Kelly Adams at Cross Creek Program (From HEAL-online's website)

What can possibly be said or written about an experience so traumatic and damaging that it irrevocably altered the course or my life? How do I begin to extemporize on the ominous, pervasive black-hole of emptiness, confusion and anger that, at times, consumes me whole? It's not an easy task for me to tell a sensical, chronicled account of my 18 months of incarceration at Cross Creek Manor in Southern Utah. I use the word "incarceration," because that is what it was, in essence - package the process in whatever lies and manipulations you wish, but the cold reality is that we were locked up, plain and simple.

Let me begin by attempting to describe my current mental/emotional/spiritual state. It's imperative that everyone who reads this account understands how far and wide the fallout from my 18 month "stay" at Cross Creek reaches. At the risk of sounding a bit melodramatic, this experience has produced a person who has lost her idealism and faith. I carry the weight of unresolved melancholy and anger, and I have become a stranger to myself in the process. I don't mean to portray that all my days are spent holed up in solitude, crying myself to sleep every night, by most accounts I lead a very "normal" and "successful" life. I DO mean to tell you, however, in no uncertain terms that underneath my seemingly "normal" life is a deeply sad, conflicted and resentful person filled with never-ending self-doubt and self-loathing. If you remember nothing else from this story, remember this -the proprietors of WWASPS and other similar Behavior Modification "Schools" are master manipulators. More than five years since my release in May 1999, the brainwashing still works. Aside from the sometimes crippling depression, I regularly suffer from nightmares about being sent back to Cross Creek. I always have the same one - I get "kidnapped" again and sent back to the Manor, only this time I'm over 18 (I was 17 at my intake). I protest, scream and cry that I'm an adult and I don't consent to being there, but my medical records have been forged and my date of birth always reads a year that makes me underage. This is when I usually wake up sweating and shaken -unable to shake the fear that my nightmare may actually come true. By far the most disturbing result of my stay at Cross Creek has been the complete and total severing from myself that I experienced, and continue to experience today. Before the program, I was a passionate, idealistic and driven young woman - I had a clear vision of the type of person I wanted to be, and the type of life I wanted to live. This is not to say that I wasn't without emotional problems and/or bad judgment, because I definitely had more than my fair share of those - but through those problems I never lost sight of who I eventually wanted to be. Post Cross Creek I am chronically insecure, indecisive, neurotic and conflicted - and on top of that, I was trained so incredibly well by the WWASPS, that I am currently unable to make virtually any kind of decision without being riddled with self-doubt.

I'm not going to misrepresent the truth here and tell you that I was a perfect teenager. I was involved in a lot of the typical "troubled teen" behavior - i.e., drinking and drugs, smoking, lying to my parents and hanging out with "the wrong crowd." This is the kind of nebulous statement that most of us at CCM (and other WWASP programs as well, I'm sure) would give to someone "on the outs" (outside the locked gates, that is) when asked about our past. However, I think that if you're going to take the time to read my story, you need to know the truth about what was really happening with me during those two or three tumultuous years. Unlike most of my peers at Cross Creek, I was not a high school drop out, I wasn't failing classes left and right, and I never skipped school. I had always made good grades, and was taking a pretty challenging course load all throughout high school that included mostly AP level classes. I was one of the Editors of the school's newspaper and Literary Magazine and was an active member of the debate team. My dream was to be a writer - a journalist, specifically - and I was on track to attend an out of state, well-respected University like Syracuse or NYU. I was constantly being told how bright I was, that I was capable of anything, and my parents were always very proud of my accomplishments. During my high school years I did begin using drugs. It escalated slowly from smoking pot at 14, to dropping acid and doing ecstasy at 16, and finally trying (I use the word "trying," because I only used it once) crystal meth at 17. I probably smoked pot more than anything else, it was obviously the most available drug there was, and it was pretty common and accepted among teenagers from all different ends of the social spectrum. As for the acid and ecstasy, it was never something that I did on a regular basis - I couldn't have used acid any more than ten times, and ecstasy no more than five. I'm not specifying this to excuse my drug use, but I need people who read this to understand that I was not a hopeless junkie - I never missed school or work because of drugs, I never went to school high, I never skipped school to do drugs, and my grades never slipped because of my drug use. Most importantly, I never lost sight of my where and who I wanted to be in life. I was having a lot of problems at home, however. It's no secret that I grew up in a difficult family; my father had some issues with alcohol and anger, and my mother could be pretty unapproachable when it came to real-life "teenager" stuff. My parents fought a lot, so consequently, I didn't want to be home a lot. I also was certain that I could never ever talk to them reasonably about my drug use. I was somewhat rebellious then - I listened to (gasp!) anti-establishment punk rock, wore fishnets and knee-high black boots, became a vegetarian and read Karl Marx. I laugh about that now, because really, I was just going through a phase with all that, but to my conservative parents, the clothes and the music were highly disturbing. Everything came to a head when my mother found a baggie with ecstasy residue in the pocket of my jeans one day. She took the bag to a lab, and she and my father confronted me with the help of my therapist during one of my weekly sessions. So then they knew, and my life - which I had to struggle to keep together sometimes as it was - completely fell apart. Of course, my parents lost it, and our household went from being tolerable to absolutely unbearable. The screaming, yelling and crying never ended - my mother let me know that I was a huge disappointment and even told me that she hated me for what I had done to the family. Needless to say, I couldn't handle it, so I decided to move out a few months into my senior year. My plan was to move into an apartment with some guy that I knew from a couple of parties I'd been to and finish high school by correspondence. Obviously, this was a ridiculously stupid plan, but all I could think about back then was getting out of my parents' house. Unfortunately for me, there was a girl that lived on our street that had just graduated from Cross Creek. My parents talked to her parents, and the rest is history.

Shortly after my moving announcement (I can't remember exactly how long), I was woken up in the middle of the night by two men and one woman that I had never seen before in my life. I was told to get out of bed and get dressed right away. Some clothes had been laid out for me on the sink, and the strange woman followed me into the bathroom and watched me while I changed. I was extremely disoriented - I'm not even sure if I realized I was awake at that point - so I didn't fight my "kidnappers." I was instructed to follow them and get into a strange car in our driveway. I got in the car without "incident," and I heard the doors lock me in. A few miles away from my house I began to get very scared and I started asking my kidnappers, frantically, where they were taking me. No one would tell me. I guess I was beginning to raise my voice (I was feeling a bit hysterical by that time), and that's when I was informed without a shred of sympathy that if I gave them "any trouble" I would be put in handcuffs or otherwise physically restrained. I couldn't fathom what I was hearing - never in my life had I EVER had any type of experience that remotely resembled what was happening to me then. Then they proceeded to tell me that I was going to a nice school for girls like me, someplace where I could "take some time off," and work through my problems. The woman kidnapper even went so far as to tell me it would be like taking a vacation. This calmed me down a bit, and I even started to be okay with the idea. I knew that that I needed some help with the way things were going in my life, and I was open accepting that help. I believed that I was going to some type of 90 day rehab, I would go back home, be back on track, and my parents would love me again. I NEVER could have imagined how grievously wrong I was.

After driving from Houston to El Paso, then flying to Las Vegas, we made the two hour car trip to LaVerkin, Utah. When we pulled up to the Manor, I didn't think it looked so bad - I was a really big, nice looking house with white columns in the front. My kidnappers escorted me through the doors where I was greeted by 100 or so pairs of eyes all staring at me as if I was some sort of carnival freak show. It was around 7:30 in the evening, and all the girls were gathered out in the central foyer area for the nightly "Manor meeting." Needless to say, I was a little wary of all those girls in sweat pants and slippers who looked like a bunch of robots - but I was there to stay. I was taken into a room with a couple of high-phase girls who did my intake. I remember pleading with them and insisting that I didn't belong in this place, and they just looked at each other and started laughing, then one of the girls told me, patronizingly, "Yeah, none of us belong here either." Shortly afterwards I was strip searched and "nix-ed" (de-loused) by a very scary looking, and very large woman - I was unbelievably mortified.

For the next two weeks or so, I kept insisting that I wasn't supposed to be there. I was petrified by the other girls - when they spoke, it sounded to me like someone was playing a tape recorder, and they had absolutely no sympathy for the shock that I was feeling. My first day in "Group" with Ron (he was the director of Cross Creek at the time), he asked me why I was there. All the girls were sitting around in a circle staring at me like I was a murderer or something, so I said "because my parents sent me here," COMPLETELY without a hint of attitude (I wasn't yet accustomed to the program double-speak). This of course, sent Ron into a tirade - he yelled and screamed at me that I was a drug addict and ruining my family's lives, etc., etc. After a lengthy barrage of aggressive, mean-spirited "feedback" from the other girls in the group, I sat down, shaken and unable to process what had just happened.

After I had spent about two weeks in Orientation (OR) Group with Ron, I had the pleasure of joining my "home" group, the infamous (at Cross Creek, anyway) B Group. B Group was notorious for being the "hardest" group at CCM, with its most intimidating therapist at the helm, Garth. Garth was a very large man physically, which he used to his advantage to create a very aggressive and imposing persona. Even before Cross Creek, I was easily intimidated by men, but being under Garth's "tutelage" merely reinforced that fear and worsened it, instead of combating it. Here is where things began to get really messy. In my 18 months at Cross Creek, there were so many harmful and traumatizing incidences that occurred - it would be impossible for me to recount every one. With that in mind, I will try instead to paint a general picture that will illustrate the kind of experience that I had.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the way a WWASPS program is run, I will give you an abbreviated list of SOME of the rules and regulations we were all subject to during our incarceration:

• We were not allowed contact with anyone from the outside world aside from our parents. If you wanted to write a letter to your aunt, for example, it had to go through your parents first.
• All mail was read by the staff and censored if they felt that the subject matter was negative (towards the program) or inappropriate.
• We were not allowed to use the telephone unsupervised (and even a supervised telephone call to your parents was a privilege that had to be earned - my first phone call came after four months.)
• We were not allowed to close the bathroom doors fully while using the toilet.
• We were not allowed to cross any type of threshold without asking a staff's permission.
• While on Level 1, we were not allowed to speak to other girls on Level 1 (aside from Group).
• We were not allowed to shave or use hair products on Level 1.
• We were not allowed to wear shoes until Level 3.
• We were not allowed to wear any make-up or jewelry until Level 4.
• We were required to show the staff our bras, underwear & socks that we had on each morning to as assure that we only had one pair on.
• We were not allowed to record any phone numbers, or any addresses except for our parents'.
• We were not allowed to watch television or read a newspaper.
• We were not allowed to look out the windows (this would be construed as run plans).
• We were not allowed to speak when a staff called "silence" (a regular occurrence).
• We were not allowed to have any physical contact with other girls, aside from 3 second hugs (except during Group).
• We were never allowed to leave the program grounds - which were enclosed by locked 15 ft. white fences - unless escorted by a staff for some reason (the first time I ever left the program grounds was for a doctor's appointment, after I had been at Cross Creek for seven months.)

While on Staff Buddy (a punishment doled out for "serious" offences, or many times at our therapists' request for whatever reason), we were not allowed to speak to anyone, look at anyone, and had to remain at arm's length from a staff at all times. We also had to sleep on a mattress on the floor right next to the night watch staff. Most of your time on Staff Buddy was spent sitting on the floor facing the wall.

The vast majority of us were coerced into adopting whatever beliefs that the program had decided upon for us - if you had done drugs, you were an addict, no questions asked; if your parents of therapist deemed a friend from the outside world to be "non-working," you had to cut them out of your life (even if you did not agree).

Unlike many of the girls at CCM, I was never "restrained," but I witnessed this incredibly disturbing spectacle too many times to count. To be honest, I was too paralyzed with fear to ever consider doing anything that I thought might cause me to be "taken down" by staff. I remember watching girls being taken down that were simply arguing with a staff not physically endangering themselves or others - and they would be dragged, literally, kicking and screaming downstairs and into ISO (the 12 ft., locked "isolation" rooms). I also remember seeing a girl sitting in ISO who had cut herself and smeared blood all over her face and arms. There were other girls who I saw with broken noses and injured arms/shoulders that were put into make-shift "slings" that consisted only of an Ace bandage. I knew several girls who had sustained physical injuries as a result of being taken down - i.e., broken noses, dislocated shoulders, torn ligaments, etc. There were plenty of girls who I saw sitting in ISO for days, weeks, and even months at a time. Fortunately, I was not one of them.

The trauma that I did sustain was purely mental/emotional. From my first day at CCM, I was told (and screamed at) that I was a worthless person, a disappointment to my family, a hopeless drug addict, a bitch and a slut, a waste of space, a horrible human being and whatever other disparaging remarks the staff and other girls could muster. When I first arrived at CCM, I wasn't sure that I even was addicted to drugs - I knew that I had some problems in my life that I wanted to work out, but I wasn't convinced that I was a junkie - however, I, like many other girls, was coerced into proclaiming/believing that I was hopelessly addicted to drugs. It was made very obvious to me that if I did not affirm the program's assessment of me, that I would never advance past level one, so I played along (at first), and eventually began to internalize and believe everything that they said.

The infamous T.A.S.K.S. seminars & group "processes" were especially hurtful to me. One of my "issues" that I had to deal with at Cross Creek was childhood sexual abuse. It happened when I was 11 years old, and I had never really dealt with the trauma at that point. During one of the Focus "processes," (which I have been sworn to secrecy never to tell about) I was physically held down by four other Cross Creek girls (high phase girls who were seminar staff) while a fifth girl screamed into my face that "HE'S ON TOP OF YOU AGAIN!!! AREN'T YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?? ARE YOU JUST GOING TO LET HIM DO IT TO YOU AGAIN?? WHAT KIND OF SLUT ARE YOU??" I was crying and screaming so hard that I could barely see - I kicked and thrashed as hard as I could, but the four other girls just kept pinning me down to the floor, and I was unable to get out from under them. There was another "process" that Garth facilitated, during which we had to write our own tombstones (the idea was for us to experience that we had died due to our "behavior"). After we had all written them, Garth and a few high phase girls from our group went around the room and screamed into our faces anything hurtful that they could manage to make us feel like worthless and horrible human beings. When it was my turn, Garth approached me calmly and told me, coldly & without emotion, that my grandfather (my mother's father, whom I loved very much) was dead. My grandfather had emphysema and was repeatedly in and out of the Emergency Room, so this was hardly a stretch. Garth and the other girls shouted inches away from my face that my grandfather died knowing that I was a worthless bitch, a drug addict, and that I had ruined my family. They told me that he died knowing what a horrible person I was. By this point I was sobbing uncontrollably and finding it difficult to remain standing, so one of the high phase girls was holding me up for the continued barrage of abuse. After they finished with me, Garth and the other girls moved on to their next victim - and the scene continued on, as it had with me. The next day, Garth called me into his office and told me that he was "mistaken" about my grandfather, and that he hadn't really died. I sobbed from relief that he was still living, but to this day, I still do not believe that Garth made an innocent "mistake." I believe that he purposefully used my grandfather's illness to traumatize and hurt me during a process. Well, it worked. Congratulations.

Like I said earlier, I was never one of the girls that were routinely taken down, but it still took me several months to really advance in the program. Let me explain - although the program cronies would say like to say otherwise, unless you are crying in group and painting a very melodramatic picture of your "issues," you will not advance to the upper levels, and you will not go home (which is where we ALL wanted to be). I, however, had difficulty with this, because I had a hard time expressing emotion back then -especially when put on the spot in group. Thus, my inability to "be real," (translation: cry) held me back on the low levels for a good seven months or so. As I stated earlier, I had been a good student in school, unlike most of the other girls at CCM, and was always very bright. My intelligence, apparently, was something to be ashamed of. I was routinely punished and chastised in group for being "better than," and being "in my head" all the time. I was specifically reprimanded in group for using "big words" that the other girls didn't understand. This was all brought on because I was trying to help some of the other girls with their school work, which was, apparently, a bad thing. After being "confronted" about my "intelligence issue," (yes, they actually called it that) I remember trying to dumb myself down in order to not incur the group's criticism.

As anyone who has been incarcerated in a WWASPS program knows, their "school" system is, at best, laughable. As I said earlier, I was a very good student, and I was enrolled in a very challenging high school curriculum. At Cross Creek (or "Browning Academy" as WWASP likes to refer to the fictional "school" associated with their programs), I was given a remedial level text book for each respective class, and instructed to complete the chapter exercises and a chapter test. This was the extent of our "education," and it was a mockery of my intellectual ability. I learned absolutely nothing my senior year in high school - if you could even call it that.

Eventually, I got over the hump and advanced to level three. But let me first let you know that I wasn't allowed to speak to my parents on the phone until I had been there for four months, the first time I saw my parents was after seven months, and the first time I saw my two brothers was after nine or ten months. And of course, I was not allowed to communicate with anyone from the outside world besides my parents – not friends, family or anyone besides my parents & brothers. After I began to advance in the program, I became one of its most vocal supporters. I was notorious for giving "hardcore" feedback to new girls, and "not taking any crap," from anyone not subscribing to the program's mantras. Honestly, I became a blood-thirsty pit bull - anxiously awaiting the opportunity to tear another girl down, the way that I had been torn down before. I'm sure that I probably caused a lot of girls pain, and this is something that I feel intensely remorseful for to this day.

After I had been at CCM for 10 months or so, I was on level five and able to take an off-grounds pass with my family. My parents, brothers and I went to Las Vegas and another small town in Utah (I can't remember the name) - and had a lot of fun. I missed my family so much by that point that I thought I might break in two. The pass really broke down a lot of the months of brainwashing, and I eventually reached a point where I felt like I would literally go insane if I had to remain in the program. Basically, I cracked – one night at St. George (the high phase facility of CCM), I spent three hours pacing around my room trying to figure out how I was possibly going to complete the program without losing my mind. You see, by then, I was 18, and I was able to walk out of the program if wanted to - however, my parents had made it very clear to me that they would not let me come home if I left Cross Creek without completing the program. My "exit plan" was pretty similar to other kids that were in WWASPS programs - if I decided to leave after I turned 18, I would get $10 in my pocket and a bus ticket to Denver (not Houston, my native city), and my parents would not accept me back in their house. So, back to that night when I lost it - I eventually decided, after a couple of hours of pacing, that I had to leave the program, despite the fact that I would probably be homeless. So, I went to the head staff at St. George, Bernie, and told her that I wanted to leave. She attempted to change my mind for an hour or so, but I wouldn't be swayed. Then my parents were called. We had an incredibly gut-wrenching phone conversation during which my mother told me "goodbye" for real – at that moment she believed that she was talking to me for the last time. After my parents couldn't get me to change my mind, my 17 year-old brother, Cory, was put on the phone. I remember him sobbing over the receiver and pleading with me not to leave the program, because he "didn't want me to die." I cried my eyes out during all of this, but still, my parents and I held firm in our positions. Finally, after a few hours of this, I spoke to my case manager, and she told me that I could still change my mind about leaving. I was petrified by the thought of being abandoned in a foreign city (not to mention the fact that I had no way of contacting any of my other family members, since it was forbidden to record any phone numbers), so I acquiesced, and remained at Cross Creek.

After this incident, I was immediately ostracized and forced to "regain trust" from my group members. I was lucky, however. If I had been under 18, I'm sure I would have been dropped back down to level one, but due to my age, I was allowed to remain on a probationary status at a level five. After a couple of weeks of groveling and enduring numerous group sessions during which I was the object of ridicule and criticism, I eventually convinced Garth and the rest of the high phase girls that I was "ready to work." And so, I was cemented into the system at that point -I was completely brainwashed into thinking that the program had saved my life and that I would be dead if my parents had never sent me there (the same robotic mantra of all brainwashed WWASPS kids). I became a cruel and ruthless high phase girl - just like the ones who had hurt me when I was new at CCM, and I extolled the virtues of the program that had caused irrevocable damage to my soul. The rest of my incarceration at Cross Creek was fairly smooth, and I graduated in late May, 1999 - two months before my 19th birthday.

After I graduated, I returned to Houston to live with my parents for a couple of months before being admitted to the University of Texas - Arlington in the Fall of 1999. By the time I was living in Arlington, away from parental or program supervision, it had only been about three months since I had left Cross Creek. I entered college a completely conflicted, damaged, neurotic, depressed and anxious person - with the next few years ahead of me to experience levels of depravity that I never came close to prior to my incarceration at CCM.

Sources:

• The original statement on HEAL-online's website
• Factsheet of the program on Fornits Wiki

Tia Foster at Cross Creek programs (From:The Cross Creek Suvivors website)

I know Tia Foster personally, I witnessed her bruising and the scabs on her face and body from restraint. She attended October 1998 to 2000. This is her story.

I was 14 when I arrived at Cross Creek Manor in LaVerkin, Utah. It is a very dark period in my life that I have tried to forget but I need to remember it now to warn parents not to send their children there. I am 28 years old now, work full time, and run my own animal rescue. It took me years to heal from my experience and I wouldn’t want any child to endure what I did.

At 14, I was rebelling against my parents and my school. Nothing hardcore, just going through what many teens do. I smoked pot occasionally and argued with teachers. Looking back on this, I think that I would have naturally outgrown this phase of my life. I arrived there not knowing what kind of a place it was. I was told it was going to be a nice boarding school and I was only going to be there for a few months. It turned out I was there for almost 2 years.

The moment I arrived, the staff members took everything from me and gave me a uniform to wear. I was to only talk to the staff and one girl who they called “my hope buddy.” Thus began the process of indoctrination and brainwashing. That night I was told I had ten minutes to shower and dress. The showers were freezing cold. I was not allowed to wear shoes and my parents hadn’t sent slippers for me to wear so I could only wear my socks. The next day my socks were sopping wet from being outside in the fenced in area we were allowed to walk in circles in for exercise each day. I caught a bad cold but was denied any medical treatment.

The first group meeting, the director of the program Ron Garret confronted me. He asked me why I was there and I said, “because I smoked some weed and talked back to my parents.” He swore at me and called me a whore and got into my face and screamed insults at me. From day one, I refused to allow him to get to me and was always disgusted by how him and the other staff members used fear and insults and threats to control the girls. This lead to abuse and mind games. I was thrown into the “iso room” for months at a time. The iso room was freezing cold with nothing in it. A flourascent light would be kept on all day and two staff members would be seated in the door way watching me but I was not allowed to talk to them. This sensory deprivation was real torture. Imagine not making contact with another human for months on end, having nothing to read or be entertained by, no warmth or comfort. Just a cold, bare room.

I was also drugged heavily in an attempt to get me to comply. When I refused these powerful drugs, I would be tackled by staff and have my nose pinched so that I couldn’t breath. When my mouth would open, they would force the pills and water in. I had permanent damage to my kidneys from these medications as well as other health problems. Risperdol was the worst of these drugs as well as Geodon which is usually prescibed to schizophrenics which I was not.

In those months, I struggled to keep my sanity. I would try to imagine happy things and keep hope alive. It wasn’t easy. Some of the staff were sadists and would enjoy take down sessions. Take downs are supposed to be a way to restrain out of control patients in hospitals. Take downs at Cross Creek were rarely ever to restrain anyone out of control but rather as a way to inflict pain and show dominance whenever we didn’t comply. At this time, I was only being fed the bare minimum to keep me alive. I weighed about 85 lbs and had no strength left in me.

Ron Garrett wanted me to write a letter to my parents telling them that I was fine and that everything was ok. I refused. He told a staff member named Dennis who must have weighed 250 lbs to hold me down until I agreed to write the letter. Dennis slammed my head into the carpet of the iso room which was very rough carpeting. He layed on top of me and I couldn’t breath. He bent me arm back in a way that hurt so badly I couldn’t stand it. I was terrified I would die. Just when I thought I would he would let me up to take a breath and then go back to laying on me. This went on for hours. It was truly torture. Afterwards my arm was so injured I could not use it properly for over a month. I had horrible carpet burn on my face and my body was covered in giant bruises. The entire time I was in iso I had to endure humiliation. The staff watched me shower and go to the bathroom. Ron Garrett would constantly come in and threaten me and taunt me. He said he would send me to the program in Jamaica where the big black guards would “have a lot of fun playing with a skinny white girl.”

Amazingly, throughout this whole time, I refused to brainwashed and give in to them. I beg you to not send your child there. This place can only bring heartache and pain.

Sources:

• The original statement on the Cross Creek Survivor website
• Factsheet of the facility on Fornits Wiki

Angelique at Cross Creek Manor (From:WWASP-survivors)

In May of 1993 I was sent to a girls home called Cross Creek Manor (CCM) in southern Utah where I lived for four and a half months. This facility is owned and operated by a notorious umbrella organization called World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP). While attending I was physically attacked, suffocated, tormented, and put in isolation on a regular basis for three day periods at a time.

I was denied all access to communicate with the outside. Once a staff member (while invading my privacy) told me I wipe the wrong way after using the toilet. In addition, I was put on unprescribed and inappropriate medication that created physical side-effects, essentially I was drugged.

I was kept in isolation on and off during my stay, including my final day, right up until being transferred into the college dorms at Seattle Pacific U (a Bible college I had been pre-accepted to prior to my incarceration). I had no contact with the outside world prior to this other than brief visits at a “hospital” called Brightway.

Brightway was more of a packaging center, than a hospital. It was a detainment center, but also the UPS for the herds of lost (or rather abandoned) children, a branding center for human cattle that decided who went where. They apparently mixed up so many “packages” and caused so much damage, they had to close; however, there are plenty of other places like it still operating.

I mention my attendance at a Bible college because the youth at Cross Creek Manor (CCM) were meant to feel like they were criminals or that they were somehow mentally disturbed, and I certainly was not; nonetheless, that’s how we were treated during our incarceration. The primary difference between prison and residential centers today is that prisoners are allowed a lawyer and a phone call.

While attending I was deprived of an education, lied to, and my mail was confiscated. I was denied appropriate exercise, sanitary conditions, and emotional/medical attention. I also slept on a floor in the isolation room where I peed to avoid staff monitoring me in the bathroom and making sick remarks.

Originally, back in California, I was told I was going to an in-state, nature focused boarding school to obtain emotional support in response to childhood abuse, something that had been obfuscated from some time.

I had two months left of high school and couldn’t finish because I was sent to a Charter Hospital for a month after having a breakdown. While attending Charter I found myself near my community in a safe therapeutic environment that offered virtually everything I needed except for a longer stay and a regular therapist that I knew well enough to confide in. They had many other specialists, therapists, and diverse forms of expressive therapy that were wonderful. I was willing to do anything to overcome what was setting me back.

Cross Creek promised to offer a high school diploma. Had the truth of their dubious unaccredited “diplomas” been revealed I might not have missed out on graduating from Catholic school.

When I got to Cross Creek what I found was that I was out of state, in Utah in a basement across the street from a cemetery. From the beginning I found myself forced into writing essays about how I was “bad” that took several hours to complete per essay. The first one was about being a liar because I showered at the wrong time (having not been informed there was a shower schedule). That incident landed me a three-day stay in isolation, a room with white walls not much larger than a twin bed.

After that I wrote a letter to friends asking them to come and get me even though I had no real idea where I was (we traveled through the night). That was a turning point for the worse, and staff repeatedly put me in isolation. One time I sat down on the bed and the frame gave way, they added three more days to my solitary confinement. I speculate the bed was already broken because the other isolation room had no bed. Despite the innocent nature of the incident it was termed “destruction of property” and “malicious mischief.” As for the cause of the latter accusation, I had to put the bed upright so I could find enough space to sleep on the floor. Both resulted in essays and more isolation.

Some girls seemed sympathetic knowing of the length of time I was spending in there and others used it as leverage to advance in the program. Many ganged up, telling me I just wasn’t working with the program. This occurred in my first group therapy session which I was quite excited about attending having just come out of isolation, but I soon learned “group therapy” for the most part was simply attack therapy.

Attack therapy involves people confronting each other in a verbally abusive way. I am yet to learn of any studies that demonstrate that it is therapeutic or helpful in any way. An example of attack therapy is telling a rape victim that the abuse was her fault, suggesting that she is a slut and that the rape was simply a reaction to her style of dress or emotional state.

Girls living in the basement with me who had less privileges than the others and little to lose began to demonstrate sympathy towards me verbally and almost unanimously towards the abuse I was being subjected to. I don’t know if staff felt intimidated by this, but either way it just became a game for them to use me as an example. Maybe they feared an uprising.

My independent education packets never came and I later learned that the organization was caught up in one of the biggest education scams having issued 113 fake diplomas just at one school alone in New York. In regards to Ivy Ridge, John Sullivan Jr. NY Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Watertown district office stated in the August 19, 2005 Watertown Daily Times “people assume there’s oversight of these programs, there’s more government oversight of dog kennels than there are of these school, and that’s not right.”

http://imgur.com/4VrKa Image of Youth in A Dog Cage (High Impact Tecate, Mexico)

http://imgur.com/aLngq Image of More Youth in Dog Cages (High Impact Tecate, Mexico)

See One of Our Great Documentaries and See Parents and Staff Testimony: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=057_1200885881

HOW TO HELP: http://www.cafety.org/volunteer Donating is a good way to help support the hiring of a volunteer coordinator. Join my STARP (Stop Teen Abuse in Residential Programs) fb site directory.

Several top government officials completely failed to respond to Congressman Miller’s extensive requests for an investigation despite the widespread incidences of kids being abused, tortured, and placed in dog cages. Dog kennels wasn’t the worst of it and yet, when it came down to small isolation cells in WWASPS’ Samoan program called Paradise Cove, we still couldn’t and haven’t received any oversight or intervention to hold the residential industry to any substantial standards.

The worst incident I experienced in Utah began was when I was put face-first against a wall for over ten hours and then told to stand on my tip-toes to reach a dot taped to the wall with my nose. The verbal taunting, enjoyment of this staff member, and the aggravation of not being able to do anything but stare at a wall led me to turn the corner and there I had two men that grabbed me and threw me in the isolation room again. This time they jumped me, put me in a painful police like lock position with my arms behind my back while they bashed my head into the floor causing significant and a large visible facial laceration.

They then proceeded to sit on me to so I couldn’t breathe and after gasping several times for air and pleading for my life, I became speechless. I was certain they would kill me, and they could get away with it. No one would of known about it because they were able to do all this other abuse, why wouldn’t they get away with killing me? There was no one there to stop them, and maybe no one cared. It wasn’t like I received any mail except a postcard from Bali at the time and a letter from my future college roommate that I couldn’t respond to.

So as I became asphyxiated and unable to save myself, the young staff member they had put in charge of me to make sure I didn’t try to leave looked completely shocked, and it was perhaps that look of shock that saved my life. Not all kids are that fortunate. About a dozen kids die every year in programs from abuse or torture like compression suffocation.

When I came out of isolation my face would twitch oddly, not like an eye twitch, but a full muscle spasm. It continued so much that I became worried that people would see and think I was weird. I also frequently lost control of my bladder; unfortunately, we had to ask permission to use the bathroom and only use it at designated times. Since some of the staff was annoyed we needed to use the restrooms they started to limit the amount of water we could drink.

Later I read an account by a parent saying her daughter was given Haldol, a medication given to people with schizophrenia, which wasn’t prescribed to her. I looked up the medication to see if there were any side effects such as facial twitching, and sure enough this was one of the major side effects. A girl with schizophrenia, named Emily, had left the program not much earlier than when I got there. She later committed suicide after being subjected to more frequent, but similar types of abuse including sexual abuse.

In my case, the Haldol could easily have been slipped into food before I received it in isolation. The side effects would explain my difficulty focusing and facial twitches. When Emily was part of the program her and another friend were woken up frequently in the middle of the night. It’s something that occurred in other WWASPS programs in order to sleep deprive and break the subject into submission.

A highlight of WWASPS programs is behavior modification. For parents who don’t really know what that means, it sound great; however, if they had done more research about what was really involved and the results of such experimentation I suspect many parents may not have signed their kids up. As a result of various abuses many kids have suffered from borderline personality disorder and PTSD. In the worst cases some kids are disabled for life and there have been suicides.

There are still staff currently at CCM that were employed when I attended. One, employed shortly before my departure seemed neither harmful nor helpful, but complacent. The other, the manager, sent my mom away when she came to investigate why my school packets never arrived. It so happened that her visit was the same day I received serious lacerations to my face, she was told that visiting me would interrupt the process. The manager, and many employees were talented at manipulating people, often through emotion, especially guilt.

Keeping this story short has been trying, and forcing myself not to live these things over and over has proven vexing. I’ve realized I was suffering most of the symptoms of post trauma and have since overcome my fear of therapists and received several years of ongoing therapy. I’ve been active in advocating for community issues and have found CAFETY, the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth, a resource of inspiration.

In my professional life and personal life, I create prevention and help people deal with trauma. The great thing I’ve found through the process of my own recovery is that people don’t think fighting for human rights and protection is crazy, but rather something that has a rich cultural history of its own called “advocacy.”

I’ve met a lot of survivors online and in person from different programs. One even moved in and became a part of my family. However, survivors really struggle with relationship issues. Some of them experienced being raped at WWASP facilities. Others witnessed children being raped and sodomized. I guess you could say being in these programs is such a strange experience that it can leave people feeling mixed up and isolated whether in their professional lives they’ve become lawyers or raised families.

Survivors often feel an instant connection; it’s refreshing to speak to someone else about these facilities without parrying assumptions that we were “out of control”. A lot of people never trust therapists again, never seek help, or share their story with other people because of the embarrassment, distrust, and initial pressure they feel to fit in, but there are several thousand of us just within a small percentage of online social groups. I’d imagine there are easily hundreds of thousands of people that have experienced some form of residential abuse.

The real issue lies within the lack of oversight and false marketing that exists in thousands of programs across the States and beyond. Politicians for years have rallied against any legislation that could interfere with their “Cash for Kids” profits. In some states, they won’t even require faith based programs to be licensed, which doesn’t even begin to make people eligible to work with kids in the first place; it simply allows there to have been some initial form of contact with a state department. It’s known too that the faith based programs tend to be also very abusive taking parts of the Bible literally into beating children with rods and pipes. This practice has resulted in kids being beaten to death.

It was a common practice in the Roloff schools that President Bush helped to stay afloat. Bush as Governor of Texas at the time, overturned legislation allowing the Roloff schools to not have to be licensed despite, the apparent severe abuse coming out in court cases. Pastor Roloff in turn, helped his campaign financially as well as through his evangelical radio shows. Roloff eventually killed a bunch of orphans flying his plane into the ground while ignoring the weather warnings.

Where the industry is huge in the fundamentally religious state of Utah, Mitt Romney also profited off these programs and chose Bob Litchfield, the owner of WWASPS, as his financial co-chairman for his presidential candidacy in 08. Romney wanted Double the Guanatanamo, so he picked, Mel Sembler as another financial co-chairman, the owner of the abusive Straight programs.

I leave you with this from a Mother Jones article “Horror Stories from Tough Love Teen Homes,” “ In March 2010, the House passed the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would have banned the use of seclusion and physical or chemical restraints by any school that benefits from federal education money. (It, too, died in the Senate.) Andy Kopsa, who covers abusive homes in her blog, Off the Record, noted that GOP members whose districts host tough-love schools rallied against the act. They included former Indiana Rep. Mark Souder (Hephzibah House), Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt (Reclamation Ranch, Rachel Academy), and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx (King Family Ministries), who testified: “This bill is not needed…The states and the localities can handle these situations. They will look after the children.”

Limited Images of Abuse and Settings Youth Were In at WWASPS

http://imgur.com/sES7w (Tranquility Bay, Jamaica)

http://imgur.com/NM6rM (Tranquility Bay, Jamaica youth in picture killed himself after being abused there, another after being pepper sprayed numerously on a daily basis by American staff owners)

http://imgur.com/a/M3tBU (Cross Creek Manor now Cross Creek Academy, isolation rooms)

http://imgur.com/SSDMr (The Hobbit Spring Creek Lodge, Montana)

http://imgur.com/8T2EU (High Impact Tecate, Mexico)

One OF Our Great Documentaries: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=057_1200885881

Other related articles:

Read more: http://www.wyff4.com/news/24956710/detail.html#ixzz1W4worVr6 The remains of more than 70 animal remains were found on the Due West property in varying states of decay on Lichfield’s property where the abusive and now closed Carolina Springs academy existed.

Read more: “Child welfare has evolved over the last four centuries. It finds its roots in empirical systems based on property and material value, not human values.”Roch Longueepee

http://restoringdignitycampaign.blogspot.com/2007/02/systems-of-control-global-legacy-of.html

Sources:

• The original statement on WWASP-survivors
• The facility on Fornits Wiki

Survivor Testimony of Bill Boyles (From wwaspsurvivors.com)

Very early one morning, shortly before Halloween 1997, several large men burst into my room, put in handcuffs, and dragged me away right in front of my parents, and they did nothing. They did nothing because they had hired the men and paid them to take me. It was a legal kidnapping, and there was nothing I could do.

The men took almost all the way across the country, from airport to airport, Orlando to Atlanta to Houston to Dallas to Las Vegas…and then we drove. I couldn’t see anything in the night as we drove through the desert that night. The men told me nothing except that we were headed to Utah. And then, in the early morning hours again, almost 24 hours after I had left, I finally arrived.

As they dragged me towards the building, it didn’t look special in any particular way. Just a one-story, nondescript building. The sign out front said “Brightway Adolescent Hospital”. My first idea of what life here was really going to be like was when we paused at the front door. The “escorts” pushed a button and waited til the door buzzed and swung ponderously open.

They dragged me in and I began the process of intake. First they asked me a seemingly endless series of questions about my drug use )none), my sexual experiences (sadly, again none) and so on and so forth ad naseum. Then I was weighed and measured, and after that, I was stripped, then searched.

All my clothes were taken from me, and I was given a cup of foul-smelling liquid. I was told to go take a shower and wash my whole body with it. I asked what it was, and I was told it was flea and lice shampoo. I went into the shower and turned it on. Have I mentioned I’m from FLORIDA? And apparently Utah is freezing cold in October? Well, there was no hot water in that shower. I tried and tried every which way on the handle, I waited and waited.. Eventually I gave up and bit the bullet. I still remember how cold that water was. I shook so hard I could barely lather up with that nasty shampoo. But eventually I got it done. I emerged from the shower and I was given, not my clothes, but a thin hospital gown to wear. Here’s the thing: I’m a big guy, 6’4” or thereabouts, and even at 14 I was around 6’1”. And yet, this was a hospital for kids. The problem quickly became clear: their gowns were sized for kids, and, as one of my friends put it to me, it was like a shirt on me. The thing barely covered my “areas”, and quite frankly they still hung out, if you catch my drift. But all my clothes had been taken, and I was enforced to wear it the way it was. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, so I shrugged and accepted my fate. The tech informed me there wasn’t a bed for me that night, not until someone shipped off to another program in the morning. So he improvised. I was led to a room marked “Seclusion”. The door had a window in it. When he opened that door, and I got a glimpse of the room inside, I was horrified. The room was tiny, so tiny in fact that a small cot had to wedged diagonally to even fit inside. But even worse than that, the cot had seatbelt-like straps across it, clearly intended to tie the bed’s occupant down. (It reminded me of the bed Sarah Connor is strapped down on in the beginning of Terminator 2.) I began to panic thinking of spending the night tied down in those straps. The tech seemed to sense my panic, and informed me as long as I behaved myself I would be spared from that, at least. He told me to lie down and go to sleep, but it was hard, since they didn’t turn the lights off, and I spent the night staring at the very prominent video camera recording my every move.

Early the next morning they came and woke me up. Strangely enough, waking up was when the nightmare truly began. I was led out into a small room and that’s when I realized that Brightway was a co-ed facility. The girls were pretty, and they were around my age, and they were staring at me…and that’s when I remembered my current state of dress. Quite embarrassing. For a socially awkward 14-year old boy, it was devastating. I don’t even think people can imagine. A lot of bad things happened to me in my time in the program: isolation, torture, electrocution, tetanus. I rate this by far the worst. I’m sure I turned red as a beet. I wanted to crawl into a hole, preferably one very far away, and die, but I wouldn’t be let off the hook that easily. My appeals to the staff went on deaf ears, and I began to learn the very first lesson every new child must learn when entering a WWASP school: What must be endured, can be endured. And what cannot be changed (basically everything in the WWASP system), must be endured. That morning I also began my indoctrination into the WWASP rules system. The rules at Brightway were many in number and often complicated in application. Rules included asking for permission for literally everything, such as standing, sitting, talking, going to the bathroom, even burping. Talking to other students was not allowed, and looking out the window, any window, was a rule violation of the most serious kind. That got you put into the straps on that awful little bed that still haunts my memory. The most curious rule involved a restriction of travel. You had to be under the supervision of a staff member at all times, either in person or via the series of security cameras everywhere. The facility was broken into blocks of monitoring, delineated by the placement of pairs of small, round, brightly colored stickers near the floor at every doorway and at various places along halls and in corners. When you got to one of these stickers, you had to stop, and then yell the word “cross”. That would draw the staff’s attention, and once they were monitoring you, they would reply with “cross” and you could safely walk on to the next pair.

The next order of business was for me to be seen and evaluated by some sort of mental health type. I think he was a psychiatrist but I’m not sure and I never caught his name. I think it was Dr. Goates, but I can’t really remember. I mostly remember that we talked, and at the end of it, right in front me he pulled out this tape recorder and started dictating. What he said wasn’t very complimentary, things like that I was clearly in denial about my drug use (I wasn’t) and that I exhibited signs of defiance, and so on. I felt like what he was doing was extremely condescending and rude. I mean, to talk about someone like they aren’t even there, and to say rude and untrue things about them while you’re doing it isn’t exactly the height of good manners. I said something to him, and he blew me off and told me not to interrupt him. That’s when I got pissed. I admit, I blew up a little bit as all the anger, frustration, humiliation, and fear of the last day and a nalf came to a head. I started yelling and got in his face, and frankly, I was bigger than he was. I wasn’t going to hurt him, I just wanted him to stop, and that’s what I told him, but all the blood drained out of his face and he started yelling for help. The tech on duty ran in, quickly took in the situation, grabbed me, and dragged me out. That was the first time I was ever restrained in a WWASP program (it only happened one other time, I mostly kept my head down and toed the line.) I quickly found myself back in the little room marked “Seclusion” with the scary little bed that had the scary little straps and the big brother security camera watching everything.

I begged shamelessly not be strapped down, and they agreed, with the caveat that if I acted up at all not only were they going to come in and beat my ass and strap me down, they would also shoot me full of thorazine, and they told me the thorazine would make me “shit my pants” and then I would have to “lie in it all day.” I don’t know how long they left me in there. It probably wasn’t that long but it felt like years. I had nothing to do, the room was tiny and getting smaller fast, and I was scared out of my mind that any second they would come barging in to make good on their earlier threats.

However long it was, eventually they let me out, and they gave me my real clothes back. I could have kissed the guy. I went back and it was time to finish my indoctrination and training to be a good little WWASP student. I was told to write a letter to my parents, and so I did. It began, “Dear Mom and Dad,

Fuck you for doing this to me…” WWASP heals families….right, sure. I have no idea if that letter made it or not, since they read all our mail. I’m not even sure which I would prefer.

After the letter writing, it was time for school. Of course, in a short-term, transient type program like Brightway, school had little meaning since any work completed didn’t follow the student to their permanent facility. I believe the only point was to start getting kids used to WWASP-style school arrangements, namely working at your own pace, teaching yourself, and having no support from a teacher. So instead of actual schoolwork, we did book reports. I remember both reading The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway and writing the book report in under a day and the “teacher” being amazed. I did a ton of book reports while I was there out of sheer boredom. It was that or just pretend to be doing book reports, and I abhor having nothing to do.

The days gradually began to pass and blur together. They were giving me pills, lots of pills, even waking me up at night to give me more. I have no idea what they were, even to this day. I was never told. I never gave informed consent. They told me to take the pills, and in a WWASP school it is always advisable to do as you’re told, as I was quickly learning, so I took the pills. Besides, all the other kids were on tons of pills, too, so it didn’t seem so weird at the time. I think the pills were sedatives administered in order to keep us in line. I was so out of it the whole time I was there I don’t even know how long I was there.

I do remember Halloween passing, though. It went largely unremarked and uncelebrated except that I think we had to do some dumb arts and craft project that would have bored a 10-year old. Other than that, nothing as far as I remember. No costumes and no candy, no trick or treating. Almost no acknowledgment of the holiday at all. It was a pattern I was going to grow all too used to.

Finally my last day came, and I was to be shipped off to Samoa. There were 6 of us headed there, apparently quite a large group. The last night, they put us all in a room with a TV, which none of us had watched since our arrivals, and threw us a sort-of little party. They showed us movies all night. I remember watching “Stand By Me” and “Red Dawn.” We had to watch. No one was allowed to sleep. If anyone drifted off he was awakened, roughly if necessary. The gaiety began to leak out of the party. The next morning, still very early, they dressed us in our travel clothes: short blue shorts, white t-shirts, and flip-flops with white socks. We all knew the score. Those clothes were designed to make it hard to run, both by making us stand out and by, in the case of the socks and flip-flops, literally making it physically hard to run. They took us all outside, my first time since arriving, and put us in a van to take us to the airport in Las Vegas.

The drive back to the airport, just like the drive in, seemed to take forever, but at least the second time I could see the scenery. Being from Florida, I had never seen a desert before and had rarely seen mountains, cliffs, and hills like the ones I could see. All too soon, though, the drive was over and we were in Las Vegas. There was one more stop, however, and little did I know but involved one of the last acts of kindness I was to experience from the WWASP staff for years.

The van pulled into a gas station with a large convenience store. The staff members with us asked us what we wanted for our “last meals.” I don’t know what anyone else asked for, but I asked for Twizzlers and a Mountain Dew. I got Red Vines and a Dr. Pepper, but it was close enough. That was the last thing I hate in America for almost 2 years. Sometimes I still buy that combo as a snack and reminisce.

After that they got us out the van and into the airport, got our tickets, and took us to the gates, where armed guards awaited to both keep us from running or causing trouble and to thoroughly embarrass us since ever person who walked past just had to stop and gawk at us. Even worse awaited us at LAX, but that’s part of another story, not part of this one.

To sum up, Brightway was nothing more than a stopping-over point, a resting place for WWASP-bound travelers. It was designed to begin the pacification and breaking process while indoctrinating those in its care to WWASP rules, points, and level systems. It had no valid treatment, no teacher, and untrained staff. The rules were strange and harsh. It was not a hospital in any sense of the word. I gained nothing from my time there except a good idea of how to act in WWASP programs: keep your head down and always look busy. Brightway was closed in March 1998, the first WWASP program to be shut down, and in some way that’s fitting to me, since it was also the first WWASP program for so many students.

Sources:

• Survivor Testimony of Bill Boyles (Brightway) (wwwasp survivors)
• The facility on Fornits Wiki

Testimonies from Danes

At the blog called Vidnetsbyrd fra det mørke asyl which can be translated as Testimonies from the dark asylum, Danes will tell how they experienced their stay at Danish group homes, boarding schools or treatment centers.

United States is far from the only country in the world where children suffer when they are forced to live outside their family home. It is time to deal with the abuse worldwide.