing a girl is 75 reflection points for example. Running away is 150. Saying a racial slur is 10. Cursing is one.

I particularly found the place unhelpful, and sometimes hostile. The staff is mainly college students. The therapists see students once a week for an hour, some even less than that. There are strong religious (mormon) overtones, all community service benefits the LDS in some way or form. All media, books and tv is regulated, cd players and mp3 players are not allowed, though students can own a radio. You cannot send letters without permission of a therapist, nor call anyone. They reccomend everyone stay their a year or more, it is not a non-profit organization as far as I can tell. While I was there (9 months) I saw three students return with more severe drug problems.

Failing to Follow the rules results in PHYSICAL RESTRAINT

The school there is all self taught they have four teachers a day for the whole school and everyone works independently. Thus students who are depressed about being there or are not good self-teachers tend to fall behind.

I personally graduated from there with a full highschool diploma and completeion of 'the program'. To complete the program you must show yourself progressing in 'therapy' and trustworthy and hardworking their are 12 'levels' representing level of trust and responsibility, level changes happen every two weeks or 4 weeks I cannot remember, and rarely do students progress that fast.

Perhaps I should mention that I absolutly hate discovery academy. If your kid has actual problems their are better places to send him, if he doesn't, the therapists will make one up.

The people who run the place are unreasonable, they are for the most part fundamentalists, and you will hear such rehtoric and beleifs coming from their mouths often.

I have considered filing legal action against them, but I really do not have the time, with college, and the money, being that I am in college.

If he is a good kid, he should not be there, end of story. If you are looking for a legal challenge, perhaps you take up the actual existence of these schools. Think about this for a second.

If you lock your kid up and never let him go out into the world, social services will come after you. If you physically restrain your child from leaving the house to go outside and play, Social Services will come after you.

Judicial Oversight needs to be in place to represent a neutral third party in determining whether it is proper to send a child to one of these places.

Sources:

• Discovery Ranch (The original testimony on the Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

DRruinedmylife at Discovery Ranch

This story was originally written on the message board called the Fornits Home for Wayward Webfora.

----
I attended Discovery Ranch 5 years ago when I was 15 years old.

My parents sent me there because I was depressed, doing poorly in school instead of getting straight A's, got caught shoplifting a pack of gum from 7-11, spent too much time on the computer, and was "too angry and defiant". I had never done drugs, drank, or even smoked a cigarette at this point in my life. I had been raped when i was 12 and was unable to tell my male therapist or parents about this happening because my family is very Catholic.

In comparison, most of the other residents had serious drug problems, were in gangs, were extremely violent, etc. Regardless of what they were there for, NO ONE SHOULD EVER BE TREATED AS INHUMANELY AS CHILDREN SUCH AS MYSELF WERE. I had repressed memories of the physical, sexual, and psychological torture i endured for five years until I watched a documentary on the stanford prison experiment in my psychology class. It brought everything back because I lived that experience, except for ten months and it was real.

I don't believe that the people who tortured me were innately evil; i think it was a situation similar to Abu Ghraib. I was forced to do the most humiliating and degrading things possibly conceivable; I was forced to eat a girls used tampon, lick cow shit off a girls boots, unclog a toilet with my bare hands... adult male staff would masturbate to me showering, changing, and using the toilet while masturbating (keep in mind I was 15.), I witnessed a 15 year old boy be sodomized by a broom handle and have the living shit beat out of him because he tried to run away and watched a girl punch a window and slit her wrists in front of me because she couldn't take it anymore.

They would arbitrarily lock me in a tiny pitch black closet devoid of food, water, a bathroom, or human contact for days, usually because I made an "inappropriate facial expression" like crying or raising my eyebrows when they screamed at me that I was worthless and no one could ever love me. The night staff was apparently fucked up on heroin, meth, pcp, etc the whole time and had virtually no training or qualifications, which I learned when a male staff member sexually propositioned me over Facebook when I was 18, so three years later, and told me what happened behind closed doors.

I had no contact with the outside world except letters to my parents which were censored, and observed phone calls once a month. I had to raise a baby cow for the slaughter to "learn to deal with loss", exercise until I threw up blood, pick up cow shit every day, I could go on and on. And the scariest part was that it was fantastic during the day; we would do ropes courses and go skiing and horseback riding and talk to a truly kind therapist every day who genuinely though I was insane or a pathological liar and convinced me I was hallucinating or having nightmares.... But I fucking wasn't. I literally couldn't make this shit up.

I thought I was actually crazy, but it was all real. I don't know why but when i was there I never wanted to leave. I felt like i somehow deserved to be treated like this and I think a part of me knew I could never stand living in the real world after all this happened. I stopped feeling emotions and didn't for two years. When I came back to real life I had forgotten how to smile and had to train myself to make facial expressions that corresponded to the emotions I should have felt in various circumstances.

Even when I started feeling feelings again I realized on Wednesday that I had been experiencing emotions with maybe 50-75% of the intensity that I normally should, which was put into perspective when I finally accepted that these things truly happened to me and felt for the first time in my life the appropriate pain and humiliation that corresponds to being treated in such a way for such an extended period of time. Until now I had remembered my experience there as a happy one- I literally only remembered what went on during the day.

The reason I am writing this now is because I ended up becoming an alcoholic and drug addict once I went to college and had finally had complete freedom. With the help of a REAL rehab and AA, I had achieved 14 months sober.

After essentially being re-traumatized after remembering all this, I recently went on a five day bender started Wednesday where I got high and or drunk every waking moment, which culminated with me waking up on my bathroom floor on Monday morning covered in blood and vomit next to two empty bottles of wine and Xanax spilled across the floor with a five page suicide note on my computer that I'd written in a blackout.

I am at a loss for what to do at this point. I'm in therapy, on medication, have been to three AA meetings in the past three days, and just feel like I am out of options and suicide or getting constantly fucked up is my only option at this point. I literally can't live with these memories. It makes me fucking sick that this place, along with HUNDREDS of others, still exists, quietly protected under the umbrella of the state government of Utah, and that parents are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their children to be tortured and driven insane or into obedient, soulless sociopaths.

Sources:

• Discovery Ranch (The original testimony on the Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)