Anon at Devereux Glenholme

This testimony was found on HEAL-online's message board

I had the 'pleasure' of being sent to this place when I was around 11 or 12,in 1992 or '93. My stay there was cut short, thank God,because my stepfather, a Navy man, was being transferred out of state.

First of all we'll start with the glamorous brochures and outlandish claims of lavish accommodations afforded the 'students' at their 'school'. I was,at the time,in an acute care mental facility for children and adolescents in Rhode Island,diagnosed with bipolar disorder, when discussions for my future care were being held by all concerned.

Somehow, Devereux Glenholme was included. With glossy brochures featuring pictures of go-kart tracks (that I'd never get to use) and ice cream shops, they lured me in. Nothing but a shameless sales pitch. Well, the first week I was there I was on the phone to my mother, desperately begging for her to come get me out of there. It all started with the 'discipline' regime which involved, as another poster had said, having to stand behind your chair at mealtimes and having to march around single file, not allowed to speak or anything - but that really wasn't too bad compared to what had me on the phone.

One morning, I was accosted by two older,bigger (I was 11 or 12) 15-16 year old boys who,wearing blankets,gave me a 'blanket party' while I was still in bed. Kids will be kids, right? But this happened in the full view of a staff member who watched the entire thing happen, without intervening - this staff member being a full grown man - he watched as a boy older and bigger than me climbed onto the top bunk with me and punched me repeatedly in the face and head. This man said he wouldn't intervene because it could expose him to liability. What a coward.

More fun at Devereux Glenholm included finding my suitcase with my belongings rifled thru and vandalized in their basement of one of their oh-so-lovely 'cottages'. Apparently, Glenholm places more emphasis on collecting its hundred + thousand a year 'tuition' than on protecting the wellbeing or the property of the 'students' who they collect it from.

Also there were the little tile rooms - probably the most egregious of offenses to humanity and sanity that Devereux Glenholm had to offer in my stay with them. They had several of these rooms -not included in the information in what can only be described as their sales brochures, to be sure - all across their campus,about the size of a small bathroom. These rooms were covered from floor to ceiling with tile, they were dimly lit and featured a door with no handle on the inside and a drain in the center of the room. Oftentimes, I was placed in one of these rooms and there was excrement left in them from children who had been held in them before. Just as the poster above mentioned - they didn't let you out of there for hours for anything; bathroom, water, food,etc. Yes-these criminals denied children access to basic human needs. And an interesting note was that at the time,or so I was told, it was illegal in the state of Connecticut to lock a child in a room using an actual deadbolt or other fastening device, so they used to have the older kids act as 'holders', or in other words, they would throw a kid in one of these holes, and have another child hold the door shut so that you could not get out. Speculatively, one can imagine what the 'holder' could get away with regarding tormenting the child he was keeping in the room when he was unsupervised - perhaps even while he was supervised, given the manner in which staff dealt with even physical assaults between the children as I have described above.

As to the 'amenities' at Devereux Glenholm - I was there maybe 9 months. Not once was I allowed to use the go-karts, the track seemed to never get used either. The pool -interestingly, if you look at their website, its the same one they had there back when I was incarcerated there in the early 90s, and looks like it was built in the 70s - I got to use once. For maybe 15 minutes. I don't recall the horses there,but I'll tell you, just like all the other 'amenities' at glenholm, those horses are just there to entice people to pay them to take their kids. Most of the time we were either in what they call 'classrooms',or the 'cottages', or we were being forced to participate in some form of what they called 'leisure activities', which was just more excersize in 'discipline', as 'leisure' meant doing things like practicing square dancing or other horribly dull and droll (square dancing,for kids?seriously?) 'activities' that if you didn't participate in, and with a 'good attitude'- see above about the little tile rooms. As for 'therapy' sessions - I remember one 'session' in particular that was being led by a so-called 'councilor', the excersize was to compose a 'group rap'. So we all had to sit around and make rap lyrics. How therapeutic.

Devereux Glenholm,as I remember it, was a nightmare. There is nothing a child can do,nothing so 'wrong' with a child,that should ever prompt a parent to consider sending them to this private, run for-profit juvenile prison that masquerades itself as an amenities rich 'care facility'. I'd like to,at this time,remain anonymous unless and until a class action suit or other suitable remedy is ever pursued,but feel free to post my story on your website. Your doing a good thing exposing these adolescent gulags to the world- as much as they like to claim and aggrandize their success stories about their 'students' going on to become doctors and such,for every one of those kids- theres probably 20 kids that were terribly ruined by them who's stories they don't post on their slick web sites.


Sources:

• The original testimony
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

Unknown at Red Rock Canyon School

This testimony was found on HEAL-online's website. All rights goes to the author who has chosen to remain unknown

Hello, my name is ******* **** and I am 16 years old.

Orange County Mental Health and the Capistrano Unified School District recommended me to go to Red Rock Canyon School through the courts because I was truant. On March 14th, I was arrested at court and held overnight and at 6:00 am Westfield, or Westerfield Transporters came and picked me up and drove me out to Red Rock Canyon School.

They were nice. Apparently, my mom did not sign the papers but my father was manipulated into signing them. The courts made Red Rock out to be something much greater than it was. Anyhow, I was told on the way there by the transporters that right when I got there I would be allowed to call my mother and my boyfriend of almost one year.

I got there, and they told me that I couldn't write letters to anyone, including my parents, or have any contact with them whatsoever for the first 21 days I was there. Need I remind you, this is a level 14 lockdown facility. I couldn't leave. But for kids there that do try to run and get over the fences, apparently the only requirement for staff members is that they bring the child back alive when they go looking for them. I can recall a story that was told to me by a lady named Gina who worked there about a young girl trying to escape, and when they got her, she did not fight back, but yet they tackled her, stepped on her face, and cracked her jaw.

But back to what I was saying, the first 21 days there were the worst hell. I had to wear these shoes they would call "Jesus Sandals", was only allowed to have my jeans, I had to be "belt looped" everywhere I walked off the unit, and I had to be body searched before and after showers. Every time we use the restroom we had to have the door 6 inches cracked, no less. I was on Green Unit, and my group leader was Alan Shalby. Him and the registered nurse, Nicole, were the only nice people there. My therapists name was Carol Williams, and I later came to the conclusion that she was a polygamist.

After 21 days, you get one family therapy phone call per week, where you and your therapist talk to your parents on the phone on speaker for 45 minutes. After my second therapy call with Carol and my mother, Carol ended up hanging up on my mother because she was "being rude" and I was "breaking the phone rules". The phone rules were "No cussing, no bashing on staff, no bashing the program, no guilt-loading, and no manipulating/lying". Apparently I broke them by saying that "I didn't feel my medical needs were being met". During my first treatment team meeting, Dr. Shannon told me that my family therapy had been suspended and I wouldn't be allowed to contact my mother for 60 days. When Carol hung up on my mother that afternoon, my mom knew something fishy was going on.

Somehow, she had a man named Kelly come to Red Rock to speak to me about what had happened. Apparently he is the man who "gives these places licenses to operate". We spoke in Brian Pace's office. I brought up the fact that I was scared and didn't quite know what was going on with my mother and how long I would be staying for. He replied by saying that I'm just a child and I shouldn't know what's going on in my life as far as how long I'm supposed to be in "treatment" for, and that adults have more rights that children, therefore I should just listen and behave myself because there's nothing I could do to get myself out of there. About the whole "not meeting my medical needs" part, you see, I have had surgery on my spine 4 times, and to this day there is something wrong with my spine that hasn't been fixed yet.

While I was at Red Rock, whenever I asked for tylenol, they told me to "drink water". After a while, they gave me advil, and I was coughing up blood from it. They did nothing. The following weekend, I had a fever of probably 100% or more, and a horrible cold. I asked a lady who takes care of the "student store", Tami, if she could call my mother just to let her know I was really sick. Tami called my mother and told her "Naomi isn't feeling well but she's being given medicine and as much rest as she needs. No worries." My mom didn't know until she got a letter from me that I was given an allergy pill for my cold and fever, yet I have no allergies, and was forced to go sit in the schoolroom and work on schoolwork all day long and was never given a chance to rest.

Now about the staff...well there's a lot of shadiness, and a lot of "drama" and rumors breaking confidentiality of the children. Last year, (I was not there but certain staff members like Annie, Gina, Laura, and Alan Shalby all on Green Unit have told me this themselves) the paramedic, Adam, had sexual relations with a young girl in the program. They brought it up to him and questioned her, but when they came to the child, she put the attention on someone else, and he was never given a consequence. In fact he still works there. Even the days I was there, I would see him flirting with all of the young girls, ages 12-17. In my unit, there was actually and 11 year old girl there, when the minimum age was 12, who was placed there for "attitude problems".

Anyhow, another horrible staff member was Melvin, the weekend supervisor. He was always going around, staring inappropriately at all of the young girls. There was a girl named Sabrina who was there while I was, and he apparently "wanted to be with her". Which is quite interesting, considering Melvin is waiting for his child to be born. The mother of the baby is a woman who worked at the front desk, and they conceived the baby on the Red Rock campus in Melvin's office. And Darlene Blackburn...you have her down as "Girl's Resource Room". Darlene is the IEP teacher for both girls and boys, and Tami M. is who the boys and girls go to for resources, such as toiletries, clothes, ect. Oh, and Vincent, the PE teacher; when I told him I had back problems so I couldn't participate in PE, he let me sit out everyday, but he would never call me by my name- he would call me "broke back", making fun of the fact the I have rods and screws up and down my entire spinal cord. And Brent...well he is very manipulative. He is the person that loves making sure these poor kids are becoming institutionalized, so they think that it isn't "wrong" for them to be there.

Now, Oscar. Oscar is very scary. There is a ground of four girls on Coral Unit who always physically beat up the most vulnerable girl in their unit at the time. As a punishment, Oscar would make them all go into a small room together called "RI", or "re- investment", from 5 AM until 11 PM. They would eat their meals in there. The RI rooms are very cold and you aren't allowed to have any of your belongings including your sweater or shoes until you get out. Oscar would send them there daily for this amount of time. Bo Hunt is Oscar's sister, or they are related in some kind of way. There was never a day where I didn't walk by Bo and see her screaming at a different kid each time, putting them down, making them feel at fault about everything bad that's happened to them.

Kaitlynn Robertson is the Green Unit teacher, and she is a drunk. She'd always come into work very hungover, and very grouchy towards all of the kids. She rubs it in the children's faces that she gets to go home at night, but we don't. Angela, the nurse, was another large problem for me. She was always very rude, and when I would ask for help with my back pain, she would always tell me I was "drug seeking". Excuse me if I said this once before, but to kindly correct your information, Alan Shalby is the group leader on Green Unit. Steel Unit is no longer running, but before I left they were going to open it back up again because all of the other male units were filling up. Green Unit was very crowded. There were two bunk beds and one normal bed in my room, which I'm sure exceeds the legal population of a tiny room in a place like this. Kasey Nelson no longer works for Red Rock either. This place is very unhealthy and unsafe for children.

I was there for fourty- something days. With barely any contact with my mother, I prayed to God every night that he would bring a miracle my way. In the end, he answered my prayers, and my mother drove out and picked me up and pulled me from the program out of the blue and placed me in a very nice dual diagnosis treatment center that was a 60 day program in Long Beach, CA called Center for Discovery. My therapist at Center for Discovery saw the report and told me she was disgusted to the point of vomiting from reading all of the nasty, untrue things they wrote on the report about myself.

I was released from there on May 24 and am at home now. I apologize for my email being so scattered, but hopefully this information will be useful. I saw my surgeon two days ago, and I'm waiting for the CT scan to come back. The second I find out what is wrong with my spine, my family is going to be filing a lawsuit against them for not meeting my medical needs while I was there and not meeting my therapeutic needs. There are a few things that I left out. Sherman Habibian, the owner, is engaged to a nurse in the clinic at RRCS named Lacey. And also, they have two potbelly pigs there at Red Rock in a pen, and the students sexually abuse the poor pigs all of the time.

Sources:

• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)
• The original testimony

Teen Reach - long gone but still haunts people

We found some testimonies on an old Fornits Thread now where Reddit are talking about this program. It was marketed as a rehab for teenagers. Use of corporal punishment let the State of Arizona to conduct an investigation. Here is a former clients testimony:

Well i lived in the teen reach house from age 16-17 and it was freaking unbelievably horrible.

Let me just state that they wouldn't let me talk to my parents while i was there, couldn't have sugur or wear my own clothes or go to the bathroom alone, or listen to music other than christian music. We had to praise god or we would be treated differently and not move up in the company. They had what they would call the demon room in the house. The really screwed up thing is that one of the property locations that they selected to have as a residence for the Christian Girls home was the house where the "sleep walking murder" Steven Steinberg stabbed his wife 26 times with a kitchen knife...so some really unusual things happened in that house but they would try to say that the house was demon possessed and all of those who didn't accept christ would be tortured and even reportedly raped by these demons. Anyway i could go on and on, they took my poetry from me when i was entered into the house and it was burned in front of me as an example of the extremes they would go to to purge me of my sinful ways.

I eventually got out of the house by hitting on the pastors wife, they said i was a pedifile because i was bisexual. (can't have a bisexual girl in a christian girls home) lol. Anyway those were some very traumatising experiences. Just thought i would report that i did in fact live there.

Also an employee wrote:

Been there, was a former employee.......not a cool place, brainwashing to the point of blind following of personal instruction. True Christians cannot stay involved with this leadership, this is a CULT masquerading as a Christian Group. Bobby Torres's direction and word counts far more than God's Word.....but the followers are browbeat, coerced, etc. into being in "spiritual submission", or else held to public group ridicule for being "rebellious", which the Bible states is as the sin of witchcraft!

Who wants to be known as a witch?.. nobody, so followers begin to doubt their own judgement, and eventually let Bobby Torres do all their thinking.....it's so much easier to get along with everyone then! The current games going on are dispicable, and are teaching vulnerable young people that lying, decieving, and ignoring the law is ok when the enemy is the State or anyone but them. Since when did the Ten commandments have "conditions" on them? They treat Bobby Torres's unending edicts like they are the original tablets from Mount Sinai, everything from how long one must pray each day, to what music you can and can't listen to, to what kind of food you can eat. Vegetarianism is not only encouraged, but mandated among staff, and grocery receipts are checked to see if you bought "approved" foods.

Only a short step here to buying large lots of KoolAid and Cyanide.

And finally another student:

I was in that thing for a couple of months, too.......scary. When they encouraged me to disconnect from my family, keep "information" from them (their little program secrets) I smelled a rat, and my family came and moved me home. Now, all the friends I thought I had there won't talk to me and have spread lies about my young daughter to discredit us, I guess, so we look like the whackjobs, not them. Too bad,....there are a lot of people out there that really believe this bunch, and Bob is even an Assemblies of God minister. Isn't that the same outfit that gave a license to Jimmy Swaggart while he was making whoopee with prostitutes?

The program was organized by Bobby Torres. The courts found a number of violations forcing the management to focus on other things.

Sources:

• Another "Christian Based" Program (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)
• Any Teen Reach(AZ) survivors here. (Reddit Troubled Teens)
• Teen Reach founder fires back at state (World Corporal Punishment Research)
• Teen Reach loses to DES (East Valley Tribune)
• Troubled teens program probed (The Cincinnati Enquirer)