3 testimonies about Hyde School

These testimonies about Hyde School was found on the Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora.

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Survivor 1:

I think one of the biggest red flags in my opinion was during the time I was there I would self-harm a lot. While one nurse was compassionate whenever it would happen, the head nurse at the time and a couple other staff members including the dean of students Mr. Truluck would shame me for it. As far as I know these incidents weren’t always reported to my parents and there were never any sort of psych evaluations done.

One time after the death of a former student who was my best friend I attempted to go to my dorm parents as I was feeling like self harming but I was really trying to work on it and had been told by the compassionate nurse and other faculty that I had permission (as if this should of even needed to be given) to go to my dorm parents after lights out if I felt like self harming and to talk about the death. A staff member on duty happened to be walking through brook house at the moment and told me no and made me feel badly about that situation. I proceeded to return to my room and and do significantly more harm to the point I thought I might of fucked up and overdone it. I ended up going to my dorm parents who called in other staff and they simply tended to the wounds and let me go back to my room.

On another note either my junior year or senior year I tried to sign up to do big brothers/big sisters. The faculty in charge signed off on it and was excited for me to do something like that but Mr. Truluck decided to veto the decision. When I went to him to ask why he said “he did not trust me alone with a child” and other things painting me out like I was a pedophile. To this day I still believe Truluck was consistently unkind to me because I was open about being a part of the LGBT community.

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Survivor 2:

In terms of self harm I encountered a very similar problem when asking for help at Hyde. Mr. Truluck was the dean still and made me feel absolutely horrible. My dorm parents were completely unhelpful and tried their best to avoid helping me. I remember asking for help once and being made to feel like a reject, failure, and weirdo.. let’s just say I did not handle their response well...and then when I brought to the nurses later that day I was only made to feel worse.

My self harming behaviors reached the highest levels while I was at Hyde. I never felt like I could talk about it with anyone, so I would hide it. Staff would gossip about it and somehow other students found out (not from me, I told no one). I remember getting a note from my then~boyfriend telling me that one of the “seniors” pulled him aside and warned him about me. (I still have that note, but it has students’ names so I won’t include it).

When I completed Hyde I was able to find the right support and was told that being open and honest about the feelings that I had that were leading me to self harm would be the only way to move forward. I did so and the self harm stopped. There has got to be a way to better help students going through this, I hope things are different now, as I was there more than 10 years ago.

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Survivor 3:

I struggled with self harm a lot in high school. Especially at Hyde. One time I cut too deep and I had to go get stitches. And the staff that took me literally made jokes about it. I was on the dance team and she was one of my coaches and she made a joke saying that I should do a dance to Stitches by Shawn Mendes and completely made the situation a joke. The fact that I cut my wrist so deep that I had to get stitches was comical to her. And afterwards I got no support. Only sending me to Eustis afterwards because I was having “behavioral” issues, bc i was suicidal and they didn’t take it seriously. At all. I spent 2 years at Hyde and that was the most difficult time of my life.

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Source:
The original testimony on the Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora

isabellabee at Diamond Ranch Academy

This testimony was found on the reddit message board. All rights goes to the original author. The author is asked some questions about the stay. Here are the answers

Of course. I was sent there for disobedience in regards to my parents. Along with minor drug use, very bad grades, and i just had a lot of party habits. I arrived the day before the boy committed suicide. Yes, one large scary man and one woman came into my house at 3 in the morning and dragged me by the arms into their car. I lived in Arizona at the time so the drive was ten hours. They refused to stop for me to use the bathroom and also refused me any kind of food. They also wouldn't tell me where we were going and made me shut up the entire way there. The experience was traumatizing and still haunts me. At the time i thought me and my mom were getting robbed and i was getting kidnapped. Upon entering they stripped searched me, made me take off my makeup, and take out my few piercings. They put two needles in my arm, i can't remember if it was to test me for something or put something in me. They gave me no choice. Then I was put in O&A (observation and assessment) which is now called Orientation. In there i had to ask permission to sit, stand, speak, put chapstick on, ect. We were monitored 24/7 even while sleeping. They put me on "run watch" as they do for most when they first enter. They didn't let me outside for 42 days. All I saw was white walls. They made us clean everything, over and over for absolutely no purpose. We basically had no rights at all and I felt like i was five years old. If you didn't comply with the staffs directives they would restrain you. I didn't wanna cooperate with sweeping the boys weight room on Christmas of 2013 because I had been cleaning the entire day. Because i wouldn't continue sweeping, two large men came over to me and applied a large amount of force on my wrists for about five minutes until I was in hysterics begging them to stop. My right wrist hurt for months.

I was half way through my freshman year of high school when i entered. Since my grades weren't 80 percent or above they made me restart the entire year over. They gave us fake citations for every possible thing we could do wrong. such as talking without permission, cursing, glorifying, inappropriate behavior, wasting food (not eating all your food), and there were probably 60 more. If you got a certain amount you failed your day which just means another day on your program. The systems they had in place were insanely degrading. If you failed a day or your hole week you felt like that was a week wasted of your life. One girl, Pamela, has been in DRA for over three years because of failed weeks. She has several mental problems and DRA has done absolutely nothing to help her. She's sitting in there rotting and her parents are brainwashed thinking she's getting the help she needs. We were forced to eat the disgusting food they served us every day regardless if we wanted it or not. We got three minutes in the shower which eventually progressed to five minutes. If they felt you were suicidal you were put on suicide watch and were forced to sleep in the hallway on the floor under lights with staff hovering over you making sure you didn't move incorrectly. I got strip searched three times a day every day for 42 days. All the doors were locked and the staff were the only ones with access to the keys. If you tried to escape the program staff would chase after you until they tackled you down and you would have to restart the entire program.

Programs generally lasted 10 months, but you had the opportunity to be out in seven and a half which was nearly impossible. Most kids just can't follow the rules because the rules are simply ridiculous and unorthodox. So some are stuck there until they're eighteen and can sign themselves out. I didn't speak to my parents until i was out of O&A which was 42 days after i arrived. My first phone call was monitored by my therapist. I tried to explain to my parents what was going on and as soon as I started crying she hung up the phone. I didn't get another phone call until my therapist thought i was "ready" which really just meant until she thought I wouldn't try and voice the truth to my parents. We were allowed to write letters but any negativity or manipulation sensed in the letters would cause the staff reading it to flag it. Which means it goes through a youth detection counselor, your therapist, the front desk, and the (in my case) girl's campus leader. Half my letters never got to my parents.

This is only what i have heard. I don't know it to be absolute facts, but I've heard it from several people and knowing their manipulative tactics it's most likely true. FACTS: The boy who committed suicide hung himself with his belt during a football game DRA was having. In the commotion of getting everyone outside they left him behind upstairs in his bathroom. They have never made that mistake before because they know the first chance they get to commit suicide they will. (I have never had any sort of suicidal thoughts or feelings in my entire life until I went there. The second I left they all went away and I know for a fact unless I went back there they'll never return. I truly would have rather been dead then spent another day in that concentration camp) This is what i've heard in regards to how he hung himself: They claim he did it on the shower rod and DRA supposedly replaced every shower rod in the facility so that any type of pressure put on it would cause it to collapse. Also after this incident we were no longer allowed to have belts. I've heard many times the truth is that he hung himself in the vent in his bathroom. I don't really know why they would lie about the exact spot he was hanging from but thats just what i've heard. The boy purposely tried to get left behind that day just so he could do this... He was in the program for depression and my biggest problem is he was sixteen years old. He had sixteen other years of his life to commit suicide and he chose to do it at DRA.... Clearly it was because that was the saddest and most depressing point in his life. Yet DRA is said to be uplifting and positive throughout the entire journey.


Source:

• The original testimony (Reddit)
• DHS confirms another child death at Diamond Ranch Academy (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)