“Ok, here goes. I am sharing what I have carried around all my life as a shameful secret in hopes that others will feel less alone and be compelled to share their stories, as well. This is not our shameful secret any longer, it is theirs, and it is time they answer to the damage they have done. Stay strong.
I was told that I was being sent to a boarding school, a nice place in nature with horses and a lake, a reprieve from the abuse I had endured at home from the ages 6-13 by a violent, malignant narcissist stepfather. I was actually excited to go when I got into the car, but as soon as I saw the gate and the sign, I knew something was off. Everything after that happened so fast that I barely remember, not to mention that I have blocked most of it out. Here are the bits and pieces that I do remember.
I was taken to a room where the staff explained where I was and what was to be expected of me. I was in complete shock and heard none of it. All I remember is sitting on the couch shaking and bawling thinking this is not really happening. I do not think I even said anything. I was then escorted to the infirmary where the staff’s friendly smiles faded, and I was yelled at to take off all my clothes. I stood there naked, crying, and shivering while the orderly laughed and tossed me a hand towel, “in case you want to cover up.”
She put on a glove and performed the cavity search, and I cried and shook some more.
I was escorted through the infirmary, where there were padded solitary confinement rooms to my right, and hospital beds with restraints to my left. There was a little girl, no more than 10 years old, strapped to one of the beds and hooked up to IVs, with tubes down her throat. As we passed the straitjackets hanging on the wall, the orderly whispered in my ear, “We can keep you here ’til you’re 18, you know.”
I was 13.
My next memory is of me laying on a thin, vinyl-covered mattress that night feeling completely worthless, abandoned, hopeless, and wanting to die. These feelings haunted me well into adulthood. Lucky for me, I already suffered from C-PTSD, anxiety, and major depressive disorder before going into Inner Harbour as a result of the abuse I had experienced at home. My stay there simply refined it.
From day one, before even receiving a medical consultation, I was force-fed an enormous dose of Lithium. These places are rarely adequately staffed so keeping kids drugged-up and motionless is an easy way to get them to comply. I was unable to form sentences, think clearly, or, much less, move. I spent most of my time sitting motionless on a couch, while chaos swirled around me daily—like a scene from a horror movie set in a mental hospital. One of the orderlies asked me what food I missed the most from the outside. The next day she brought it in, sat directly across from me, and ate it while silently, unblinkingly staring at me. She reminded me that I was there until I was 18.
We were humiliated and punished on a daily basis for almost everything we did, and I woke up every day disappointed that I was not dead. We were told that no one would believe troublemakers like us, and if we dared say something, they would do everything they could to keep us until we were 18. We were punished for talking and making friends. If they suspected you were getting too close with one of the other inmates, (because let’s be honest, that’s what we were), they would buddy you up and play psychological games with you to make you hate each other, like making us use the bathroom together.
Although I never witnessed or experienced it, there were rumors that the younger kids who stayed in cabins in the woods were being sexually abused. We were forbidden to talk to them, so I was not surprised to find out, much later, that the founders had reached a $432 million settlement for sexually and physically abusing the young boys they were supposed to be treating and healing. This happened only four years before my stay there.
One girl had a complete mental breakdown after being told she had not met her behavioral requirements and could not go home as planned. She stopped talking and eating for days before they finally carted her off to the infirmary where they restrained her to a bed and force-fed her for a week. She was crying, screaming, and begging them to let her die as she was being carried away. She was 11.
The boys’ unit, adjacent to ours, did not have direct access to the infirmary as we did. Any time a boy had to be transported to the infirmary or solitary confinement, we were forced into lockdown in our rooms. During my first lockdown, I broke the rules, risking solitary confinement, and peeked out my door to see four orderlies carrying a boy, bleeding from the face and physically restrained, and bound with hogties. I later found out that he was being punished and sent to solitary confinement for a week for passing a note. He was 12.
At 39 years old, the day I walked out of Inner Harbour still ranks up there as one of the happiest days of my life. I, like so many other troubled youths, started acting out and rebelling as a result of the abuse I had experienced at home. There were some happy girls there, but they were the ones that came from the most severe forms of abuse or were wards of the state.
The children that are sent to these places are acting out because they are in pain and desperately in need of love. They are sent there to correct their “troubling behavior” with promises of therapeutic care and nurturing environments, only to be met with more trauma and abuse.
I wish I could remember the names and faces of all the strong, beautiful souls I met there because the bond we formed is the only thing that saved me. To that girl that sat down next to me on the couch on my first day and secretly held my hand while I cried, thank you. You were the kindness I so desperately needed and lacked for so many years.”
-Alex