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I survived being dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night by two strangers, yanked down a flight of stairs by my feet, leaving rug burn on my chin, threatened with handcuffs: leaving the ‘hard way’ if I was not compliant or yelled bomb in the airport, I would be departing to a place I couldn’t know. I was told that my parents had signed over custody and no longer wanted me, that things were going to be different now, that I was finally going to learn my place, before being transported across state lines. I was not allowed to change on my own, I’d never been nude in front of an adult and felt violated. I realized my body wasn't mine anymore. I knew my mom was upstairs, had opened my door, signed me away.  She was ok with what they were doing to me.

At the airport, I tried going to the bathroom planning to escape into the ceiling tiles like in the movies; she followed and watched me pee. I cried the entire flight. I wrote a note on the back of a vomit bag with a golf pencil to my best friend, hoping to pass it to a fellow passenger, but my escort took the note from me, promising to deliver it. Not one passenger asked if I was ok. I realized if something happened to me, no one but my parents would know where I was, yet, did my dad really know how I was being treated? I believed the escorts, they did not want me, they signed me over to people that drag me down stairs over choosing the wrong sneaker. Unlike the movies, when you are taken, people don’t save you when you cry through an entire flight. I was totally alone with thugs.

I was dropped off with more strangers, only to be strip searched in a crudely erected wood shack while I was taunted with nasty names and told to bend over or they would do it for me, while men were present with only their backs turned. I didn’t understand why I needed to bend over and cough, what did they think I could be hiding in my private parts? I was only 14. Handed to more strangers, taken in another car, they left me at a camp, there, I was left to sit on an uneven vertical log of wood too small to sit on that cut into my bottom, with all of my winter clothes on in 100 degree weather, isolated from all of the other kids that seemed to have run everywhere, didn’t talk, they only looked down, and were constantly getting yelled at.

I was a vegetarian and when I refused the food they put it in a bag and hung it around my neck, not offering me new food until two days later when my parents confirmed I was not lying. That meat rotted around my neck for two days in the hot Idaho sun. For 10 weeks I survived off of only 1 pair of clean underwear and 2 bucket baths, in which I had only 5-minute timed intervals to pump water, heat water, and bath in front of a staff member yelling at me and the other kids, before Lysoling the bucket naked, even though I was doing manual labor, chopping wood, and extreme exercise every day.

I watched the staff roll kids that spoke out into tarps and sit on top of them in the mud, sometimes six staff at once. All day I was yelled at for trying to take my own life, for being weak, selfish, and spoiled, while girls were yelled at for being sexually assaulted and boys for being gay or thugs. At night I slept on the wood floor of a teepee, after coed staff timed me to take my pants off, throw them aside, de-lace my shoes, throw them out of the teepee, and get into a sleeping bag, before I silently cried myself to sleep.

Bodily needs where used against us repeatedly. We had to raise two fingers in the air silently, be called on, then say, ‘potty please’ to use the outhouse. We were made to hold it, often in stress positions as a group, like the plank position, with the person that needed to go reserved for last. Accidents where not unusual.

Before two mile runs I was made to drink two nalgene water bottles just to puke up the water. After losing items like chapstick, at high altitude, my lips began to scab and bleed and turn black, and I could not move my mouth easily, but I was not given ointment or new chapstick to teach me a lesson to value my belongings. After forgetting my water bottle, I was forced to carry all my belongings to each task, including physical exercises, like arm circles, giving me permanent rotator cuff damage. The staff instructed other kids to dump crate after crate of oranges into a pack on my back until I fell on the ground and could not get up, my face in the dirt, only to yell at me that I deserved it, because I felt how my mom must have felt when I called her names. If I died from getting hurt, no one knew where I was, all I could think of was the last time they saw me, that may have been it. I was on my own.

The camp consisted of brutal work out routines, manual labor, and chopping wood to heat the neighboring “school”, a permanent camp with everyone in orange jumpsuits, living in teepees. Seeing the “school” was motivation to succeed at the camp and not end up there. I knew it could get worse if I did not comply and do whatever it took to leave. I was not allowed to write home unless I took full accountability for all of my parent’s accusations. My letters were ripped up unless the staff approved.

I confessed to being an alcoholic. I had been caught with a non-alcoholic beer and an unopened bottle of gin and been kicked out the house. After that, I started drinking because I felt I would start doing what they accused me of, and I wanted their attention, but I was by no means an alcoholic, yet no one believed me. I confessed to doing multiple drugs, even though I had only smoked pot 2-3 times and wanted to do it to be cool. I confessed to being in a cult because I was a goth girl and into the occult, but upon explaining my beliefs to my parents they said I sounded like a christian, still, no one believed me.

I confessed that my attempt to take my own life was only for attention and apologized, even though that was not true, I was severely depressed. I took accountability for all the problems my parents were having in trying to start a new family, for making their life hard, in order for my letters to be delivered, in order to get out of the program and go home. Even though all of these things were not true, I would have done or said anything to get out. Instead my worse fear came true. I was signed up for a three year school, and it was the only day the staff saw me cry, which I knew was not good, because it meant I was not ‘into’ the program and I could get punished further at the next place I would be.

I was just a 14-year-old kid that wanted to go home, to be loved, and wanted. I did not understand why my parents did not come to my camp graduation after all I had confessed to, after how compliant I had been. How could they leave me with these people? I knew deep down I wasn’t wanted at home and I had to make the best of wherever I was going, whatever that meant, whatever it took. I was taken to ‘the school” by strangers. I was so excited to shower, to draw. I was greeted by a kid my age and a staff, together they took me into a small stall bathroom, had me get naked, and strip searched me again, as they were telling me they would be my new family.

I was quickly put into a rap, and had my first panic attack. Like some emotional fight club, everyone was screaming. All the kids were raising their hands excitedly to release “disclosures” or bad things they had done. The staff, our team leader, who seemed like the ‘dad’, decided to go first to create safety and encourage sharing: he said he had raped a girl in high school. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, my throat literally wouldn’t work. I ran out of the room; my big sisters were right behind me. “What’s wrong? Are you ok? Tell us!” they said. They were grabbing my arm. I had no space from them, and realized I had to snap out of it.

I wasn’t safe to not act ‘not ok’ there if I wasn’t going to confess what was wrong. I didn’t want to go back to the camp, and I immediately caught my breath and lied, claiming claustrophobia, a half-truth, and volunteered to go back in. It was common for staff to confess to bad things, and participate in the program alongside the students. Staff would scream at the floor which felt scary, confess to doing cocaine, hitting their wives, having sex with animals, and sexual assault. I was shocked that my Big Sister thought his confession normal, and that my parents had sent me somewhere where grown men in charge of us thought they could confess to raping someone our age in the past like it was no big deal and that this man was not in jail and working with children. I didn’t think my parents really knew where I was. I hoped they didn’t pick this for me. I wasn’t allowed to tell my parents what this man did because they said that what is said in a rap, stays in a rap, so if I broke the rule, I would just be assigned to more manual labor, and going home would be even less likely.

I wasn’t allowed to have any bodily autonomy anymore. Arm in arm, everywhere I went, someone was touching me. My new Big Sister would not allow me to go anywhere alone, and for a short while would not allow me to go to the bathroom by myself, but she could assign a friend to watch me go to the bathroom.  After two weeks I was allowed to go to the bathroom alone. I did not have “up and down” privileges which meant I could not go from building to building without an upper school student present to monitor me. Sometimes she even grabbed onto the belt loop on the back of my jeans.

There were so many special words to replace normal language, and rules, I could not keep track. I felt a new sense of despair that it was not just three years of time I had to do, but three years of being told how to talk, think, move, and be touched. She was constantly putting her arm around me and holding my hand or petting my hair.

They would ‘pull me up’ by telling me I had ‘broken an agreement’ or a rule once, but after that they expected me to remember it and if I did it again they would consider me ‘out of agreement’ with the school and if I did not ‘cop out’ to being ‘dirty’ I would be ‘holding dirt’ and that was basically, the worst thing you could do there, because that was the same as lying.  Worse, if I saw someone else break a rule, I was expected to report them or I was considered equally as dirty so everyone there was constantly peer policing. I would get put on work assignment and have to do manual labor like chop wood, two man saw, landscape, or do pots and pans. I was soon constantly doing manual labor. It was like being at the first program but there were so many more types of jobs.

Everyone was constantly calling each other pumpkin, sweet pee, or boo boo, what they considered their little girl or little boy names: they were obsessed with being childlike or, the child within. They were always yelling at each other to ‘slow down’ and not go ‘too fast’. In the House, the main building, everyone was touching each other, sitting on each other’s laps, petting each other’s hair, laying in piles on the floor. Students and staff together, regardless of gender or age difference. Male staff would have 5 or 6 girl students piled on his lap or in his arms. A female staff would have male kids against her chest petting their hair, or a male staff would be spooning another male kid between his legs, arms around each other. Kids would be lying on the floor woven together like a waffle, crying, to the song Imagine. I had never seen so much touching in my life.

The same songs by Neil Young constantly blasted on repeat out of the speakers. Everywhere people were, they were hand in hand, arm in arm, in “smoosh” piles. If you were sitting alone, or reading too much, you would get yelled at for “hiding out”. You were not allowed to kiss, hold hands, or date at the school if it was someone you had a romantic interest in. All the touching, was supposed to be platonic.

Special friendships with staff where encouraged, especially ‘power staff’ that were considered more knowledgeable in the program, more dominating and meaner in the raps than lower ranking staff. It showed that I had bought into the program, I was ‘doing my work’, and that they saw something special in me. Touching between staff and students was encouraged and expected.

I was groomed by my best friend, the staff in charge of my life, he felt like my pseudo dad, he was only ten years older than me, who I thought understood me more than anyone and that I loved more than my dad. He put me on a feminine program, approved or rejected all of my clothing purchases, approved and read all of my mail, monitored my calls, banned me from all of my friends, decided what I had to say and what could do on my parent visits, was involved in the bioenergetic exercises of my workshops, put me on manual labor work assignment for having touched myself, and forced me to share all my worst sexual experiences with the boy I had a crush on in order to humiliate myself. This early relationship set me up for a long line of abusive relationships later in life in which I confused control and a lack of boundaries for love.

Girls where sexually shamed on a constant basis. If their shirt came untucked and the small of their back showed for a brief second while they were doing manual labor, they were accused of being a slut and trying to get a ‘feel good’ from a guy. Boys could go shirt free and did not experience this treatment. Girl’s skirts had to be ankle length. When girls discussed their values and dreams, femininity was very much about becoming a wife and mom first, before pursuit of an ideal career. There was little or no room for deviation in this.

Being gay was considered dirty and shameful. I was made to disclose any prior same sex relationships in confession circles as if it was a dirty and darkest secret, but I did not have to confess that I had kissed a boy in the same way. This created a lot of confusion in me as a young girl. Masturbation was ok for a boy, it was something very shameful for a girl. Anyone who was not a virgin was slut, shamed over and over, with male staff often making girls give lap dances to male students in propheets while they screamed at them for being a slut, while they played songs like ‘Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?’

Their need for purity was extreme. There was no space in the entire program for natural sexual exploration or relationships. By the time I got out of the program I had arrested development and no idea how to explore or experience romantic relationships without shame or guilt. The only relationships that felt ok, where with adults who were in charge of me, or with best friends and platonic touching, even though I was 18.

All music from home was ‘out of agreement’ too. I could not talk or sing it, upper school acted like it was criminal to think about it. Musical instruments were locked up and required permission to use, being denied access was a punishment. Kids resorted to beat boxing and playing with pots and pans from the kitchen.

Sugar was restricted and had to be earned. Brand name foods were not allowed ever just like some brand name clothes, because we did not deserve brand name food. I couldn’t talk about drugs, boys, anything fun, anything from home...that was considered ‘cutting up the streets’. I couldn’t wear anything but Colombia and Wranglers, because I wasn’t allowed to have an ‘image’. I could not wear any black clothing. My creativity was stifled and I was not allowed to draw what I wanted that often or to read that much. It took me one entire year, to earn the privilege to have my own set of art markers. I was given oil paint on my 16th birthday, and only allowed to use it once, for half an hour, before it was taken away from me.

My high school diploma was a sham, receiving duplicate credits for raps. We only had one book that I remember that we barely read. I missed out on an education. I was often not in ‘school’ because of restrictions and manual labor punishments. This set me up for a lifetime of difficulty by having only an 8.5 grade level of math, and numerous other learning impairments.

My day was to be spent in wood coral, chopping wood for the school to heat it, and in raps, 3 days a week that lasted 4 to 5 hours. I was not allowed to go to school, I had to earn the privilege. In raps, everyone was yelling at each other, crying, attacking each other, sometimes 10 kids yelling at one, vomiting up mucus was common they cried and screamed so hard. Like lord of the flies on steroids, staff egged kids on at each other, armed with each other’s inner most shameful secrets, used against each other like a chess game to break each other down or deflect attention from themselves, until people were sobbing puddles, in their vulnerable ‘little kid place’.

People who had been totally nice to each other seconds before the rap would rage at each other for stupid items, like wearing a shirt untucked, or eating without a napkin, all under the guise of ‘taking away safety from the school’ by ‘being out of agreement’ and being ‘dirty’. This created an environment of paranoia when you were not in a rap, of always being on your best behavior because others were watching you. Anything could land you in the hot seat, which could lead you to a punishment like a restriction if you didn’t scream at the floor and take care of your feelings in the rap.

While everyone was supposed to be as genuine as possible, that wasn’t really how it worked, there was pressure to perform in front of the staff. Raps were a place of true back and forth emotional terror, crying, shaming, name calling, and rage. When kids screamed at the floor so hard their blood vessels broke around their eyes and mucus poured on the floor, they were congratulated for ‘doing their work’. I knew if I didn’t perform in raps, I would never go home. It was common for kids to turn 18, just for their parents to choose extended custody and for their stint to drag on, and on. My parents were clear they would not pull me from the school, and I was terrified they would choose extended custody if I did not do the program.

Workshops included physically taxing, emotionally abusive exercises that included sleep deprivation, stress positions, temperature control, limited food, attack therapy, and confession circles, which lasted hours, and sometimes, days. In one, we had to vote on who lived and died to get onto a life boat, write our own epitaphs, and get buried alive. Another, we were told to slap each other. Another, I was restrained on the floor by the man that groomed me in a containment while he whispered my worst memories in my ear while my peers rubbed my body, as the song Mother was blasted on repeat. Another, I was forced to get my hands and knees while my peers were made to push on my back while he yelled all my bad memories in my ear to teach me what weighed me down. Another, my friends were forced to form a circle and link arms, while I was excluded and instructed to fight to try to get in the circle, the others instructed not to let me in under any circumstances, while I Am a Rock blasted on repeat. Another, I was forced to dress up as Dorothy and sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ over and over for almost 24 hours. Many included shaming, bad names written on index cards that people were forced to wear on their chest.

The less compliant I was, the more they upped the ante. My name was taken away, and I had to go by a new name. Use of the name Laine by anyone on the campus was punished by manual labor. This was one of the most degrading things that has ever been done to me. At one point, my ability to be physically acknowledged by others in any way shape or form, touch, sing, smile, talk, learn, go to school, wear anything other than the same jumpsuit that was not regularly laundered, spend my day digging up a stump with a pick axe to ‘focus on my negative roots’ and do anything other than humiliate myself by reading my most shameful secrets to a new person every day and then listen to how they judged me...this was the way I spent almost two months of my life when I was only 16.

I was medically neglected. My tooth was drilled out and replaced with a temporary pulp cap, then it rotted to the point of leaving scar tissue the size of an olive, and needing extraction by the time I got out and was home. I was repeatedly denied treatment because I was accused of wanting ibuprofen to get high. I had lock jaw, but staff still shoved a sock in my mouth, forcing me to do a workshop. They wanted me to look within, because disease they thought was the cause of “dis-ease” of the mind, and I just wasn’t trying hard enough to control my body with my mind. I had to carry a 60lb pack with sciatica and trench foot. I had untreated giardia for 3 weeks and defecated in my pants, but was denied anti-diarrheals and treatment. I was accused of acting like a baby and trying to get out of work crews and thinking I was more special than everyone else, that I needed to get over it.

I was not allowed to write home unless my letters “took full accountability” which meant they said what the staff wanted me to say. I was confessing that all dynamics in our family where my fault, that legitimate medical problems I had were things I had to pull myself up by the boot straps and get over and fix with self-work, by working the program.  I wanted to go home so badly, I said everything they wanted. I now believe that these confessions helped the program convince my parents to stay committed to the three-year program.

The second I earned the privilege to call home, I told them I hated it there. The staff hung up the phone, and I lost the privilege for a long time. They were reading and monitoring all of my mail. Three years. My parents told me that was my time frame no matter what, and that I had no chance of ‘getting pulled’ and going home early.

At night, night watch came in every 30 minutes with flash lights, often touching you in the bed to make sure you where there, eventually, I tuned it out. There were no walls or gates. I was free to walk down the road or “split," but if I did, I would just get brought back by bounty hunters or escorts, placed on a restriction, or sent to the camp, or worse, the place in Utah, rumored to be like hell. The staff constantly threatened us with stories of kids who had split and been raped, been eaten by bears, or hurt by the Arian Nations located outside the school if we ran.

I was expected to cut off contact with all my friends and family from home except parents. They said my friends were not considered ‘real friends’. Tertiary family, they held the belief that I didn’t know how to have real relationships with them either. I was told I would soon learn all about this in my Brothers Propheet, one of the 8, 24 hour workshops I would go through on my way to graduating the program.

I was just a Voyageur, one of the first phases I would have to go through, which meant that I had no privileges, and to gain privileges, I had to ‘work the programs’ phases in raps, and propheets, and move up through the 5 phases, or levels, of the program. The levels, phases, and steps I had to take seemed daunting when I arrived, yet it was clear I had to do it all in order to leave and mask the fact that I hated it. I have deep sadness that unlike many people I know, I do not have childhood friends or bonds with high school friends because of the forced severing and the strange letters that the program made me write to my friends saying I didn’t care about them and that they were not real.

I was convinced eventually I was happier there than at home, even though I woke up with dread, or doom before a rap. I bonded with friends that felt more like my family than my real family. I learned to love the staff who began to feel more like my parents than my real parents. I knew I wasn’t wanted at home, the staff were always reminding us in raps that we were not wanted at home, or we would not be in Idaho, because we had fucked up. So, the new family I had made felt better. It seemed after a while, like the best family I had ever had. In reality, it was more community than my home life had ever been, even though it was abusive. After every propheet I felt like I had some new knowledge that made me understand why I belonged there.

I was placed on restriction after restriction that took my friends away, who I would have done anything for, and they removed my right to learn or attend school, so gaining back the privilege to learn always felt amazing. Each time my privileges were back, I believed in the program more, because the lesson it taught me convinced me that before I had been really bad, and the relief I felt after I gained my reward for being complaint reinforced how right the program was. I was so afraid of breaking rules, getting my friends taken away, or, to use a program word, ‘being dirty’, that I was convinced I had unspoken contracts to break rules with others, and began thought-policing myself for bad thoughts. I was constantly confessing to this man that was in charge of my life.

Eventually I became an upper school student. I believed the program had saved my life. The transition happened over the course of my punishments, when my friendships were taken away, and the only way to have companionship, and to survive the program, was to participate in it in order to receive back my access to these friends, the main buildings, and privileges. I often felt immense relief when I would be rewarded after these punishments or after a propheet would end and the ‘lift you up’ portion would happen.

I loved what felt like the peak experience I had with all of these friends together, like they really understood me and no one else did. I would have done anything for these friends. I started enforcing the program, putting younger students on work assignment, doing strip searches with staff when new students arrived, telling them how great the school was going to be, and being thrilled for the privilege to give prospective parents tours of the campus to persuade them to send their kids to the school. I started supporting the staff in workshops, and in raps.

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After leaving the program, my world slowly fell apart. I missed what felt like my family: peers and staff. I felt abandoned by the staff, who felt like my real parents, and was not used to living a life where I did not have peers that felt like siblings constantly around me. I didn’t understand why if they had been my real family, the staff were not staying in contact with me. The man I that groomed me continued to write to me about how beautiful I was for about 6 months, then his mother abruptly told me not talk to him anymore and there was zero contact. I was devastated and didn't understand. Another staff tried to recruit me and get me to recruit others from my college to work at the Monarch School that he was opening.

Everyone in my family didn’t feel real. I didn’t know how to be with them and I often felt like they were scared of me, because my whole life narrative was that all of our problems together were because I was the problem kid. All the things I was not allowed to do at the school, that were now available to me in the real world, felt wrong, since three years had gone by and those things were called ‘dirty’ that whole time. I didn’t understand why they were magically ok now. I was not prepared. I kept using program language that based everything on emotions that I felt needed to be constantly revealed, processed, and dissected...and people looked at me like I was crazy. I was incredibly vulnerable. I spent many years in abusive relationships, because I had learned at the school that control and abuse, was love. I did not understand the concept of boundaries. 

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Now… I work every day to undo that damaging, erroneous message that I am a ‘worthless, never good enough, weak, do not deserve to live’ girl that my abusers put into my head, a message I internalized as a vulnerable child.

I struggle with triggered emotional responses that are extreme and volatile, just like I am back in a rap. It’s painful to see myself act like my abuser, and bring this abuse onto myself and others, so I work on recognizing my triggers, every day.

A part of me wants to be back at there even though I hated it there, I miss that type of community of friends.  I know I’ll never feel the way I felt there, where best friends speak the same language as me, and seem to ‘just get’ the same big uncontainable emotions we have all been trained to produce. I don’t ever want to be back there and feel rage that my abusers are still free to work with children, after they taught me to crave such an abusive environment.

I was a latchkey kid and my home life did not provide community, the program exploited that, then gave me (an abusive) family I never had. Knowing the abusers forced a trauma bond is something I remain ashamed and frustrated with.

I struggle with knowing what my values are, they twisted my ethics to such a degree it’s hard to know how to navigate life, especially when I feel like I have arrested development, and it feels like there are 5 of Me:

The Me before I went there. That Me I wish I could have back...she knew exactly what she liked and what she didn’t, choices were not hard for her. Things were simple and not complex. That kid still wasn’t afraid of kissing boys, girls, or of being touched.

The Me in the program, that kid was so strong and had to do so much to survive, I will never be ashamed of what that kid had to do to make it.

Me right after the program: A brief lull high on life, the only time I remember ever being confident, before the real world hit. That me stumbled through numerous abusive relationships, mere recreations of the program, confusing control with love, mental health treatments in which I confessed the same ‘program problems’ leading to misdiagnosis and over medication by ill-informed doctors. Almost ten years in a fog.

The Me that fell apart with rage and devastation. The sorrow in realizing that I wasn’t a bad kid, all those wasted years. That nothing was wrong with me, that I didn’t deserve it, all those years I said sorry to my abusers for their abuse, that I had been told was ‘therapy’.

The Me now, putting in years of treatment and hard work building back trust with the medical community with trauma informed doctors, and the correct diagnosis of CPTSD. Working so hard to integrate the parts of my belief system that I want, remove the ones I don’t. I celebrate choice, knowing I get to pick what I get to do in life, figure out what feels right, what feelings and thoughts I get to share, who I allow to touch me or enter my space, without others input, a privilege I did not grow up with. Knowing that I want my choices to be considered and not instinctual or deeply rooted in false program ideology, I get to set boundaries, say yes, or no.

My deepest fear that anything could happen again at any moment and take everything away, and change my life forever, in a second, just like that, all over again...I know that feeling will never leave me. It lurks like a bad omen always on my shoulder. I’m learning to let that be there, and cultivate how to enjoy all that I have worked so hard to achieve. I have built a beautiful life despite what they did to me, not because of what they taught me. This work is painfully hard but I believe it is worth the reward, to be able to feel whole and like, I am really me, not who they told me I was. I am so grateful that I woke up, and I don’t believe the message that something is inherently wrong with me.

It may have taken me almost 25 years, but I made it.

~Laine