“It has been almost 15 years, to the day, since I left my Hell called Tranquility Bay. I have come to realize, only in the last eight years, that those memories, whether they are good or bad, should be remembered. They were a big part of my life. They helped make me who I am today, and I am proud of that!
A little backstory first, I was homeschooled from Fifth Grade through the beginning of Tenth Grade, because of chronic kidney stones and kidney infections. The homeschooling education that the public school provided me was terrible. Due to my medical issues, I was medically addicted to opioids at 11. I was put on and addicted to so many medications at an incredibly young age. The first withdrawal I went through, I think I was 12—I thought I was going to die.
This was my life for years: hospitals, surgeries, medications, doctors. Things started to get a little better, health-wise, at 15. So, I went back to Public School for the first time in years and most of the medication I had been on was also reduced. I was so lost mentally and emotionally. I did not know how to take notes while listening to teachers lecture. I did not know how to study on my own or write a paper.
I did not really have friends to lean on either. I had maybe two best friends, and I knew the kids from school, but I did not know them well. They had not been my friends for the last six years. So, I ended up going wild. I fell in with a “bad crew,” if that is what you want to call it. I decided to skip classes and party. I felt like I was making up for so much lost time. I was having fun with friends and self-medicating because they took away a lot of what I had been on for years. Drugging and drinking, missing curfew all the time. Thinking this is what teens are supposed to do. This is when the issues with my parents started.
I ended up getting left-back my Junior year, because of skipping classes and refusing to go to summer school. After a lot of turmoil in September of 2004, and after I was drug tested and they found stuff in my system, I agreed with my parents to go to a boarding school.
So, in October 2004, about two weeks after I turned 17, I thought it was a “normal” boarding school. I figured I would come home on some weekends and holiday/summer breaks. I thought I would have phone calls weekly with friends and family, and I thought I would get visits monthly, but I was wrong. My parents knew it was a program for troubled kids, they unfortunately just did not know everything about Academy at Ivy Ridge (NY) or any of the WWASP schools.
After hearing stories from other girls, I consider myself fortunate that I was brought in the way I was and not kidnapped in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Once my parents left I learned what that place was going to be like after only a few hours. I was stunned, lost, confused, and scared. I just wanted to call my parents and tell them to come back, it was a mistake. That is when I was informed I would not be able to speak on the phone with my parents for some time. It could be months. It depended on how hard I wanted to work the program.
My head was spinning, “I can’t call home? For how long? Work the program? What program? How?”
In the coming days, I started to learn what that meant. There were endless rules. I soon learned those rules were there to just break you down.
They did not take my kidney issues seriously, so when I would have to use the bathroom and they would say no, I would just go, and then be I trouble. If I would question them about my meds, I was in trouble. If I did not eat all my food, I was in trouble. I was not “working the program” as they would say. I remember being in Worksheets—not sure what it was for—copying from a textbook and having to pee so bad. They did not want to let me have a pass to use the bathroom, so I tried to just get up and go, and they locked the classroom door. Meanwhile, I am supposed to have a restroom pass at, any time due to my kidney issues. Here I am, having to pee so badly my kidneys are starting to hurt, so I went in a garbage can. I sure as hell was not going to do it down my pants.
That got me restrained for the first time, and they put me right in OP. I was shocked at what had just happened to me and worried about how it would be, going forward. I was just man-handled and sat on by grown adults. OP is where I ended up staying until I left AIR. We were allowed to write home once a week, but you could forget telling your parents what was going on. Your letters were read and if they did not like what you were telling your parents, they would not send that letter and told your parents you refused to write them that week (same in Jamaica).
You see, in the beginning, they tell all the parents not to believe us, and that we will, “try to tell them anything like the school staff abuses us just to get you to take them home.”
So, from the beginning, my vulnerable parents were lied to and manipulated, like all the other parents. The story was always spun to make us, the teen, look bad/defiant and we could never defend ourselves to our parents. We did not have the opportunity. From then on it was one nightmare after another.
After a few weeks in total of being there, I was expelled from AIR for being “Uncompliant” and inciting an “OP movement” as they told my parents.
The last thing I remember at AIR was a lead staff member coming in with two “officers” who had handcuffs and said “we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You are no longer welcome here at AIR and will be transported by these two individuals to Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.”
Now Is where I learn what others meant when they say they were kidnapped. I was feeling the same at that moment, saying to myself, “my parents didn’t tell me this over the phone, this would surely be a phone call right? cause I haven’t been able to speak to them since they left me here, they didn’t write to me to say this would be happening. I’m 17 how can they just take me out of the country without me talking to my parents, is this even legal, I don’t even have a passport.”
I had heard all about this place they were taking me to. It was said to be one of the worst of these types of schools at the time, (staff always threatened you with going there).
“Would my parents really send me there? Was I that bad of a kid?!”
They looked at me and said, “well…?”
I said, “Well, what?”
They said “Easy way or the hard way?”
I did not even say anything. What was I going to say? That was it, they grabbed my arms and walked me out. My stuff was already packed, I was not able to speak to my parents before leaving. I had no idea if this was real. All I had was a Tupperware of my stuff, my terrified self, and the two “officers.”
Once I saw the silver minivan I panicked. Next thing I knew I was handcuffed and inside the minivan. The large woman sat in the back and the man drove. She said we were on our way to a hotel near the airport and our flight was in the morning. She then uncuffs me and hands me a letter, and says, “This may explain better it is from your parents.”
As angry as I was, I did not want to read it, but I also needed to know if my parents were really doing this. Sure enough, I open it and see my parents’ handwriting. I read half of it and could not believe it. I started shaking with anger and fear and tore it up into pieces. The anxiety of not knowing what I was about to walk into was crippling, especially after hearing the horror stories the staff at AIR would tell us.
We get to the hotel in the middle of the night and they said to get some rest. I do not know what they were on, but there was no way I was going to go to sleep with two strangers in a hotel room. I said hell no and sat there, scared in the corner chair, until we left for my flight. I did not know these people I did not even know if they were real officers.
There we were, the next day and I had not slept. I was shaking from the inside out. I remember walking through the airport, exhausted but freaking out inside. The only thing that helped me through that flight was a handful of Benadryl. I get motion sickness and the lady going on the plane with me said my mom said I needed to take them before we fly. Her mistake was she gave me the bottle, so I poured a bunch into my hand not even counting and swallowed them.
I do not remember anything after takeoff. By the time we landed I was so out of it, I was barely able to get to the car. Most of the multiple-hour drive to Tranquility Bay is a blur as I was in and out of my Benadryl stupor.
We arrived and I remember the “supervisor” had carried me in because I was so out of it. I do not remember much until waking up the next day to meet my “buddy” sitting at the edge of my bed and a Jamaican woman yelling at me. I was told I was in the Integrity family and Mrs. Smith was our family mom, who I would meet later.
After about a week or so, and some nights hearing girls scream, I knew this was not going to be an easy place to survive, but I was going to have to try. This is where my insomnia/paranoia and anxiety started to get worse. I remember being sent to Worksheets for the first time in TB and I think it was from falling asleep in class. Because I was too scared to sleep fully at night. Your time in Worksheets depended on the consequences received.
There were pages of rules ranging from Category One to Five (CAT1-CAT5), which described the severity of the rule you broke. I just could not seem to follow all of the rules. I was breaking rules and did not even realize it. I gave up on trying early on.
From what I remember our day consisted of waking up, hygiene, and clean (everyone had a chore). After cleaning I think we went to breakfast, then classes, then PE, then seven minutes to undress, shower, dress, and be lined-up to wash your underwear, which we hand-washed in buckets; then lunch, then more classes, then group—which was a total joke and bash session, then dinner. We then watched an educational show before getting ready for Quiet Time and then hygiene, and bed.
I remember the shower was a nasty pipe sticking out of the wall, and we were lucky when the water worked, even though it was cold. Otherwise, we would have to fill up buckets in the courtyard and carry them and use that to shower. We washed our clothes/ bedding by hand and hung it to dry.
There were stretches when I would “behave,” but it felt demeaning, hurtful, humiliating, unfair, and just plain stupid, honestly. in those times my depression and anxiety were worse. It felt wrong. Everything about their methods/therapies/seminars seemed wrong. The more I heard in Group and from others, the more I knew that place was Hell, with a tropical disguise.
We were not getting real therapy or help, we were getting judged and belittled and mentally emotionally, and physically abused. We were being broken down as far as they could get us, so they could basically reprogram you to what they believed was the ideal teenager.
I was in worksheets, OP, and later isolation, on and off all the time. That is how the majority of my time was spent in TB. My family mom did feel bad for me at one point and gave me 200 points while I was in OP, so I could go to a seminar and see my parents, hoping it would get me to work. I was all bandaged up when I got to see them, and they were told all injuries were self-inflicted, not completely true.
I tried working for a very short time after I saw my parents but it did not last long. I was screamed at, teased, bullied, and humiliated by staff. Most of the time they would taunt us to get us wound up, so we could flip-out, and then they could restrain us. They knew what made us tick and used it against us, especially if they see you try and start working. They had their favorites to pick on, unfortunately. We were spat on, pushed, sat on, and mocked by staff. At times We would yell back, or spit back, or fight back, and at times we did not have it in us. We were restrained by multiple women—women four times most of our sizes—for various reasons. They would twist my arms back and push them as far as they could. They always seemed to dig their knees into the backs of your knees or toes. Some of us would be scraped up and bruised. But in the end, it was always “our fault.”
I was completely depressed and lost. I self-harmed and starved myself while there. I did not want to hear girls screaming in the middle of the night anymore, because I knew something bad was happening to them, and there was nothing I could do. So many had it much worse than I did.
I do remember at one point a “riot” was planned, and acted out, to fight back from all of the abuse, in hopes it would get out and shed light on what was happening there. Maybe hoping someone could get away. Running away was only a dream because we were surrounded by concrete walls with barbed wire on top. We were about three hours from civilization. That was one hell of a night. A lot of girls were hurt badly that night, by male and female staff. I remember being dragged down the stairs and restrained on the concrete, but what happened to me was nothing compared to what happened to some that night and the following nights.
I just needed to get out of there, I could feel myself fading day by day. My mental state was 1000 times worse than when I went in. At that point, I just had to hold on for a couple more months. I was almost 18. I was still getting in trouble, in and out of OP, but for smaller scaled reasons.
I was fortunate enough to be able to sign out at 18, as I was not court-ordered there like some of the girls. The youngest girl there was 12, yes 12! Your parents could pull you out if not court-ordered, but that did not happen often at all.
Finally, on the 29th of September in 2005, a few days after I turned 18, the staff brought me to the office where my stuff was already packed. I got the papers and signed myself out of there! I did have mixed feelings, as I had grown close to some of the girls there. We had a bond after going through what we did, and as happy as I was to go home, I was sad to leave kids behind. Them putting that ticket in my hand was the absolute best feeling ever though. To this very day, that was the happiest moment of my life; knowing I would not have to live on-edge and in fear anymore. I was going home! Thankfully, I was able to go home, unlike a lot of the kids.
My parents, fortunately, gave me an exit plan where I could go home with lots of rules, but at least I could go home. Also, unlike a lot of the teens, my parents came to know and believe the harsh truths about these places. I know and love my parents, and I know if they knew what went on there, they would not have sent me. We have since overcome it and put it behind us.
Since then I have had an amazing relationship with my parents. After all, they too were victims of deceit, lies, and manipulation. They just wanted to help me from going down the dark path I was on. They too are #ParentalSurvivorsFromWWASP and supporters of #BreakingCodeSilence
If you have read this far, thank you for putting up with my scattered memories. I am happy I can now say I KNOW I am STRONGER in many ways from that experience, and I KNOW I am BETTER than what they made me believe about myself.”