“This is incredibly difficult for me to write. I spent 24 years believing in my heart that Island View saved my life. This was a lie I perpetuated within myself to avoid the trauma of the truth. The truth is that I was abused into submission by adults who were supposed to be helping me, and my peers were forced to help abuse me to keep their favor, hoping to stave off being abused themselves.
It probably sounds crazy to think a person could be abused and not know it for 24 years. The problem is that I was severely emotionally abused by my parents starting at a young age, and then also by other adults when I was a pre-teen and teenager. When you are abused as a child you do not have the opportunity to learn appropriate boundaries. An adult screaming in my face that I am “worthless?” Yep, my dad had been doing that to me since I was 6, plus worse. The 30-year-old night staff creeper who, every shift, would come into my room to “pop” my 15-year-old toes and give me sensual foot rubs? Men had sexually abused me since I was 12, so I did what I had to do to survive; I let him and thanked my stars it was only foot and ankle rubs. The “houseparent” who would throw candy down the hall at us at night like we were animals and watch us scramble and fight for it? He was just another person giving me something good wrapped in awful. I was yelled at, dehumanized, ostracized, silenced, put in isolation, stripped of any semblance of privacy, and denied contact with my sisters by Island View. All of this was normal for me.
I was really messed up from being abused my entire childhood and I needed help. I turned to drugs and alcohol at 12 and by 15 I was a runaway, going on and off the streets, suicidal, and drug-addicted. I had been on the streets for about 6 weeks when my dad tracked me down and brought me to Island View in 1996, very shortly after they first opened, and when it was all still in one building. We moved into the new building a few months after I arrived.
When I arrived at Island View, I had scabies, severe lice, and just about every drug for which they could test for in my system. I spent the first 3 nights on the hallway floor under the bright lights.
I did get better while I was there because I got clean and sober. I went to a college preparatory non-RTC boarding school after Island View and I did very well there and stayed clean.
When I finally came home, I was a straight-A student, clean and sober for over a year, and ready to take on life. Unfortunately, I went home to the same abusive parents and I ended up out on my own again before I was 18 as a result. I took a GED and worked three jobs at 17 to survive, jumping from couch to couch.
I did not turn to my old vices, though. I worked hard, and then I got pregnant and had a son at 20. He changed everything. I put myself through college, then law school. I have amazing, powerful, brilliant children and I run a legal service non-profit. I represent survivors of abuse of all ages.
If I had been able to see into the future when I was 15, I would have never believed I would be where I am now. Because my life turned out this way, when 25 years ago I was likely to die from an OD, murder, or suicide within a few years, I believed Island View saved me. I was their poster child. I would go to promotional events for them near my home for about 3 years after I “graduated” and tell parents about how much Island View changed my life, even when I was couch surfing after escaping the abusive home to which they returned me. Island View flew me to Utah in 1999 and had me talk to the kids there about my experiences after graduating and staying clean to give them hope.
The truth is, I could have gone just about anywhere abusive parents weren’t and gotten better. The truth is, Island View staff abused me just a little less than my parents did, and I thanked them for it. I held my lie close to my heart to protect me from these painful truths for over two decades.
It was not until I started reading about other survivors that I was able to recognize I had minimized, blocked, and normalized what happened to me. When I first read their stories, I thought “all that happened to me and I got better, that’s not abuse.”
Then I had a friend whose son was murdered by his teacher improperly restraining him and I was triggered by his death to remember when I had seen my peers in “takedowns” and the terror I could see in them as 3-4 adults descended upon them and threw them to the floor. I remembered the terror I felt myself that staff would do that to me, and how that was always a threat to keep control, and that trauma boiled up inside me. Then I was contacted by a fellow Island View survivor last year and after we spoke a flood of memories of what had happened to both of us washed over me. As I have reconnected with more and more of my former teammates, the more I remember. I am also now able to see how the abuse I survived as a child made it possible for me to block out and normalize what Island View did to me, and even promote them to others.
One incident I always remembered was the first time I was sent to the pink room as punishment. They told our parents it was for kids who were out of control, were a danger to themselves or others, and could not be physically controlled. I am not now and have never been a violent person. I am less than 5’ tall and I was tiny when I was 15. I responded to abuse by dissociating and complying. I was no physical threat to anyone, ever.
I wouldn’t say my mom abused me during a therapy session at a staff member’s insistence that I accuse her (my mom was neglectful but not abusive like my dad and stepmom and I was fiercely defensive of her). I was walked to the pink room in complete compliance, my head bowed to hide my tears. I sat in there on a thin mat, silent, while they locked me in there and then left me alone, staring at that pink wall for 24 hours. The light was on all night.
I was used to being told to say untrue and cruel things about myself or others; with my dad yelling in my face for hours, so close I could smell his breath and feel its humidity, and I would still refuse him. I could not be broken in that way by staff. Sleep deprivation combined with complete social isolation is a whole different animal. I had the skills to survive that environment and appear compliant until I was able to get free by graduating.
When more memories came back, the stories of my fellow survivors changed. The narrative I had created to survive the trauma was torn down to reveal the truth. I was abused for 7 months, not saved. Getting locked in isolation in the pink room was not ok. Being forced to sleep in the hallway on a thin mattress is not ok. Leaving bright lights on kids in either of those situations all night is not ok. Being given Trazodone when you do not need it is not ok. Being yelled at and put down is not ok. Being forced to turn and face a wall whenever the boys walked by was not ok. Being told you cannot talk to anyone and must sit at a desk in the hallway where you had just laid all night, and could not sleep, is not ok. Being forced to shame your peers or spy on them is not ok. None of this is normal or acceptable when it happened to me or anyone else. I just hope that more people come forward and Utah will do something about these places once and for all. “