This testimony was found on the message board, which belonged to Fighting Institutional Child Abuse Network. All rights goes to the original author "August"
An absolute nightmare. If you want your child to become a lab rat for psychiatric drugs, and abused on every level, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and I am rarely at a loss for words, it is an absolute nitemare! I have never before or since witnessed and experienced such abuse as the hell that was that year so long ago. I'm going to break it down for you as quickly and simply as I can. I remember my Mother driving me to the office where I was officially admitted. The moment that we exited the car and entered the PV office was the last time for a solid year that I would be able to openly or freely communicate with any of my family. It's almost like cult tactics, well, no almost about it...Everything from that point on is coached and controlled by peninsula village. I was driven from admissions to the STU stabelization unit- sky blue walls, fear, and sadness.
Staff members wearing alarm buzzers around their necks to push for assistance in tackling teenagers, stripping them down and locking them in a freezing cold "time out" room because perhaps after hours of sitting on their bed with their arm raised and no acknowldgement they really had to piss so got up without permission- tackled, stripped and locked away- for their own safety of course. We would sit on those dreaded beds for twenty three hours a day. No going outside, no anything really. You may raise your hand for hours on end and the staff would only ignore you unless you got up, then prepare to be tackled. I was told to write a twenty page biography of my issues, and had this ripped up in my face three times by my counselor who told me that I was full of shit and a manipulative liar minimizing and all that good shit...so what does one do, make up issues when the truth is not working its about survival at that point. Truly. Then they "accepted" my bio, what irony. A couple of years ago I was visiting my family and found a video from a family therapy session from when I was at the village. Damn. I broke down, flooded with the pain of that year. I was on so much lithium and extremely high doses of prozac that on the video my speech was terribly slurred and I almost seemed retarded. Scary.
After about six weeks to three months one "graduates" out of the stabelization with the grand priveledge of moving into a cabin in the woods with no electricity or running water. Of course there is a bath house that is used for showers and everything is timed short. The winter is cold, and often as a punishment for something or another the bath house "priveledge" would be revoked in the mornings and if you wanted to wash your face and brush your teeth then you you had five minutes at an outside spigot for the entire group in thirty degree temps, and it is an absolute nitemare. There is a cosequence for everything. It seems to break ones spirit is a concrete goal of the all powerful treatment team. There is verbal abuse by the counselors, and the limited and always supervised contact with family is always coached. Some other consequences pusing a wheelbarrow full of rocks, walking holding a ten foot piece of rope stepping all over one another for miles on end. Slepp deprivation. They work you like a slave doing physical labor and the school is inadequate at best...I don't know.
People have problems, and time heals a lot of things...I left home after graduating from the village so upset that my parents put me there and did not speak to my Mother for almost four years. Today, I realize that at the time they were only doing what they thought was best at the time, right or wrong, they never intentionally set out to harm me....now the people at the viallge, there was some serious abuse going on...
I mean I am 34 now, and still tramuatized...anyway...I am tired, and given time could deliver more details and examples, but feel free to e mail me with any questions, and I'm interested in hearing from some other "alumni" from years ago with their own thoughts and opinions....I'm allowed to have those now unlike my time at Peninsula Village. Thanks...August
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