S24 Ep8: You Are Not Alone

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Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics.

Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children, which may be triggering for some listeners.

As always, please consume with care.

For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.

Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken cycle media.

All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season.

Something was wrong and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

After Kat left Copper Canyon Academy in 2006, They attended Aldern Academy, a private therapeutic boarding school in Seiler City, North Carolina.

Aldern markets itself as a trauma-informed college preparatory program that combined academic instruction with behavioral therapy for young women struggling with emotional and psychological challenges.

Founded in 2001, the school was initially operated by Three Springs Incorporated, which also operated other youth behavioral facilities in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina.

In 2009, Three Springs, Inc.

was acquired by Sequel Youth and Family Services.

Aldrin Academy remained operational for nearly two decades before it was closed February 2021.

Sequel Youth and Family Services stated that the decision to close Alderan Academy was due to declining enrollment and shifting demand.

But the closure came amid broader scrutiny of Sequel's network of youth programs following numerous reports of abuse across multiple facilities.

At one point, SQL Youth and Family Services had over 40 facilities in 21 states.

By February 2021, SQL closed a dozen facilities.

In 2024, two former students filed a federal lawsuit against SQL Youth and Family Services representing abuse survivors from programs including Aldrin Academy in North Carolina and other facilities in Alabama.

In the complaint, a former Aldrin resident detailed how Aldrin's community service requirement extended far beyond light chores involving strenuous on-campus labor, such as moving heavy boulders for 12-hour days, maintaining multiple buildings, and cleaning campus grounds, effectively using students as unpaid staff.

Allegations also included physical abuse by staff, including tackling, hitting, or restraining students, and punitive disciplinary measures like refusal of class credits, forced isolation, removal of privileges, and deprivation of meals for non-compliance.

The lawsuit also characterizes these practices as cutting costs through coercive labor.

At a broader organizational level, SQL Youth and Family Services has been named in numerous state and federal investigations, lawsuits, and high-profile media investigative reports.

According to APM reports, SEQL underwent multiple closures of facilities, including Oldrin, in February 2021, citing declining enrollment and reputational concerns after widespread allegations of abuse.

Investigations revealed frequent improper use of physical restraints, seclusion, and understaffing, as well as cases of sexual misconduct, neglect, and even death, such as the tragic restraint-related death of a resident at Lakeside Academy in Michigan in 2020.

After many travesties, several states, including Washington, California, Oregon, and Minnesota stopped sending children to SQL-owned facilities.

However, some SQL facilities continued operations under new ownership.

According to American Public Media,

most of the former SQL treatment centers that remain open are now controlled by Vivant Behavioral Healthcare, which was founded in 2021 by one of three people who founded SQL in 1999, end quote.

I'm Tiffany Rees, and this is something was wrong.

I went home for a couple weeks preparing to go go to Aldern Academy.

That was in North Carolina.

It was described as a quote-unquote step-down program, so less restrictive than Copper Canyon, but also a college preparatory school.

I actually read the brochure this time, but I don't really think you can get a lot of good information.

from a brochure because of course they're marketing it to make the parents inclined to send you there.

My parents drove me to Aldern.

Pretty much no one was there when we got there because everybody was coming back from like their little summer break.

It was a night and day difference at first.

I thought it was going to be a pleasure cruise compared to Copper Canyon, but it doesn't matter if you get more freedoms.

It was still a pretty awful place.

I could wear my own clothes, but the funny thing is, is when you've worn uniforms for so many years, you don't know how to dress properly.

So I looked kind of dorky, but I didn't care.

I was just happy to wear whatever.

I could listen to music again.

I could go walk around the campus at night if I wanted to within a certain hour.

This place also

for people to a room.

Not bunk beds.

It's more spread out.

Everybody has their own dresser.

There's a mirror and a sink in the room.

We had closets.

We could put our pictures up.

My roommates were cool.

They had been there a while.

We were actually allowed to talk to whoever we wanted there.

What I liked about that is I could see everybody's personalities a lot more and individuality compared to Copper Canyon.

It kind of made it feel more like a normal high school in the sense of like, you've got your preppy people, you've got your grunge people.

I think it was probably about 30, 40 of us, kind of like CCA was at first.

On the weekends, they would put up little signup sheets.

We had to do at least one off-campus activity.

Usually it was like a trip to Target or something.

Imagine like a gaggle of 16, 17, 18 year old girls who put on so much makeup and their best outfits to go to Target because we never get out.

That's what it was.

I feel like 99% of the people there had been to a more restrictive program before.

So there was the sense that it's still a therapeutic boarding school, troubled teen industry, but there were people like me and people who came around the same time as me who were like, oh, this isn't this bad.

But they had just changed directors of the whole program.

So I came at a very, very weird time.

This woman who took over the school tightened up the restrictions.

So, a lot of those people who had been there longer than me were very unhappy with the situation and very vocal about it.

One of my friends there, she had been there for like two years, and because of her seniority, she was allowed to take an extended trip back home for the summer, and they took that away from her.

I do remember hearing about more therapeutic elements being enforced, more structure.

Also, I saw it progress into

a lot stricter than when I arrived.

I thought it was relatively chill in comparison to CCA when I got there, but it ended up becoming slightly different than CCA, but still very strict.

Looking over the schedule that you sent us, they really had every second of the day planned for you guys from 6 a.m.

until 11:30 p.m.

Yeah, not a whole lot of downtime, but when you do have downtime, you really make use of it.

Did you have to participate in any kind of seminars while at Aldern?

No seminars, but we did have the group therapy.

It was different than TCA's group therapy.

It had teachers and dorm staff members and the therapists.

They had a lot more attack therapy there.

I'm thinking of a specific instance that happened to me.

At Aldern, the second level, you were allowed to have internet access.

They had a little kind of like a gazebo-shaped building that had internet and it was Ethernet.

They turn it on for 30 minutes a day.

It's connected to their server.

I had found that on their internet network, our dorm staff members had been writing their observations and treatment notes for everybody and putting it on a folder on a public network that anybody could access it, which was a HIPAA violation.

So I was showing the girls in the internet cafe.

I'm like, oh my God, what are we going to do?

We could sue these people.

But it ended up instead transpiring into a therapy session one day where I was a topic of conversation.

One of the girls ratted on me.

It's not my fault.

that I stumbled across this, but they then accused me of hacking their network instead of the staff members taking responsibility they're encouraging these girls to yell and scream at me i remember digging my fingernails into my skin feeling so like small i was so upset and i was just like seeing red and i ended up breaking down i couldn't handle that after that incident I told them I needed to go to the psych ward.

And I mean, they took me.

I was there for a whole week.

And it felt like a vacation.

It was amazing.

But nothing was the same after that.

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This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

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RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

Need to hit the road now?

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And here's the big one.

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I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells and ostracized.

And maybe a lot of it could have been in my head, but things like that happen.

quite often and I just happened to be in the hot seat that one day.

If we turn on each other, either you get rewarded or the world of hurt being rained upon you stops.

That's not the only instance that they've literally had us turn on each other.

They pulled us in the middle of a school day and sat us all in our cafeteria and told us if we didn't come clean for what we did on our spring break, none of us were going to graduate.

It was because some girl...

drank a beer and told one of the other girls.

They were just trying to find out who did it.

So they threatened us and then kept us from school all day.

After that, I did not want to be there anymore because that was insanely unethical.

There was not a lot of resolution and caused a lot of trust issues.

You don't want to talk to anybody about anything going on

because you don't know when that's going to be weaponized against you for someone else's benefit or because the staff is literally threatening you.

We had a therapist at Aldern who actually got fired for having a sexual relationship with one of the girls.

Granted, she had turned 18, but she was still a student there and under his care.

They found out and they banned him from the campus.

The girl was ostracized and removed as well.

But it's a really big theme with these programs.

I don't care if that girl was 18.

Yeah, she is old enough to legally make her own decisions, but it is so unethical and predatory, but they turn it on the girl.

And he was a therapist that I thought I could trust.

I'm in therapy now.

And I even told this to my current therapist that I have a really hard time trusting therapists because that happened.

And having changed therapist, I think like four times while I was there, whatever work you may have done, it's down the drain.

My therapist before I left, I only had him for about two months and we did not get along.

He was very argumentative with me and very much like, everything your parents say is right.

And that's also a common theme with all the therapists.

Everything your parents say is right.

And I don't really understand how that's beneficial if you have to go by whatever the parents say 100% of the time because you got to understand this is a whole family unit.

You're not the sole reason for every single issue within that family unit because there's so many different dynamics that come into play.

Before I got sent away, I had a psychiatrist who was prescribing medications and then other medications to combat the side effects of those medications.

And then that continued at CCA and Aldern.

They both had their on-campus doctors who would visit and give you a brief evaluation.

I'm talking maybe like 10 minutes tops, but I was on so many medications that I actually developed tardive dyskinesia, which causes involuntary facial tics and facial movements.

I remember I had brought it up to them and they're like, oh, that's no big deal.

The fuck you mean it's no big deal?

Like, I'm actually getting made fun of right now because I can't control my face.

If I felt a certain way, I couldn't just schedule a doctor's appointment.

I had to wait to get the doctor to come for his once-a-month thing.

And then there's never enough time to disclose what's going on with me, my thoughts and my concerns.

And I don't have a true adult to advocate for me and help me.

vocalize my concerns other than what I personally can notice.

What do you think was the hardest part about about being at Aldern in juxtaposition to Copper Canyon?

I think it was a lot more difficult with the psychological mind games.

Granted, you had these freedoms that you did not have at the other school, but the style of the attack therapy, the taking away of privileges, the punishments, That was tough.

At Copper Canyon, when you got punished, you had what we would call work hours.

We had focused reflection.

That meant they took you out of school for the day and you still had to do these cleaning tasks, but it was an all-day thing.

It was from the start of your school day, and it went until nine in the evening.

So that's over 12 hours of cleaning.

That meant you got up at five in the morning.

And you and whoever else had work hours would go and do things like sweep dust in the parking lot or move rocks from one location to the next or scrub grout with a toothbrush.

I did things like clean stains with magic erasers.

I remember cleaning a bathroom of a part of a building that hadn't been used in years.

I picked up the plunger.

There was a pile of shit under there.

I don't know how long it had been under there.

I had to clean that.

And you couldn't talk to anybody.

They put you in an empty bedroom with just the mattress.

And then you had to write a paper and finish your schoolwork for the school day you missed.

You write like a 3,000 word paper on why what you did is wrong and how you recognize that.

Then it has to be reviewed by like staff and therapists.

I would take work hours over that.

I was only on focus reflection twice, but it was really tough.

I kind of felt like the family's dirty little secret.

They had their picturesque house in their suburban neighborhood.

When I come around, it's, there's the problem, child.

Nobody really knows why, and I don't have the time to sit there and tell everybody my backstory, nor does anybody deserve to hear it all the time.

It was very isolating.

I got to go home more frequently when I was at Aldern.

I got to go home for like holidays and spring break, summer briefly.

That was nice.

But when you've been trying your damnedest to do all this therapeutic work and your parents went to one or two seminars and poof, they're done.

There's no real progress.

So that same issue still exists.

You have more time to really see how dysfunctional your family truly is.

As long as I was in those schools, I absolutely felt like the black sheep of the family.

I continued to be the black sheep of the family until recently.

Ultimately, you ended up spending almost two years at each facility.

You were in these types of environments from age 14 to 18.

Correct.

I stayed there when I was 18, even though I thought about leaving.

I was going to graduate high school.

I wanted to go to college, especially because I didn't feel like home with my parents was a good option.

How much do you think your parents were paying to have you attend school there?

The initial first month deposit, I think, was non-refundable, $10,000.

I'm not really sure about the monthly tuition there, but I imagine it's similar to Copper Canyon.

So in like the $5,000, $6,000 a month range, I didn't have much money in my account each month.

College applications are expensive.

So I only applied to the one school that gave me an application fee waived.

And I got into that school.

That was Virginia Commonwealth University.

I was prepping to go there.

But when I turned 18, that's when the whole attack therapy thing about me potentially hacking happened.

I was so upset.

I had packed all my things and I was ready to walk off campus.

But the only thing that deterred me is if I had left, some of those credits wouldn't have transferred.

So I

stuck it out.

I ended up graduating high school and I came home until college and went off to college.

I ended up dropping out after the first year.

It was just too much for me to handle.

The school I went to was a very large university, so I had a lot of trouble with the schooling because getting one-on-one time with a professor is impossible when you have a classroom of 400 people.

After college, I tried to briefly live with my parents, but I wasn't really welcome.

I got kicked out.

I was so angry.

And to a certain degree, I don't blame them.

And I'm sure they were scared of how I was going to behave or conduct myself, but they kind of created a monster in that aspect.

When I got out of the program,

It was really hard having a relationship with my mother.

I had a boyfriend at the time, and I know my mom wasn't too fond of him.

I had so much anger and resentment build up because I had gone from four years of these programs straight to college and I failed miserably.

It's another culture shock.

I was not prepared to go from someone dictating your day-to-day life and every move to having complete independence.

All I wanted to do was feel freedom for once.

Unfortunately, that did lead to some bad decisions on my end.

I did get involved in drugs and drinking, and I unfortunately experienced sexual assault again.

I saw that my mother was weaponizing it against me, and I felt so frustrated because I didn't know where to begin to tell her, hey, I am so screwed up from four years of not having my own voice and not having nurturing care from the people I need it from most.

It was really hard.

When it came to my mom, we didn't really have much of a relationship.

It was constantly trying to bend over backward to please her in some way while she still told her friends or anyone who would listen about how I was upsetting her in whichever way, I wasn't really necessarily interacting with her a lot, maybe because of how angry I was, but also when your mom is saying not-so-nice things about you, why would you want to continue talking to them and subject yourself to that?

I think one thing about the program that made it insanely difficult to have a relationship with my mother was the fact that there's not a whole lot of direct communication.

So there's not a lot of resolution with issues that have been happening.

There's no closure on either side for parents or for kids.

So if you are to approach these things later in life, it can be really difficult and it may be really uncomfortable.

And that's how it felt for me.

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Thrive makes it easy to shop for high-quality pantry staples, snacks, vitamins, and even skincare without the errands or the ingredient labeled deep dives.

I just place an order with Thrive for my office snack cart, and I highly recommend the made-good organic granola bites.

I also love Thrive for stocking up on clean beauty products like Mighty Patch, Dr.

Brauner's, and a Cure.

Now's the best time to try Thrive Market.

You'll get up to 25% off select items, and new members get 30% off their first order plus a free gift.

Go to thrivemarket.com/slash sww to start saving.

The sale ends August 31st.

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That's thrivemarket.com/slash sww.

Thank you so much.

This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

From August 22nd to September 1st, score up to 60% off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands.

RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

Need to hit the road now?

Fast Lane Financing lets you ride now and pay later with 0% interest for three months.

And here's the big one: August 29th through September 1st only.

Buy any helmet $319 or more and get a free Cardo Spirit Bluetooth.

Supplies are limited.

Don't wait.

Cycle gear.

Get there.

Start here.

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When leased through Stellantis Financial Services, not all lessees will qualify.

This incentive is offered by a third party as a cap cost reduction and is subject to change without notice.

Lessee cannot claim E-Fee incentive on personal tax return.

Consult a tax professional for details and eligibility requirements.

Restrictions apply.

Contact your dealer for details.

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from age 19 to 20 i was between homelessness and couch surfing then i joined the military because i was like i need some structure and i need a roof over my head i did a couple years of that and it was very traumatic.

It was difficult in the sense that was familiar to me with the psychological mind games and the sleep deprivation.

I was really depressed when I was in basic training.

Granted, I was also going through a divorce at the time, so it was a lot of shit at once.

But at the same time, you know, it's like I've done this before.

This is really familiar.

I got out of the military, I was stationed in Germany, so I came back to the States, and it was unfortunately a really very long period from age age 23

to about 28

of homelessness, on and off, drug addiction, alcoholism, not having any proper life skills to feel like I could really get anywhere in life, doing a lot of grunt work jobs and trying to get by.

There were times that I did sex work because it was a way to pay the bills.

I learned how to disassociate really well, but it hurt having to put myself through that and not having my parents I could lean on.

I moved to Chicago in 2017 on a whim, but with a plan in mind.

Living in this city has been the best thing that has happened to me.

I've been almost nine years clean from heroin.

I finally stopped drinking this year.

It's been 102 days.

It always makes me wonder if I hadn't have gone to these schools and had a normal teenage life, could I have been on a different life path?

I feel like this put me behind on the learning curve.

I'm 35 and I still

feel like there's a lot of work to be done.

I'm in the right direction.

There are times where I still break down crying.

thinking about these schools because it was so isolating and you feel like you're the bad kid, and it feels like a mark on your record.

Like, this person's bad.

They went to bad kids' school.

It's still a constant, everyday struggle to try to pick up the pieces, and I don't think that I ever will, unfortunately.

Another thing that it did is it caused a lot of abandonment issues with me.

When parents signed that initial contract in 2004, They gave up custody of me.

They also said they would not sue if I died in these people's care.

And other horrid things, they consented to me being strip searched if I needed to be.

Things like that.

Like, what parent would do that?

Knowing that they were putting their trust in strangers who they don't even know.

Unfortunately, abandonment issues cause a lot of psychological trauma, especially later down the road.

I came out having much more complex and adult issues that as someone who's almost 40, I'm having to navigate.

And I feel like a child doing it because I'm working through issues that were forced upon me during my childhood and my developmental years.

Back in 2011, I did go back to CCA to visit.

Why?

I don't know.

I was 21.

I had just graduated basic training from the Army.

Maybe it was also to go back and be like, fuck you, look how good I'm doing.

You guys said said I couldn't and here I am.

Either way, I did go back and I didn't really have anywhere to stay all of a sudden.

I'm just stranded in Arizona.

I'm not going to name names here, but there was a staff member.

He said that I could feel free to stay with him and his wife at his house.

I was like, sure, I'll take you up on the offer.

So went to their little cabin in the middle of Arizona.

I remember we all watched a horror movie together and then he's feeding me alcohol, lots of whiskey.

At some point, his wife goes to bed, and it's just me and him watching this horror movie.

I think it was I Spit on Your Grave, which has got a pretty violent rape scene, which was a little triggering at the time.

Really weird choice of a movie.

But he ended up getting really close to me, and I was pretty inebriated at this point.

Like, I in no way, shape, or form, could safely drive away if I wanted to.

He's definitely putting his hand on my thigh and getting close to me.

That's when I'm like, I have to go to the bathroom.

And I just locked myself in the bathroom for the rest of the night.

Did not come out.

And then in the morning, just acted like everything was okay when I went to go visit the campus.

But I think a part of me also was trying to convince myself that it didn't happen.

And you're like, oh, yeah, you were just drunk, cat.

Maybe you're remembering this wrong.

But based on how uncomfortable I felt the next day, I know I didn't remember that incorrectly.

I can remember it sitting here now talking about it.

And that was another person that I was supposed to trust who knew a lot of information about me and put me in an extremely vulnerable position where I had no way to get out of it.

And I'm glad I locked myself in the bathroom.

But imagine if that opportunity weren't available.

What would I have done?

Did you feel like that reopened a wound after that visit?

It really did.

And it really made me regret going out there too.

I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly not that.

When you trust somebody and

they know

everything about you and everything that you went through and they knew about me being raped when I was 14.

That absolutely hurt.

And I have since told a couple of of people about it, but it was really, really hard to tell other people about it because I was afraid of what they would think because it was someone who was well regarded.

Once I did say something, a couple people noticed, he's always liking my pictures on Facebook where my cleavage is out or something like that.

Put two and two together.

There's power dynamics at play here, several.

The fact that you were a former student, the fact that he knew knew all of this personal information about your history.

It definitely sounds like grooming behavior.

It absolutely is.

I'm not a unique story.

It just seems like they wait for you to turn of age.

And all of a sudden.

They prey on you because of your vulnerabilities.

It almost feels a little more dirty knowing that they played you in that way for years.

Some of the survivors that were sexually assaulted by staff while in program often have reported being told that if they didn't comply or if they told anyone that they would be harmed or that no one was going to believe them, who's going to believe you?

Me, a staff member, or you, a troubled teen?

Exactly.

And the whole who's going to believe you because of the troubled teen thing.

Unfortunately, that's such a big thing with these documentaries and things coming out.

Even the comments, it perpetuates that, or it's like, oh, who's going to believe these girls?

They're lying.

They're troubled teens.

How hurtful is that?

You're trying to really invalidate us.

And just because we went to these schools does not make us troublemakers or problems or liars.

It doesn't invalidate our experiences.

It's hard enough for me to talk about these things.

Why would I subject myself to that?

What would I gain out of that?

It's terrible.

I had a staff member from Aldern who reached out to me when I was in college.

I was 18 at the time, and he would message me some pretty suggestive and flirty

things

about how I looked and sex and things of that nature.

It made me wildly uncomfortable.

It's something you don't want to hear when it's a trusted individual.

You thought they were maybe one of the good ones, but it turns out they aren't.

And it absolutely shatters your trust because here's somebody when you're in a really vulnerable state.

You think that you can trust them with stuff and especially a male figure.

It's hard to do that.

When they turn around and say things to you that are suggestive in nature, it absolutely breaks your heart.

I had two incidents of that happening, one from each school.

It was a really tough pill to swallow, and it definitely made me have more severe trust issues.

I never really got the closure that I wanted and needed from my mother because there was never really an opportunity to talk about it.

My mom is no longer with us.

Six months before she died, I propose that we look at our relationship together as less of a mother-daughter relationship and more as peers.

It was nice because she jumped on that and it was kind of like having a mom again, but not in the same regard that I would have hoped.

It didn't feel like it should, but I was grateful to be talking to her.

Even with her gone, there's still a lot of unresolved feelings and anger that I feel toward her.

And I don't think that's ever going to go away.

I think if I hadn't been sent to these programs, we may have had more of an opportunity to work through our issues, maybe in a more therapeutic setting where we could talk to each other.

I will forever be sad that I didn't have that chance to do that.

It was maybe helpful for you to think of her as a peer.

And I've heard other survivors mention this methodology.

Why do you think for survivors of these programs, that approach could be especially helpful.

It could be helpful in the sense that maybe your parent is potentially looking at their own

life and being mother, father to a survivor.

Maybe they're looking at themselves as being a failure in that aspect because either they sent you away or they view you in a certain way because of that.

And if you eliminate the position and title of mother, father, whatever, I think it takes away a lot of pressure that they may feel.

It just made it so much easier.

It was like, okay, we can talk to each other and we can be open and honest about things.

And that is exactly what happens.

It wasn't quite what I wanted, but to be able to talk to somebody and have that tension taken away, it makes life so much easier.

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You mentioned your dad's now in his 70s and that he's struggling with memory issues.

What's that been like for you?

It's really hard to grieve someone while they're still alive.

My dad was always very close to me, so seeing him go through that and have to be put into a memory care unit at a facility is really tough.

No one really prepares you for having to deal with that.

Granted, I only saw bits and pieces because I would fly home to Virginia from Chicago and try to help out as much as I could.

But at this point, I haven't seen him since March of last year because the last time I saw him, he tried to proposition me sexually.

He didn't recognize me.

And it's really hard to take a step back and realize, okay, this is the disease and this is very normal, but I am his kid.

I don't want to think about him like that.

I get regular updates on things.

We have a wonderful person that goes in and checks on him.

And my brother is back home taking care of him as well.

So he's in good hands, but it definitely is difficult mourning someone who's still alive and doesn't remember who you are.

We haven't been the closest, but my brother lived not too far from my parents.

My mom was constantly calling him over to help with things and be there for whatever.

So he essentially had a full-time job, and that was my mom.

We didn't feel like we could speak freely when she was alive as well.

But since my mom has died, we've actually become a lot closer going over things and how we felt in certain events over the years.

He's been one to actually discuss the aspect of me getting sent away.

He said that he absolutely protested to my parents that that was a terrible idea.

When he came to visit me at CCA,

He

was really weirded out.

He said it was a very strange situation.

He actually visited me for Thanksgiving of last year, and I made him watch the program.

He said, Oh my goodness, I did not realize it was this bad.

And how could he?

I'm really grateful for him living so far away.

It hasn't really posed much of an issue.

We are definitely sure to like check in on each other every now and then.

We're essentially all each other has left since my mom is dead and dad is a little too far gone.

So it does bring me some comfort to have that relationship with him.

It kind of opened my eyes to realizing that I wasn't the only one who went through a lot with my mom.

He did as well.

It was just a whole different ballgame.

Being able to talk openly and freely now, it allows for the chance for healing.

That's all I hope to continue to do with him because I love him so much and I am so happy to finally have a better relationship with him that I don't think either of us felt comfortable having before.

You mentioned part of the reason that you were happy that you were participating in the podcast and sharing your story was so that you could share it with your partner.

How do you feel like being in these types of programs can affect survivors in intimate relationships?

Unfortunately, going through these things can cause you to have a lot of PTSD and a lot of trauma responses.

Sometimes navigating those, especially in a relationship, can be really hard.

I think the more that they understand what you went through, the more that they can be like, well, this makes sense and this makes this easier to deal with next time.

I do try my best to recognize in times where maybe I'm freaking out over shit for no reason or something's bothering me or times where I'm reminded of my time sent away.

He's been nothing but supportive and he tries his best to understand, especially as someone who didn't go through that.

His childhood was a lot different than mine.

But the more he learns about these places, the more he really gets to dig deep into the dynamic between myself and him and helping navigate my family.

After my mom died, he was there not only for me, but my family.

Understanding and having a good idea of what's going on has been really helpful.

Even when we were going through the paperwork and stuff to prepare for this podcast, he was really helpful and really validating and helping me truly realize, hey, like you didn't really need to go through all this.

I love that about him.

What would you say to the people who run these programs?

First of all, I'd like to say shame on you to each and every one of them because I don't know how anybody who works for these programs can truly sleep at night because they are both directly and indirectly affecting my life even years later.

Some of these people have children as well, and I want them to really evaluate if they would even be comfortable with their kids being in places like this.

And I already know the answer.

It would be no.

But it's really hurtful to know that these people were okay with a huge money grab situation from our parents and then mistreatment of us and not really thinking about the long-term consequences of underdeveloped brains going through such traumatic times.

People who ran the programs, fuck you.

I'm still here and I'm doing great.

What do you want survivors who are listening to this to know and remember in their own healing journeys?

I definitely want them to remember that it's okay not to be okay.

We've all been through so much and it's really hard for an average person who hasn't been through these schools to understand or comprehend.

And I also want them to know that it's okay to have moments where you do feel defined by your trauma, but do not let it rule you.

I know it's easier said than done.

It definitely still impacts my day-to-day life, but I've made a really good effort in taking the negative experiences that I've had and letting it help me grow as a person.

I definitely am a really strong and resilient person.

I know a lot of survivors are.

And unfortunately, we've lost so many of them too.

I additionally need them to know that there is such a huge network of support.

I've experienced it firsthand with talking to people I went to school with and people listening to me.

When we're going through tough times, we all know how hard it is and how hard life can be after going through schools like this.

No one is alone and I want to really drill that fact in.

You were not alone.

And please reach out if you were ever going through something and you feel like there's no one who's going to listen.

I guarantee you there's a bunch of people who have been through this who are going to be there in a heartbeat.

I appreciate you being willing to be so real and raw and vulnerable.

And I think that a lot of survivors are going to feel extremely validated in the things that you've shared.

So thank you.

Thank you.

You are very welcome and thank you for having me.

It means so much to me.

Next time on something was wrong.

I was feeling lost and completely helpless because you speak up that you don't want to go, you're seen as defiant, and potentially you could be put somewhere worse or for longer.

The school part was kind of a joke because I was 18 years old and having to take the same math class as a 14-year-old.

Everyone got on the ground, laid on the couches, cuddling, giving massages, but it would be staff and students cuddling in piles on the floor.

If you don't participate, you stand out or you get in trouble.

Once I left these programs, trying to assimilate back in the real world, it's constant loneliness.

Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production.

Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B.

Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist, and Marissen Travis from WME.

Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories.

And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and listenership.

In the episode notes, you'll always find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources.

Thank you so much for your support.

Until next time, stay safe, friends.

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.