My name is Chelsea and I spent time in both Darrington and Carolina Springs from 2005-2006.
Growing up I had a father who was absent or in jail, a physically abusive stepfather, and my mother, who used alcohol as a way to smother her pain.
Due to many of these things, I became defiant, in hopes to gain attention, which eventually turned into anger.
I was bullied at a young age for my family disruptions, and called “white trash.” It led to fighting and getting involved with other troubled kids.
A month after my 14th birthday, I was dragged out of the Atlanta airport in handcuffs, screaming. I did not understand what was happening. Did my mom give up on me? Did she not see that everything that was happening was a cry for her attention? I was lost and felt alone and I could not communicate it, nor was I being heard.
My household upbringing had a lot of hard twists and turns that I will never want to bring to light. I did spend a short time in Juvenile Detention and the programs I went to were so much worse.
I was a number and nothing more. I was being controlled by unfit adults—most of them not even having a high school education.
These were adults that had many of the same issues as we did growing up, but turned around and abused children for profit.
See these were not adults that were educated in treating young children. Very fragile children with a variety of personal conflicts. I imagine not even one of them had an education supporting it. With maybe a total of four staff that even cared for the students there.
I had a lot of issues in Darrington. I came from a house of absence and abuse and now I was being controlled by many uneducated adults who took joy in controlling me in unhelpful ways.
There were no trained therapists there, except maybe the man who gave group anger management classes. However, he made us talk about things together that made us angry, allowing other students to comment on them as they pleased; which stirred into a physical fight between another student and myself, that he did not break up. The students had to separate us.
They would force you to stand up in front of your peers (who had their own issues) and tell them about the things in your lives that happened. Our peers then instructing us to take accountability for all of it. Accountability for being raped, accountability for being abused, accountability for my father being out of my life. Everything in my life was because I chose it. They then would make those same peers give you “feedback.” Not feedback from trained professionals, but judgments from other kids who were having their problems. If they were silent, they got in trouble and if you did not stand up and talk about yourself, you got in trouble.
I remember one of the only times I talked… They put everyone into smaller groups of five, in a large room during a seminar. You were told to tell your deepest secrets and pain. When the other students felt you were genuine enough in their eyes, they should stand up, and when they felt you were not genuine enough, they would sit down. These students could barely understand their pain, let alone mine. A girl who did not like me was in my group, and everyone in that group followed her lead. She did not think anyone knew pain more than she did and had everyone sit down, expressing that my pain was not real.
We were kids who dealt with pain differently than each other, and exposing myself to people who did not like, care, or understand me, was traumatic. To have them ridicule and judge me about the worst things in my life was so damaging that it followed me into my life today.
They had categories for the level of trouble you were in. Cat 1-5. If you didn’t think you did anything wrong, the Cat would jump hirer. The staff got enjoyment out of this.
It was all a point and number system. You start as Level One and can go to Level Six. Based on your points, your level gets higher. They tell you to evaluate yourself at the end of the night and then talk down to you about how you did not deserve the points you felt you deserved. So I gave up even trying. To make these levels, you must become submissive. Many people turn on their friends to become higher levels, and some learn how to manipulate the system. Then there was me, who could never get above Level One. I knew it was all wrong.
When hurricane Katrina hit (I am from New Orleans), I was unaware. The staff was forced, after a month, to give me the letter from my family. They brought me into a room to read it. The letter read that my grandmother was stuck in the flood and they had not heard from her in over a week. Everything we had was gone. Everything was underwater. My family lost everything. I broke down screaming and crying, but this was not acceptable behavior to them. I was not meant to react and this is why they did not want me to get the letter.
A staff member who was infuriated with my reaction (a man about 250lbs and over six feet) slammed me into the ground and laid on top of me. I was then thrown into Intervention (a 4×4 room) for a week and told me that I was there because my mother did not love me. That no one loved me and no one wanted me. Hearing that was unbearable because I believed it.
One time I had to use the bathroom so badly, I was going to pee on myself, and I begged to go. They refused to let me, so I grabbed a small trash can and peed right there in front of them.
Coming from a home of abuse, and then being abused, was not the way to make someone “better.” Instead, it made me worse. More defiant because I had nothing to lose.
I remember one of our girls was Vegan. She cried and begged not to be forced to eat meat and drink milk, and I remember them telling her that was not part of the program. They seemed to think it was funny and laughed about it. She was told she could ask her parents through her next monitored letter, but we all knew that letter would never reach her family.
The letters were monitored and read before being sent out, and if they did not like what you wrote, or you told the truth about what was happening, the letter was not sent and you were never told. If they did not like your letter, you were thrown into Worksheets or Intervention (where I spent most of my time).
They would make us take bogus photos to send to our family to make it appear like things were good. It was not an option, and you would hope your family saw it and it made them miss you enough to bring you home.
There were strong rumors about male staff having sex with some of the girls. One of the staff and the girl he was rumored to be sleeping with actually dated as soon as she got out. These are underaged kids with a lack of guidance.
Students that had been there longer told us about students who died from withdrawals or students that the owner of Darrington had hit in the face, knocking one kid’s teeth out.
You were allowed five-minute showers, so some girls’ hygiene was extremely poor. You could only use the bathroom during certain times and only for a short period. Whether in the shower or on the toilet, you were required to count out-loud the entire time.
After a while, I was told I was going home, but they lied to me and transferred me to Carolina Springs.
I was driven there by two staff. One was someone I actually liked. They brought another student who had just turned 18 and was legally allowed to leave. His parents did not want him, so the staff dropped him off at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, with no money and just a backpack of the things he had when he arrived. I sometimes wonder what happened to him.
Within a week of arriving at Carolina Springs, I attempted to run away, getting in the woods before I realized that there were wild animals and it was getting dark. They stripped everything from me, which was not much besides photos I had of my family. I managed to hide one at first. When they found the last family photo and took it away, I tried to get it back. Three very large people jumped on top of me, sitting on my arms, my head, and my back until I was trying to scream that I could not breathe. They then put me in an outdoor shed, which was also 4×4, in the winter, with no heater, and nothing but a thin sweater, for days.
I was finally removed from there and taken to a real center in Utah for troubled kids, with trained professionals in child psychology and given real therapy.
In total, I was gone for one year and three days.
Since then, I have always struggled to trust and reconnect with my family. It has caused a lot of trauma for me that I work on every day. I have suppressed so many nightmares from my past. From both my childhood and the time spent at the behavior modification programs. It feels like someone else’s life. I hand never spoken much about it until now, and there is still so much that has gone unsaid.
But to all my girls and guys who went through this too, I am sorry.
I had braces and was not allowed to go to the orthodontist, so the braces were rusting and rotting off of my teeth. I had to pop them off with the back of a pen and got in trouble for doing so.