“On July 16th 2004 My father committed suicide by shooting himself at our house. Less than 2 months after On September 11th 2004 a strange man showed up at my house to take me away. I was told I was being sent to a therapeutic boarding school to help me in the grieving process because I wasn’t ‘grieving properly’.
Upon arriving to Provo Canyon School my life was turned upside down. I don’t remember a lot of the first few weeks but I do remember crying uncontrollably all day and developing a deep seated fear that my mother would die and I would be left there. After losing my Dad in such a traumatic way a lock down boarding school was the worst thing imaginable for me and my depression got so bad that I had to be medicated to function.
The whole time I was at PCS I was absolutely terrified. I could not speak to my family with out a therapist present and I felt like I had been completely abandoned. While there nothing terrible personally happened to me aside from the PTSD I incurred from being sent but I did see terrible things happen to other girls, one who was my Roomate. My Roomate, who I will not name, was raped by her father starting as a small child, eventually he committed suicide and she found him hanging. This girl did not have behavioral problems so far as I could see. However they had her so drugged up to the point she couldn’t stay awake and constantly was sent to Observation because she would fall asleep from all the drugs she was put on.
Because the staff at PCS were all young Mormon girls with zero therapeutic training or life experience in general they often couldn’t connect with us. I was good at being supportive of my peers and was often used to try to get other girls to comply. One night I was woken up at about 2 in the morning and asked to go speak to my Roomate who was in Observation, a cell where girls were sent when they wouldn’t listen. When I walked in the cell she was in a caterpillar suite thing and was crying uncontrollably, she had been sent there because she kept getting in trouble for falling asleep and was absolutely hysterical. I will never forget sitting with her in that cell and trying to help her get out of there by staring at the wall until staff said she could move. This poor child had been sexually traumatized since early child hood and did not deserve the negligence or abuse she received at PCS. After the incident I was rewarded with a candy bar the next day for helping staff and it still bothers me to this day.
In December 2004 I was released from Provo Canyon School after the staff had come to the conclusion I didn’t “belong there”. Still the damage had been done and I was severely traumatized by the time I spent at PCS. Provo Canyon School is NOT a “therapeutic boarding school” and is a prison for children, many who have suffered from abuse. I will never be the same after being sent there and while I have grown into a healthy responsible adult the wounds that were inflicted from the time I spent at PCS will stay with me the rest of my life.
I am sharing my story in hopes that not one more girl will have to be sent to this terrible facility and that the centers for troubled children would be reformed to actually help children instead of hurt them.