WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD. THE TW IN THE TITLE WAS NOT A JOKE. BUT THIS IS A TRUTH THAT MUST BE TOLD. #BREAKINGCODESILENCE ________________________________________________________________________________
I wish to write one last post about my time at the therapeutic boarding school just to sum up this experience as something I've discussed and hopefully won't need to discuss again. The only exception being, of course, would be if at some point in the future, if you are among my readership and have a similar experience you need to share, then I would be glad to exchange experiences. When self-disclosure serves a purpose, I'm always willing. And at this moment, there is a purpose to serve, so I will share...but that purpose is, at the moment, an open-and-closed sort.
So yes. The punishments...more adequately described as, the abuse. And in some cases, torture.
I will never understand what it is that causes certain human beings to be wired in such a way that they appear to thrive over the domination and humiliation of those weaker than them. This was the definitive summary of the two women who ran that hellish place.
Their cruelty was bizarre. I didn't have it as bad as a lot of others. But perhaps one of the strangest, worst things they did to me (aside from the spider incident) was to treat my anorexia by forcing me not only to eat a full plate of food every meal (piled ridiculously high) but to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich afterwards. And I'm not talking about a regular PB&J. The peanut butter and the jelly were each three inches thick. It was obscene. They would require me to stuff myself to the point that my stomach was distended and if I took another bite, I would throw up. Then they would hover over me, taunting me, daring me to throw up, accusing me of making myself try to do this on purpose.
As a result of this torture, I quickly put on twenty pounds. Then they proceeded to make me stand up in Life Skills while they laughed at me and told me I was fat.
This was pale in comparison to what other students suffered.
--One girl was accused of flirting with boys. One night, they made her stand outside and had everyone spit in a cup and then made her drink it.
--This same girl had long, beautiful hair. They made her stand up in Life Skills class while they took scissors and hacked every bit of her hair off, down to her scalp.
--One boy in particular was accused of looking at girls. He spent nine straight months sitting in a chair facing the corner from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed. Otherwise, they made him mow the lawn over and over. They eventually made him wear this homemade helmet that caused him to only be able to stare at the ground. He wasn't allowed anything to eat other than tuna fish or oatmeal for every meal for a period of around nine months. One day, he was suddenly gone, and we never knew what happened to him.
--Another popular punishment was being forced to dig a six foot by six foot hole in the garden, digging a literal grave. Sometimes students would be put outside to dig from waking until sleeping, sometimes deprived of sleep to work under bright spotlights all night long, for days, sometimes weeks.
--Another boy was accused of looking at girls. He was taken outside and made to kneel with his wrists and his ankles bound while a group of girls were instructed to circle him and kick him, stomp him, beat him while he could do nothing to resist and was unable to get away. Very much like that scene in the Handmaids Tale. The look of confusion and desperation on his face as he was assaulted until he was battered and bloody still haunts me. They let the girls proceed until he was so injured he required treatment at a hospital.
--One day, they came in without warning with dump trucks and cleaned out every single personal belonging we had, every article of clothing, book, photograph, and threw everything into giant dumpsters. They went to Walmart and bought (in their words) "the most intentionally ugly clothing" they could find because (in their words) we were "a bunch of spoiled rich kids who needed to be put in their place."
--In addition to this, they began to ominously gloat that we should expect "any day now" for them to come in with razors and shave everyone's heads so that we would no longer have any personal identity or ego. Then they would go around and pick out who they thought would be the ugliest with a shaved head.
--They brought in a drill sergeant and started making students do "calisthenics" up and down this big, sloping hill. They intentionally forced people to do this until they threw up. The infractions that earned this punishment were baffling... a student forgot to do a homework assignment, for instance. Or, sometimes, they'd make you do it even if you'd done nothing just so you could "see what it was like." I was in this category. The throwing up element soon gained popularity with them. Offenders were forced to eat an entire plate of food, then an entire plate of seconds, so that they would throw up during this ordeal. Then they made students roll through vomit. One night, I remember a boy having to be carried in by several adults. He was catatonic, appeared to be in shock. They were shining a flashlight into his eyes and his pupils weren't dilating. They had to call 911 and screamed at us that if anyone said anything about this to anyone, we didn't even want to know what they'd do to us.
--And then... the jail tours. The women had two police officers who were in kahoots with them. One of them came in and told us, we were under their control. If we crossed them, if we told anything on them, they would take us to the jail and splice together video to make it look like we did something bad. And who was going to believe our word over theirs? The other officer....well, I'll get to him in a minute. But students would be picked up, "arrested" by one of these officers, and taken into a jail and left overnight, sometimes for several days, without supervision. One girl came back with her arm in a sling, and they screamed at us not to ask what happened, for if we did, we'd get taken to jail and left there, too.
And so, about that other officer? This happened.
After this event, the school was finally sold and then shutdown.
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