“I was a ‘troubled teen.’ I acted out, I ran away, I didn’t do my best in school, and I got into fights. I was molested and raped, I was belittled, and my feelings were ignored. I was called a liar, a faker, and was given the label of bipolar before I knew how to process through any of my feelings. Rape cases were opened and closed because why listen to a child? I was in a family where I felt like I didn’t belong. So I acted out. I couldn’t control my emotions because I didn’t understand them. Instead of being heard, I was sent to Provo Canyon School, where I stayed for two years. My name is Michaela, but I was known as 360, and this is my story.
I remember that weekend like it was yesterday: I thought things were getting better at home since I had been pulled out of school and was participating in independent study. I thought maybe the bad times were changing, but I was wrong. My mom was dropping me off at the skate park and before she drove away she asked me, “Will, you come home tonight? Maybe we can have lunch or watch a movie.” I can’t tell you how happy this made me, truly. I thought, “Wow, my mom wants to hang out with me, after everything I have done!” We did. I came home, and we hung out. That night, I was woken up at 2:00am by my mother sobbing “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I have no choice…” I thought something horribly wrong had happened, but when I started to become more aware of what was going on around me, I noticed there were two other people in the room.
My room was so dark, and these two complete strangers were standing there side by side, dressed in all black. My stomach immediately twisted up and I turned to my mom and asked her what was going on. One of the strangers, a woman, pulled out a zip tie from behind her back and they both took a step towards my bed. My mom backed up and didn’t say another word. I was told to get dressed while they stood there in my room and my mother cried. They escorted me, zip tied, downstairs where my two sisters sat fully dressed and completely silent.
I was taken to the airport where I was told I was going with one of them on a plane, without a hint as to where I was going. I sat there on the plane, with a stranger, for what felt like a lifetime, my hands still bound together by a zip tie. I was terrified. When we got there no one spoke to me. I was told to strip down, squat and cough in a small closet-like room with cameras and then told to sit down and be quiet. By the time I went to bed that night I had been kidnapped, completely violated, and the bag my mother packed me was confiscated.
I was then given a number, a unit and a therapist’s name. That was it. I didn’t meet any other students, eat or shower. I sat at a desk reading the rules until they gave me a bunk.
Orientation, or “Intake” as they called it, was a very small unit behind the “Investment” unit. Investment is when girls lose their beds because they “didn’t follow the rules” and are sent to a specific unit for punishment. They sit “chair structure” at a desk all day long. They eat when food is brought to them, if it is brought to them at all, and school work is brought to them as well. This is the unit where they kept “observation”. Cement rooms, a drain, and a yoga matt if you’re lucky. They were used for isolation punishments and students who had been sedated. I can still hear the screams, the running footsteps of a “dial 9”, and the echoes from girls banging on the wall. I told myself I was going to be good, participate, and get home so I never had to live in those poor girls’ shoes, but I didn’t know that was going to be nearly impossible.
There were so many rules, ridiculous rules, like how to sit, eat, talk, walk; things like asking before scratching an itch on your body. I was getting into trouble before the week ended. There were so many punishments: IR, Class Two, Standing Orders, No Talking orders, Observation and sedation or “booty juice”. Shower Watch was when we had to wash in front of a staff member. Sleep Watch, where we slept in the hallways on a mat. Trey watch, where they watched you and forced you to eat. The list went on: write before you speak, rubber band snapping for those who self harmed. The staff put us down, ignored us when we had to use the bathroom until we wet ourselves. School was our escape but only for three hours a day. School was also a privilege and you could lose out on that for weeks at a time.
Therapy was the hardest. We were forced to talk about things, traumas, events in our past and if we didn’t or couldn’t we were forced to walk around with a box. On the “Box Program” we carried our baggage, so to speak, everywhere we went. We ate with it, exercised with it, went to school with it. Some girls had to wear a pregnancy weight pillow instead of a box. Exercises like trauma groups, attack therapy and so much more made girls turn inward and withdraw from others. I personally was put on a cocktail or drugs, like Lithium, Ritalin, and Ambien that made me hallucinate, have horrible dreams and gave me suicidal thoughts. They switched them up with no warning and didn’t seem to care about any symptoms or reactions to these mixtures of drugs they kept us on. They created a series of mental illnesses I couldn’t cope with and punished me for it if I didn’t “deal” with them in therapy.
I felt lost, broken and, more than anything, confused. I didn’t use drugs before Provo Canyon School and I didn’t know much about them either, not the ones I learned about in NA or other drug therapies.
My mind has blocked out so many of the traumatic events that happened to me during my two year stay at that school, but I remember so vividly what my peers went through there. I will never forget the sweet girls I met there, and who they became after just a few months of “treatment”. I will never forget how it feels to be tackled and given a shot that made you feel paralyzed and helpless for 24 hours. I will never forget watching my friends get restrained and isolated for days or even weeks.
Now, as an adult, reading other survivors stories has reopened wounds that should have stayed closed. I would have panic attacks there; I remember my heart racing and my hands going numb because I was always living in fear of falling out of line and I would pass out. I remember one time specifically a “dial 9” was called for me. I had gotten dizzy, fell and passed out. I don’t remember much, but I remember hitting a few things as I was “loosely carried” down to observation, where I was told I was faking it and I was losing my bed and remaining on Investment. No nurse saw me, no one addressed the issue. Now I’m 27 years old with four kids and have been diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, heart palpitations that cause tingling and passing out. I couldn’t tell my mother because I was restricted from phone calls and letters. No one was listening. No one would believe us.
I do have some good memories of the bonds I made there with the girls who lived with the same fear every day. I don’t care if this [school] helped some girls or not, we weren’t given purpose, we were stripped of our identity, told how to live, how to act, what to decide. We were taught how to survive within those walls and not how to be strong after we left. We were shown strict structure, not love. I struggle with mental health every day, not because I was a troubled teen but because I was manipulated and treated as if I wasn’t good enough by so many, that I started to truly believe it. It still affects me in my life today. I am angry, I am sad, and I want to be heard. So, I am #breakingcodesilence.”