Mike's stay at ABM ministries.

Abm claims to be a cure, a safe space for kids who struggle.

They give a "tough love" approach. There is little love. Just tough. Day one Mr.Larry looked at me and laughed. "What's with the sour face? Did your dog just die? You where lucky. Usually we have people kidnap you in the night."

They took my adhd meds which I had been taking since I was 5 and got rid of them "It's just a lack of self control." I developed some sort of neurological tick. It's not adviced by psychiatrists that anyone go off a meds cold turkey. Parents are given a handbook. Then told a handful of lies. There is no physical abuse. Staff members will not berate/humiliate students. Food will not be used as punishment. Of course, the phone calls where monitored so saying things like "They are abusing me." Was impossible. The parents where told that their children would most likely say a number of outlandish things about the school, and that the child is lying to you because they wanna leave. pull one over on you.

Since I'm "gay" I was told that I would get restrained for making eye contact with any male student. Which in reality meant put you in a choke hold, punch you, push you, forcibly throw you face first into the ground, hold your head down while putting your arm behind your back in this position I can't even begin to describe because I can't imagine that it was physically possible, until you start screaming and obey. A student could be put into one at any time. Some times for just talking out of order.

Most parents reading this will think spare the rod spare the child! Your gay they did what they had to do! It wasn't just the rod, it was physical abuse. God! These people do not have the fruit of Christ to show for it. They are just master deceivers. I was consistently called a f#%^*¥, pickle lover. Humiliated in front of the other students. They would take away blankets and pillows, sometimes mattresses and you'd have to sleep on the thin wire bars of the bed. Painful. I watched a kid get cement glue shoved up his nose while he was being held up against a wall by his neck. Iv seen kids pass out. One child somehow got a hold of a razor and slit his wrists. Blood everywhere. He was unresponsive and we assumed taken to the hospital. Treated like absolute crap afterwords. 3 years ago he ended up killing himself.

We would have these "bible studies" and "church services" Mr. Larry would talk about himself, and how he was so smart, successful and how we should strive to be more like him. Christian homeschool program called ACE. Dumbest education I've ever had and unfortunately I was so behind in things like math and English when I entered college. If I got in trouble, I was outside doing "work projects" which consisted of running large stones back and forth, or digging holes in Missouri ground (all rocks) and putting up fence posts. My food was tortilla wraps with peanut butter. An overweight mentally handicapped boy was given small amounts of food and made fun of because he was fat, by staff members in front of students until he would cry. Which he did a lot. He had asthma and was given one water bottle and told to run laps for hours until he stopped crying. boy fainted.

We where forced to circle around a student one day, while he stripped into his underwear in the snow. He was a black student who had taken food from the kitchen once when no one was around (which was super rare). We where told to yell and scream at him and throw snowballs at him. You could get in trouble for doing nothing. Which meant the staff found something to be mad at you for. A lot of parents see me as just being leftist trash. I'm the furthest thing from liberal. I just see this school as wrong. One year a male teacher raped a female student. Her family ended up suing the school. Larry paid out a little more than what the school makes in a year in fees.

There where a lot of abuse allegations, they had changed the schools name multiple times in order to get away from bad reputations and allegations of abuse. Just do your research!

Source:

• The original testimony on Yelp

A testimony about Storm Ridge Ranch in Utah

A former resident named James Bilardello wrote on Google:

Storm Ridge Ranch is a fraud. It is a warehouse for children. The Larson's are liars who will do anything for a dollar. They make desperate parents take out loans to send their children to this facility. Meanwhile the children become slaves; yes a working ranch, read in between the lines. If your child wants to leave on time they will have to work for freedom. Meanwhile Rick's cattle makes him money. It isn't even slave labor, its worse. The parents pay to have their children become slaves. Then Maryann rubs it in the children faces, to make them have low self esteem, how their parents suffered finically to send them there.

The education is horrible, they give you a book and say read it. No one teaches you. Your child, if not self motivated, will not learn a thing. Rick has broken children's arms for little reason. He is abusive and strict, disobey and your child could have a broken nose or arm. They call it restraining a child. This is just code for torture until they comply. They are an evil family. The whole family works their. Most male staff are married to one of Rick's daughters, only one is actually nice. The lowlife husbands become horrible role models for your children. The other owner Darin, his wife is the teacher. You might think this is good, a family owned residential facility. Think again, they will cover for each other. It is like a Larson cult, but the men kept their last names because they married his daughters. Do not send your child here.

I personally was there twice. Both facilities when it was only male. It will only make your child worse. Trust me. Their are better options, please I beg you do not send your child to Storm Ridge Ranch. They monitor all communication between your child and you, this is because they do not want your child to tell you the truth. They force the children to send home "happy" letters. All phone conversations monitored so your child cant tell you what is really happening. I have personally heard Richard Larson threaten children "If you don't do what I say I will get another 3 months out of your parents, you know I can!!!" he manipulates parents with Maryann. If your child says something true, how they are abusive or mention slave labor, they will tell the parents their child is a manipulator. I was personally there over 10 years ago. I imagine it has only become worse. The man they call "Woods" is no better. I had to add that. He is a know it all, arrogant human being who only cares about his job. The staff that isn't related hates it there, as they are paid minimum wage because they are un educated.

Do not send your child here, this place is a scam. I came out worse then I went in. I was personally never abused, I believe because I was six feet tall and athletic when I was young. They were scared of me. The children who weren't as big as I was, I was a big 16 year old, were the ones abused. They justify their abuse so they could sleep at night but if your child is not a big kid they will be "restrained", aka abused. This place left me psychologically harmed, as I only left worse. I left worse because if you think your child is out of control, their is a child that is worse, your child will become friends with them, your child will gain knowledge on how to be a better criminal. Please I beg you, I know from experience, 9 months then 3 months. Please excuse my spelling I went to high school at Storm Ridge Ranch. I left worse and became a nightmare in my late teens and early 20s because of Storm Ridge Ranch. Save your child.

The facilty is located on two gender separated places in Utah. An investigation in 2014 showed that they billed Medicaid for services they didn't provide

Sources:

• The original testimony (Google reviews)
• STATE RECOVERS NEARLY $320,000 IN WRONGLY BILLED MEDICAID EXPENSES (Utah Business)

Testimony about Refuge of Grace Academy

Today the boarding school has been rebranded as Wings of Faith Academy but remains under the same management. The boarding school was founded in Michigan but moved to Missouri in order to avoid oversight.

Even prisoners get an hour outside, for the first few months I was there we NEVER went out. I went to refuge march 2009 to nov and well..

I came out fragile and feeling like dying. The martins convinced my parents and I that I had stds to keep me there longer. Once my parents said they couldn't afford it they were happy to let me go! Besides that I went to the doc after I got out and found out I was completely fine and healthy which made me so angry. I was at first disliked by Debbie because the first night I got restrained for pushing her back when she pushed me first! I lost the feeling in my hands for a couple weeks. I was a guide there after a few months and tried to help as many girls as I could.

It was only possible for me to get through by learning to live inside myself. Their self righteous arrogant ways make a bad name for Christians. Only God helped me through and only Gods forgiveness keeps me from a lawsuit.

Sources:

• The original testimony on Merchantcircle.com
• Factsheet about the boarding school (Fornits Wiki)

Testimony about Diamond Ranch Academy

This testimony was found as a reply to a blog entry on the blog runned by Secret Prison for Teens. All rights goes to the original author

A lot of comments I have made in the past have ended up helping fuel the rage against DRA and I just want to add to those.

Before I go into further detail I want to state that the focus should not be on the troubled teen industry and especially not specifically one place.

IT should be on the state of UTAH which is proven to be funded by the church of lds and the donations of various Mormon owned companies such as troubled teen industries.

I have seen a kid who unsuccessfully tried committing suicide right in front of me multiple times. I had to live with the poor soul who had probably one of the most troubled past I have yet to come upon and the improper mixture of medicine to follow. I am studying medicine now and I can tell you the combination alone of just half of the psych med he was taking would cause me to turn suicidal.

One instance was when the kid was sitting on the rocks which he was isolated on. In a treatment called Isiah-landing aka Islanding where one is forced to sit in the 105 degree sun and be isolated from the group as punishment for bad behavior.

Please not while this is happening... the rest of the children are eating out of dog bowls filled with 24 oz of sour kraut or if morning a bowl of oatmeal cooked in over 1-2 gallons of sauerkraut juice in lieu of water. Pickle juice in your morning cereal is a good comparison If your not accustomed to fine German food like I am.

Blanket punishment influenced on everyone due to a child... stealing a piece of bread out of the trash can where the insider program doers dump there left over scraps. The trash can represents what resembles the scraps you would put in a pigs trough. I have personally eaten out of the trash can due to days where I would not be able to see straight from the lack of food due to the 13 year old cooking 150 peoples food unsupervised mistakes. opps. back to the witnessed suicide attempt. -_- This child was so suicidal he tried to swallow a golf ball sized rock. The staff happen to catch him doing this obviously because of the gagging and called for help on the restraint.

The restraint that followed was one you would see on the tv show "COPS" after a suspect was tackled for a very serious crime and arrested. 4 giant football players and 1 being one of the biggest guys I have ever met probably weighing 330 pounds. Would have been a defensive line backer for NFL if he didnt get hurt while playing for a college team. Followed with 210 -225 pounds lean. athletes who proceed to restrain this kid who was 120 pounds and 14 years old. He had multiple skin infections from mosqito bites and a scratching which was left untreated for 9 months so the sun was bothering him .... and just couldn't take it and lost control of his will to live. I was ordered multiple times to take care of this child and one of the demands made to me due to his
itching was to tape his hands together. I was told to use almost an entire roll of duct tape to tape his hands together since the previous taping of garden gloves to his wrists still allowed his ability to itch. Going against all that is Mormon and using Darwinism to come to the conclusion that if you have hands which allow you to itch and then remove those hands you lose the ability to itch. So put gloves on the kid tape them to his wrists and then tape his hands together with another roll of tape.

This guy had a hard time controlling his bladder alone so you can imagine sitting in 105 degree sun and being forced to drink 1 gallon of water a day while only being allowed to pee every 2-3 hours after hiking 4-5 miles pulling a ox cart with your hands taped together. For some reason re reading what i just wrote reminded me of Joseph smith.... Why:? Well the root cause is because of all the food I was given when I came to LDS church on sundays at Diamond ranch academy held by our science teacher... The side effect and main reason why it reminds me of J,Smith is because of how in a way there hiking and digging projects resembles how the plates of nephi where found but that is another story.

Back to the restraint.

The staff each restrained one limb of the child for over 15 minutes while his face was directly in the rocks that the child tried eating to end his suffering 15 minutes prior. Two types of rocks there are smooth rocks and there where lava rocks. When ever you got restrained by head staff they love to put your face in the extremely sharp Lava rocks. That is why they call the campus LAVA FALLS and being homeless. When your face is being ravaged by lava rocks it gets cut up pretty bad. I have never seen more then two people restrain a person while at dra except for this child. I weighed 180 at the time and even then I had only been restrained 1 time by two people (and im 2nd or 3rd place for restraints ). The suicide reports on this kid alone are probably numerous And need to be reviewed by the federal court. (I guess Romney proved that the federal system cant be bought so thats why I choose Federal Over State court.) Not that that It would matter anyway because I can personally attest to my personal experience of which I screamed at an inspector, "They made us hide there filthy semen, vomit, urine, etc mattress in the gym." I yelled this 4 times of what I can recall because I only got close enough to yell at these inspectors. They heard me but continued to not confront me. I was punished very hard for this through physical exercise and screaming. I was just getting even since We had to wake up 50 minutes early to take our filthy beds to the gym and where worked extra hard the night before cleaning the over crowded dorms.

This brings me to what I stated before. -Its the game not the players- We need to focus our efforts on the people in charge. Aside from the crooked private licensing organizations ran by the Mormon Mafia- WE need to as people under the federal court to abolish there rights to perform this.

Take what is happening in California for example. If the federal courts can demand the state prisons to release people due to overcrowding for non violent crimes and reposition the majority then why cant the federal courts abolish these types of treatment facilities ...

These are children. Not your typical children who run track or are voted prom king or queen. But maybe if they where not raped/beaten/ignored or simply raised differently then there would be a shining glimmer in each ones eye like the rest of there friends... In comparison to all the people who have complained about DRA or even as far as created little blogs and such have effectively done something. The same can be said about solitary reflection. I learned a lot about myself from the confinement but it only helped me learn how to deal with a problem and not SOLVE the problem.

*If my statements are used and I find out d.r.a tries to repute them I will be forced to drop time dates and names. To D.R.A. You know who I am. The suicide that has happen here would of happen a long time ago if you didn't restrain the suicidal. I have personally seen you fracture J.M's arm (who was autistic due to his birthing mothers drug addiction. ) He could not help himself. Unable to kill himself due to his learning disability he would cry constantly "Why dont you just -friggen- kill me already" While being restrained almost weekly.

Your use of punishment by physical force is excessive. Your use of punishment by calisthenic exercise exceeds that of the military. Its sole purpose is to exert so much physical exhaustion that one cant move to lift there arms let alone tie a rope. Yet the while of one person was stronger then your punishment. You took this persons happiness and joy away. You left them for the 18 year old staff that you hire out of dixie state college to perform pscyho-analisis reports and to mimic a employee who works at a mental institution. Your staff is grossly undereducated on both the real world and what it takes to properly analyze a mentally disturbed person.

I have had a short physical relationship with your female staff outside of the ranch and have gotten to really know who you are having run your facilities. Drug addicts treating drug addicts seems to have worked for N.A. groups but not when there punishing the people there treating through pain.

Diamond Ranch Academy was founded in 1999 in Idaho. The authorities intervened in their operations forcing them to move to Utah where the authorities short to say don't care much about what goes on at such places. They used to be located east of Hurricane but moved to a new campus west of Hurricane not long ago. A boy died there some years ago on the old campus. Another boy committed suicide on the new campus in 2013.


Sources:

• Diamond Ranch Academy fights back at negative testimonies from former students. (The original testimony found on the Secret Prisons for teen blog)
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)

necolumen at Discovery Academy

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

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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)