S24 Ep3: A Carcass

Transcript

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Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season.

Speaker 32 Something was wrong, and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

Speaker 32 Today, you'll be hearing from Malia, a survivor of a so-called wilderness therapy program called Second Nature in Trada, which opened in 2004 in in Santa Clara, Utah.

Speaker 32 Second Nature in Trada was part of the broader Second Nature organization, which first launched its wilderness program, Second Nature Unitas, in 1998 as a behavior modification and expedition-based therapy option for adolescents to offer a structured, quote, nature-based therapy, end quote, approach using a level system, self-reliance, and clinical interventions for teens struggling with alleged behavioral, emotional, or substance-related issues.

Speaker 32 Malia will be sharing her experiences from her time at Second Nature Entrada, where she lived from April 13th to June 11th of 2009.

Speaker 32 In 2015, the institution Malia attended, Second Nature Entrada, was rebranded as Evoke Entrada Entrada under Evoke Therapy Programs, which continued operating until the Utah location closed August 2024.

Speaker 32 While Evoke Entrada has closed, the broader Second Nature organization still runs wilderness programs in Utah.

Speaker 32 We reached out for comment to Brad Reedy, a former co-owner of Second Nature, former co-founder and clinical director at Evoke Therapy Programs, and now an owner of Finding You Therapy Programs.

Speaker 32 And he shared the following statement. Quote, to clarify, I was one of three owners at Evoke Intrada.
Second Nature, the one I was brought out of, still runs a wilderness program.

Speaker 32 Actually, two programs, but they split after I left. I am one of four owners at Finding You.
None of the other Finding You partners had any ownership at Intrada.

Speaker 32 Finding You is not a a rebrand of Second Nature or Evoke. We offer different therapy services, specifically trauma-informed attachment-based treatment for adults.

Speaker 32 That was the reason for the change in my direction. Specifically, the change from Second Nature to Evoke was not due to reports or allegations, but was about ownership changes.

Speaker 32 I was brought out of Second Nature and I bought my partners out of Evoke, Intrada. I was a part owner of the wilderness programs and am an owner at Finding You.

Speaker 32 We run three to five therapeutic intensives for adults, families, and couples. We do not see teens unless they come with their parents.

Speaker 32 I encourage anyone who experienced abuse from anyone, including wilderness programs, to report these complaints to the proper authorities, state licensing, child protective services, law enforcement, or to the courts.

Speaker 32 End quote.

Speaker 32 So, while Evoke Entrada, where Malia was placed, has closed, Second Nature, as an organization still operates wilderness therapy programs.

Speaker 32 And though Finding You Therapy programs is connected to one former co-owner of Entrada, it is a separate organization with a different mission and population focus.

Speaker 32 I'm Tiffany Rees, and this is Something Was Wrong.

Speaker 32 You

Speaker 32 My name is Malia. I was born and raised in Southern California, and I was sent to Second Nature Wilderness Program when I was 14 in the early spring of 2009.

Speaker 32 As a kid, I was extremely withdrawn and, for lack of a better word, mostly nonverbal and expressed myself more often than not just through writing.

Speaker 32 I was always very drawn to the character of Disney's Tarzan

Speaker 32 because he was silent. and yet he was still able to connect.

Speaker 32 My behavior as a kid and further into my adolescence was very confusing to my parents and those around me because I was unable to verbally respond.

Speaker 32 I was almost silent unless I was making a joke, but it had to be on my terms. I wasn't super loud and goofy.
It was just random comments here and there.

Speaker 32 But if somebody asked me a question about something serious or about something going on in my head, I would literally just say, I don't know, and I would look at the ground.

Speaker 32 On the other hand, I would open up my notebook and I would write extremely articulate paragraphs and pages about what was going on in my head and how I was feeling.

Speaker 32 I would email with my therapist when I was younger. She realized that I couldn't really talk, but then she had me email her, and it was like another world opened up.

Speaker 32 These kinds of miscommunications and my ability to write down what was going on in my head was seen more often than not as a manipulation and as weaving a masterful web.

Speaker 32 My parents often thought there was way more going on behind the scenes in my brain.

Speaker 32 Now being in my 30s and diagnosed with autism, I was not diagnosed back then, but it was that communication difference where I felt like I was screaming, I'm not okay, please help me.

Speaker 32 It's just on a piece of paper and that's not good enough. There was nothing wrong with that communication difference, but that's what villainized me.
My relationship with my parents was always

Speaker 32 very tense.

Speaker 32 I was emotionally an absolute disaster my entire life and they just couldn't understand why.

Speaker 32 My relationship with my siblings, I think all four of us were very diverse individuals. And we definitely butted heads.
Everybody in my family, except for myself and my dad, has Tourette syndrome.

Speaker 32 So there were a lot of noises, a lot of things that nobody could help. For me, that was unbelievably dysregulating.

Speaker 32 I do have mesophonia and for my mesophonia to be triggered almost every second of every single day, but to not be able to escape it and to be consistently told, they can't help it.

Speaker 32 This is your problem. It was like the just married car and it's got the metal cans attached to the back and it's driving away.
And I feel like I was the metal can just like clinking in the wind.

Speaker 32 I was forced to absorb all of that turmoil and dysregulation and it had to stay inside me. I was a pressure cooker for my entire life.
I have a twin brother.

Speaker 32 My parents always told us this story that in preschool, I would hide behind my twin brother and hold on to the back of his shirt collar. And he was very outgoing.

Speaker 32 So as soon as he would socialize with other people, I would pull him and yank him back to me by his collar and would continue to hide behind him. I stopped grabbing his shirt collar, thankfully.

Speaker 32 That feeling inside of me that I was different and I didn't know how to communicate that never went away. It just got worse.

Speaker 32 I went to school and maybe it was one full year where my twin brother was at a different school than myself and that was a breath of fresh air because I did have that time and separation.

Speaker 32 I only wanted to be at school. I did not want to be at home, but I do not like school.
It was really hard speaking in class. I never raised my hand.
I would literally fail a speech.

Speaker 32 Even though I had written it, I would not get up in front of the class to present it. Socially, I really struggled.
I did not understand how to communicate and interact with my peers.

Speaker 32 I felt like I was on the outside and looking at them. There was a back and forth that I didn't understand.
And my attempts to have successful interactions, I felt like didn't exist.

Speaker 32 Someone else would get a laugh and a hug and then they'd run around and play on the playground. And I had no formula for that.

Speaker 32 It weighed heavily on me, the fact that I could not achieve those results. I had maybe one or two friends and at the same time, I didn't feel like any of that was real.
No

Speaker 32 connection for me ever really felt genuine. I thought that I was so different from everybody else.

Speaker 32 I ended up receiving services, but I don't think that they were the right services for me because we didn't have the right information. and I didn't have the right diagnoses.

Speaker 32 If I needed to leave class, I would put a sticky note on the desk and then leave. But I took that a little too far because I didn't want to be there at all in the first place.

Speaker 32 I definitely had a 504, and I think that began in eighth grade. That was the first official service that I got.
And in high school, I had an IEP.

Speaker 32 I think at some point in high school, I was labeled ED, emotionally disturbed, and I had to meet with a school psychologist a couple times.

Speaker 32 Could you speak to where things were at for you emotionally leading up to the Second Nature Wilderness program?

Speaker 32 I was extremely depressed and so dysregulated. At home, it was horrible.
My twin brother was going through a lot of his own issues and challenges.

Speaker 32 And I was often the collateral damage of that because We had a lot of classes together and our peers were the same. He

Speaker 32 was extremely verbally abusive at the time. My entire life, I was always told, he can't help it.
Stop feeling this way about it. So I started writing.

Speaker 32 I was giving my writing, which was pretty disturbing to teachers and people that were mandated reporters. And that writing would make it back to my parents.

Speaker 32 We were just in this cycle of, why is she doing this? How does she feel this way? She never told us. My parents were extremely concerned and confused.
They didn't know what to do with me.

Speaker 32 I began to self-harm. I was punching brick walls outside of my classes.
There were cuts all over my knuckles, the backs of my hands. I definitely did a lot of damage to my tendons.

Speaker 32 At one point, I became suicidal. And I told one of my friends I was texting with her.

Speaker 32 It was late at night and I felt better, but then my parents took my phone away for some unrelated reason and I didn't respond to that friend. And she got very, very scared.

Speaker 32 So she called my parents and gave them that information. And then they were beside themselves.

Speaker 32 Another huge moment was when I was texting with another kid my age that I had met at a sleepaway camp and he was not okay. And he asked me if I wanted to make a suicide pact with him.

Speaker 32 In my head, I knew I'm not doing that, but socially, I didn't really know how to say no. So I entered into the pact and my parents found out and they were even more terrified than they were before.

Speaker 32 All of that came to a head and my mom realized we have to do something. We have to keep her alive.
All of that. was the trigger for going away to Second Nature.

Speaker 32 My mom is a mental health provider, so she's in the industry and knew of this consulting firm.

Speaker 32 She met an educational consultant named Jennifer, who worked very closely with Second Nature and other programs to, quote unquote, place students with the right therapist and program.

Speaker 32 They told my parents that this was a very targeted, proven, and safe way for me to escape the triggers that was causing that turmoil, the reasons you can send your child to second nature is like bad grades, depression, social anxiety, inability to connect, getting arrested, doing heroin.

Speaker 32 What they really, really emphasize and focus on, especially when selling this to parents, is your child is going to die if you don't interfere.

Speaker 32 For my parents, they felt like they had no other options but to save my life and spend an unreal amount of money on a torture program. I actually met with Jen twice.

Speaker 32 She was a very tough, no-nonsense person, but I think looking back in a way that kind of made her a bully, you can't shit a shitter. She said that to me multiple times.

Speaker 32 I was supposed to take that to mean I can't lie to Jen. She's going to know what's going on in my head regardless.
And it's too late. I didn't have a choice.

Speaker 32 They just gave me the information about what was about to happen so that I wasn't woken up by a transport service and taken in the middle of the night.

Speaker 32 It was presented as more of a camp, a therapeutic backpacking trip camp. It was very structured, very safe, but I'd be in the outdoors where I love to be.
That's why Second Nature was chosen for me.

Speaker 32 She said, you're going to be outside under the stars and you'll hike, you're camping, you're with other girls your age, and you're going to meet with your therapist twice a week.

Speaker 32 They're going to help you get your life back on track.

Speaker 32 She made it sound tolerable, like I would come out of this program a stronger and healthier, productive kid and move on with my life to be very successful. She sold me on a lie.

Speaker 32 I didn't know that until I got there, though.

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Speaker 32 I was sent away April 13th. I had just turned 14 and I was in eighth grade.

Speaker 32 I

Speaker 32 woke up early. My parents drove me to the airport.
I got on a plane by myself and I arrived in Vegas. I didn't know who was coming to pick me up.

Speaker 32 Thankfully, I saw two people with a sign with my name on it and they were absolutely floored.

Speaker 32 that I just showed up alone because that is almost unheard of In the TTI, most kids get woken up in the middle of the night by a transport service. They drove me to Utah.

Speaker 32 We stopped for a Jimmy John sandwich. That was my last meal.
I had a physical at some suburban house, and that was its own terrifying experience.

Speaker 32 My record of that physical is very, very sparse, but I do remember an internal exam. So after the physical, they took me to

Speaker 32 the Second Nature HQ where they took everything from me. They strip searched me.
I had to do a coffin squat in case I put anything up there.

Speaker 32 During that first physical where the cavity search occurred, I knew this is not right.

Speaker 32 Either my parents have lied to me and they just said these things to get me to go willingly or they have no idea that this is happening.

Speaker 32 But I knew that everything that I did or said was now going to be controlled and that nothing was private. So I tried to stay calm.
They gave me all of my backpack equipment.

Speaker 32 Then they blindfolded me and they drove me out into the wilderness. I think it was about an hour, and I arrived at that camp where they had set up for the day.
It was the last snow of spring.

Speaker 32 They made me sit on an inch thick Walmart yoga mat that they cut into squares.

Speaker 32 It was tattered and they had put a tiny tarp over me and I just sat there in the snow in my zip-off hiking pants and a t-shirt and a fleece jacket.

Speaker 32 And they said, you have to write your life story now. And so I just sat shivering, starting to write.
It was terrifying.

Speaker 32 And I'm looking over and there's a huge tarp and all the girls are sitting under it with staff. They're around a fire and they're laughing and eating and cooking dinner.

Speaker 32 They told me that nobody was allowed to talk to me until I finished my life story. And that initial period is called earth phase.

Speaker 32 You can't join the group or you can't move forward in the program until you've written your life story and then you read it aloud to the rest of the group.

Speaker 32 And how long are you typically in this earth phase where you can't talk to anybody? I think about 72 hours.

Speaker 32 Another thing, the first night that I spent there, it's called a burrito where they wrap you in a tarp inside your sleeping bag, and then you have to sleep in between two staff members so that you can't run away.

Speaker 32 You're just like in the dirt, in the snow, unable to move. I was forced to sleep between the two staff members and gender did not matter.
There were a lot of male staff members.

Speaker 32 I I had no rights and no ability to communicate what I was comfortable and not comfortable with. It was terrifying.

Speaker 32 I think the most sinister thing about the program is they make every effort to dehumanize you from the second that you're in their custody.

Speaker 32 Every step of the way of these programs is to strip you of all humanity. So by the time I got to the group, I didn't even have a name anymore.
I had a number.

Speaker 32 The group I was in was for girls 15 to 17, but my parents and Jen, the educational consultant, believed that because I was so intelligent and manipulative and conniving, that if I went to the younger girls' group for age 13 to 14, 15, that I would manipulate the therapist.

Speaker 32 So I went to the older girls' group. At first, staff were explaining protocols and then I was assigned a mentor.
We are also assigned numbers and when one person leaves you move up in the count.

Speaker 32 So my mentor was number one and she was the only person that was allowed to talk to me but it could not be out of earshot and that's what they call having a conversation with somebody that cannot be heard by staff.

Speaker 32 And if you do so, that is a huge rule violation. My mentor explained the bulk of the behavior rules to me and like the daily life.

Speaker 32 I think the emphasis was mostly on the fact that I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody until I finished writing my life story.

Speaker 32 They really control the amount of information that you have at first too, because if I had known the rules moving forward or more information about the phase system and what life was about to be like, then I would have probably taken more drastic measures to escape.

Speaker 32 The fire phase begins when you have read your life story and then comes the impact letter.

Speaker 32 The impact letter is essentially a letter that your parents or whomever sent you away writes to you and it details why you got sent away and what you need to do to come home and how you are the problem.

Speaker 32 Their guidelines for the impact letter is also terrifying terrifying because they say, do not give your child any hope. We call this future information FI.

Speaker 32 Do not tell them that they're coming home after wilderness. Do not tell them that you believe any amount of their story.

Speaker 32 Be as devastating and sharp as you can be and hurtful because this is your opportunity to force them to do the work. The structure of Second Nature is that we are the issue.

Speaker 32 Nothing that that has happened outside of ourselves is anybody else's fault. So when you look at dysfunctional or abusive family systems, it's not the person that's molesting you's fault.

Speaker 32 It's your fault. My parents wrote me an impact letter, two of them.
The first time that you see and read that letter is in front of the group, and it is devastating.

Speaker 32 The impact letter is designed to destroy any and all hope that you had that your parents will help you, that you you can leave.

Speaker 32 It was pages and pages of gut punch after gut punch, and they're all watching you, hearing your deepest, darkest secrets that may or may not even be true.

Speaker 32 After you have read those letters, then comes the attack therapy, and the group just starts picking you apart, and they tear you to pieces too. Essentially, you are a carcass by the end of it.

Speaker 32 You have been killed by the predators that are your parents or that letter. And then the group is like, ooh, there's still flesh left.
And they eat the rest of you. And then you are nothing.

Speaker 32 I remember after reading my impact letters, I was nothing. And they said, you can go now and feel some feelings.
And so I went behind a huge juniper tree. I was maybe 10 feet away from everybody else.

Speaker 32 And I just cried. I realized, this is it.
This moment, I will never be the same. I'm broken.

Speaker 32 Can you explain a little bit more about the number system and how that was used throughout your time in the program? It's called the count,

Speaker 32 and it is used to make sure that we are where we need to be, that we are not running away and we're not talking to each other. Essentially, it is to control us and our dynamic.

Speaker 32 They'd wake us up in the morning and they would would yell, Good morning, group four.

Speaker 32 And as we packed up our stuff, we would have to do the count off. So we'd yell one, two, three, and then so on.

Speaker 32 Every night they would take our shoes from our shelter so that we couldn't run away in the night. We would yell, one pickup.

Speaker 32 And that means that you're ready for a staff member to come and take your shoes because you are in your sleeping bag ready to sleep. We also got stuck in a horrible storm.

Speaker 32 I truly did not know if I was going to survive that storm. We had to yell into the screaming wilderness our number.
So I guess from their perspective, it's safety, but it's not.

Speaker 32 And then when we use the restroom, we are told to take a direction. And that means you just walk in a direction.

Speaker 32 And while you're walking, trying to find a place to go to the bathroom, you're yelling your number very, very loudly so that people know where you are and what you're doing

Speaker 32 when

Speaker 32 you move up a phase they do a ceremony and it's this weird cult-like thing where the other girls will create this circle or whatever with rocks and then they'll like be really ceremonial and super deep like this marks your transition to this and it's a reward-based system but the rewards are basic necessities

Speaker 32 so fire phase doesn't really have rewards, but as soon as you get to the next phase, which is water phase, what you get is a crazy creek. And that is a fucking chair that folds.

Speaker 32 It's like a cradle almost. There are no legs.
So you're still on the ground. That's what everybody is working towards, the right to not sit on a two by two scrap of foam.
And that's how they get you.

Speaker 32 And I still have my crazy creek. To this day, I still use it.
Can you talk about the basics of Second Nature? What gear, hygiene access, and other sort of supplies were you given?

Speaker 32 We get a backpacking backpack, and you get a sleeping bag. I arrived during the last snow, so they gave me a summer sleeping bag.
So I was freezing and had almost no ability to keep warm.

Speaker 32 They give you two to three pairs of underwear, I think. A couple pairs of socks, some boxers, two t-shirts of different colors, two bright orange, two red.
You've got notebooks as well and pens.

Speaker 32 Hygiene was a huge thing, and I think that was one of their main sources of humiliation and dehumanization because we were out there for so long and we bathed so little.

Speaker 32 They told us that wearing deodorant would cause mold to grow on our armpits. So we didn't have deodorant.
They call it a billy bath, and it's an empty number 10 tin can.

Speaker 32 And that's what we use to cook over the fire as well. They would fill it with water and sometimes put it over the fire in their sexy brochure.

Speaker 32 They say, we heat up the water on a fire for you guys to bathe. But they don't.
You have to walk, take a direction, and just pour this water over your head while screaming your name repeatedly.

Speaker 32 We weren't clean. It was humiliating.
You're in the snow. You have no towel.
You're exhausted. You're filthy.

Speaker 32 And you're just pouring this can of water over your head in some weird, perverse way of cleaning yourself. You don't know who's watching you, or you don't know if they can see you.

Speaker 32 So for all we know, we're yelling our names and identifying our location for them and some random person is watching us. It was so nauseating smelling myself.

Speaker 32 I would just cry constantly because I could smell myself and the smell of my sleeping bag was horrible. They were not happy that my hair was getting so tangled.

Speaker 32 All of the inhumane things that they were doing to us, they could be washed away. My hands are caked and my face is filthy, but you can wash that away.

Speaker 32 It's very much like an abuser only hitting you underneath your clothing. And I think that's a very telling metaphor for wilderness.

Speaker 32 We did have toilet paper, but not very much. We had to pack everything out.
So if you use toilet paper, you have to carry it with you once it's used.

Speaker 32 And if you have your period, they give us cardboard tampons. All of your waste, you have to take with you.
It's extremely humiliating.

Speaker 32 I was getting sick every single day because the food did not agree with me. I'd wake up every single morning and this is disgusting.
but this is true.

Speaker 32 At one point, we were in a valley and there there were a lot of cows around us. And so cows would shit and they'd make a cow patty and it literally looked like a frisbee.

Speaker 32 I was so sick that every single morning I'd make a cow patty. It was before everyone woke up and I have no shoes.

Speaker 32 So I'm like walking barefoot behind my shelter, making a cow patty and using pine needles as toilet paper. What was your food allowance?

Speaker 32 They called it a bear bag. It's just a drawstring bag that we would hang over trees.
For breakfast, every single day, we ate granola and oats with powdered milk and water.

Speaker 32 That was one of the most terrible for me. Lunch was usually a tortilla with, we had peanut butter and tuna fish.
I hate peanut butter.

Speaker 32 So I ate a tortilla with a packet of tuna and a little bit of soy sauce drizzled on it every single day for lunch. And then for dinner, we had beans and rice, and sometimes we'd have broccoli.

Speaker 32 We were usually given a black of cheese for the entire week, and we would carry it with us. And there was no refrigeration.
It was in our pack. So sweaty cheese.
We had some snacks.

Speaker 32 They call it gorp, good old raisins and peanuts. I think about twice a week we would get water and fresh fruit delivered.

Speaker 32 by staff and they drive a truck to our campsite and leave some food and water for us. No silverware.
If you want to eat with a spoon, you have to carve a spoon out of wood.

Speaker 32 And if you don't, you eat with a stick. The entire time I was there, I was working on a spoon, but it was not going well.
So I ate with the same stick.

Speaker 32 Every Friday, they called it Freestyle Friday, and we would have the privilege of earning some protein.

Speaker 32 Usually it was like a bratwurst or Dollar Tree hot dogs, but we would have to perform for the meat to earn it. I have our field jargon dictionary, and this was printed in 2009.

Speaker 32 So there's a definition here. It's called losing or earning sugars.

Speaker 32 And they say, because extraneous sugar and spices adds no nutritious benefit, but provides tremendous external motivation, the program uses brown sugar, cocoa, spices, availability as a behavioral negotiation.

Speaker 32 And that's verbatim. And sugar does provide nutritional benefit because we're in the middle of the wilderness walking miles a day with 60-plus-pound packs.

Speaker 32 One time they gave us, I think they called it our drug of choice, and they let us choose what candy bar we wanted. And this was supposed to be some sort of metaphor for life.

Speaker 32 I got a candy bar and I didn't eat it for like two weeks. I still had it because I was trying to hold on to some sort of motivation or sweetness.

Speaker 32 And it turned into a huge issue where it was supposed to be like this attack therapy learning opportunity for me.

Speaker 32 And so at one point I was forced in front of everybody to eat the candy bar and it was humiliating. So everything is a learning moment to traumatize a child.

Speaker 32 They didn't want you to have any semblance of control over the situation, even when you received the reward or chose to eat it. Correct.
We didn't have lighters.

Speaker 32 The only way that we could start a fire was if we busted it ourselves with a bow drill. So you've got your curved piece of wood string attached to that, and then you wrap something called a spindle.

Speaker 32 It's usually a piece of sage that you've carved into a round stick. We had to make that ourselves.
So we'd have to go out and find the curved piece of wood and then cut it.

Speaker 32 Part of a busting set is called a top rock. It's the rock that you apply the pressure to the spindle to create the ember on a sage base.

Speaker 32 And the top rock has to have a hole or like a dent and a divot in the top of it to keep the spindle in place.

Speaker 32 If we did not bust a flame as a group, then our consequence was to cold hydrate ramen for that meal.

Speaker 32 We had ramen packets and you'd crush it all up, pour your cold water in it and you would let it sit for at least 30 minutes, possibly longer. It would soften enough that you could eat it.

Speaker 32 So that was definitely one of the worst consequences. I went into the program and I had two casts.

Speaker 32 They were removable, but because of my self-harm and hitting the brick walls, I had fractured and torn almost all of the tendons in my hands and my knuckles.

Speaker 32 I had a lot of nerve damage, but in order to do basic tasks and literally do anything in the program, I couldn't wear the casts.

Speaker 32 So I was trying to make fire with fractured hands and torn tendons in both hands. Shortly before that, I had dislocated my shoulder.
So I was also recovering from that.

Speaker 32 The toll that it took to even try to bust a flame was excruciating. Also, we were not allowed to have flashlights.
We had to earn them by busting a certain amount of flames.

Speaker 32 So I didn't get a flashlight because I couldn't physically do it. Did your parents know they were going to force you to remove your cast in order to participate in the program? I honestly don't know.

Speaker 32 I know that in the photos, I'm not wearing my cast. So they had to have known.
They knew at Second Nature as well that I was supposed to be wearing them, but they didn't actually care.

Speaker 32 And the staff definitely took a lot of joy in watching us suffer. We're in the middle of the wilderness, we're teenage girls and we're surrounded by mandated reporters.

Speaker 32 But those mandated reporters are the ones doing the abusing. The field staff are not licensed more often than not.
They're in college. Some of them are psychology students.

Speaker 32 Often they were going to the same colleges. They're paid very poorly.
And there is really not much clinical supervision. And they work a week on and a week off.

Speaker 32 They're the ones in charge and in control of our lives. We had this melting pot of staff members that were all living and working and existing together and they all loved the outdoors.

Speaker 32 So it was a very tightly knit community of field staff. I think that made it worse for the clients like us at the end of the day because they very much protected their own.

Speaker 32 And so if somebody was being abusive, They, for the most part, covered it up and said nothing.

Speaker 32 A rule about reading your impact letter and about a lot of these groups is that you don't bring this stuff up outside of a controlled environment like that, and you do not use it against people.

Speaker 32 But this staff member did, and she would mock me all the time. She was terrible to me.
I don't know where she ended up in life, but I really hope that life has not been kind to her, honestly.

Speaker 32 There were a lot of these people that were just shit human beings. I know that they weren't all bad.
And I think that's kind of the tough part about these programs.

Speaker 32 There were some good people in there. However, they had to enforce rules and perpetuate the cycle of abuse because there was no other way to exist in that space.
So they were complicit.

Speaker 32 However, there were probably two to three. that really were kind people and made a huge difference in my life.

Speaker 32 We were supposed to make a fire bag, like a busting bag out of leather, but I didn't want to do that. So I instead made a football and then some juggling balls.

Speaker 32 And one of the other staff members, I gave her mine and she mailed them to me when I got out. After the fact, I think I must have been a junior or senior in high school.

Speaker 32 One of them asked me to write a small aside for an article she was writing about how wilderness had changed my life.

Speaker 32 And at the time, I was terrified of going back and saying anything bad about Second Nature. So I wrote a very nice piece for her article, article, which is hilarious to me now.

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Speaker 32 What do you recall about the day-to-day at Second Nature?

Speaker 32 We would wake up in the morning and they'd give us maybe 12 minutes to pack up all our shit and then we would eat breakfast and then walk. and walk and walk.
And we didn't know how far we were going.

Speaker 32 We just had to follow. We hiked almost every day.
And throughout the day, they had something called a standing group.

Speaker 32 If you're feeling any emotion whatsoever and you just want to talk about it, because that's how you move through the program, is by demonstrating that you understand what they want you to do.

Speaker 32 You just out of nowhere call a standing group. And then everybody stops what they're doing and you all gather.
And then there is a structure, a formula for how you communicate that. It goes like this.

Speaker 32 I am feeling blank. and I'm feeling this way when blank happens.
My hope inside my control is blank and my hope outside my control is blank. Everybody gives you feedback at that point.

Speaker 32 It's just more attack therapy. This is the only way you're allowed to communicate with people.

Speaker 32 Each day is structured, but yet it is not because they decide when and where and what they want to attack you for. Almost every day, either a staff member or one of us would run a group.

Speaker 32 Often we would have to present an assignment.

Speaker 32 One of them is called the letter of accountability, where you take accountability for everything you've ever done for any reason to anybody in your family. It is also disgusting.

Speaker 32 One of the girls had to take accountability for the uncle that molested her. One of them was kidnapped and used for sex trafficking for months.

Speaker 32 And they forced her to tell all of us about being gang raped and the STDs and the pregnancies that occurred. We had a lot of groups where you share all of that with everybody.

Speaker 32 And then they come back and they attack you for it. And they critique whether or not you were accepting all of that responsibility that you need to be.
There was a girl that showed up.

Speaker 32 She's like 15, 16 years old. And she was taken by a transport service and put on a plane with them and handcuffed.
And she did heroin on the plane in the bathroom. So she came to Second Nature.

Speaker 32 And when she arrived in the group, that's when she started coming down. And she was going through withdrawals in the snow.

Speaker 32 That was the first time I ever saw a naked body was this girl stripping naked and throwing herself into the snow, trying to throw her head into a rock so that she would have to go to the hospital.

Speaker 32 And that didn't work because male staff members tackled her and then immobilized her.

Speaker 32 But her next step then was to attack one of us because if she was a danger to the rest of us, then they would have to take her out of there.

Speaker 32 So she's trying to find the smallest person in the group, which was me. And another girl,

Speaker 32 I didn't know what drugs were. Someone with social anxiety doesn't need to be in a group with someone on heroin in the snow.
But that's how they make their money.

Speaker 32 They just throw you all in a melting pot and pretend like you deserve it.

Speaker 32 At first, the girls really didn't like me, They felt like I was putting up walls and I wasn't being honest with them because I told them that I'd never had sex or done any drugs.

Speaker 32 So for the first two weeks, it was just horrible. They kept attacking me for that.

Speaker 32 But at one point, they had a walls group and they stacked these, they call them blueies, and they are these massive like five or seven gallon containers that are blue plastic.

Speaker 32 and they fill that with water and that's the water they supply us with. Sometimes as a punishment, you have to carry it on a hike and they're at least 50 pounds and huge.

Speaker 32 Like you can't get your arms around it as a child. But they stacked, I think like 10 of them around me in this weird ceremony and they said, these are all your walls.
You have to break them down.

Speaker 32 And they wanted me to disclose something every time they removed a bluey from this wall. That was just staff's idea because they wanted to encourage growth.

Speaker 32 So at one point I had to confess to doing drugs and having sex, even though I had never done so. But if you deny that, then you are lying.
That's also part of the abuse of the program.

Speaker 32 They don't even care what's real and what isn't. All they care about is the disclosure itself.
To get out of the program, you have to tell them what they want to hear.

Speaker 32 They want you to tell them what they want everybody to tell them so that their program maintains that structure. Like we got her to confess.

Speaker 32 She was not being truthful this whole time and we finally broke her. In speaking with other survivors, I'm not alone in that, that forced false confession.

Speaker 32 It's just this ridiculously manufactured progress. The growth I exhibited, it was not real.
It took me two weeks to figure out the me that they needed from me.

Speaker 32 And then I did my assignments in record time. And then I got in trouble for that too, because I was doing it too fast.
If you don't act like them, then you're not going to get out.

Speaker 32 You don't have a choice. And I think that's been a common thread in a lot of the TTI programs where you have to abuse others in order to survive, essentially.

Speaker 32 I was reading through one of my notebooks last night and I saw that I was a mentor to another girl when she arrived as an Earthphaser. I said she had a really hard day today.

Speaker 32 She was feeling all of the things that I was feeling when I arrived. And so I told her that it was okay because I felt that way.

Speaker 32 But then I gave her the much needed kick in the butt because she has to get her shit together.

Speaker 32 What they did to me was so beyond cruel and it totally normalized what I was about to go through and the abuse that I was enduring.

Speaker 32 Then they made me turn around and do it right back to this other young girl that didn't deserve it either. And the only way to get through the program is become a mentor.

Speaker 32 You have to help them get to the place that you're at so that you can leave.

Speaker 32 Going to bed was what I looked forward to the most. I was desperate to be away from all of it.
I was sleeping on top of a yoga mat in a summer sleeping bag in the snow, and we didn't have a tent.

Speaker 32 My tent was a tarp that I just had to tie to things. So it was sort of hovering above me.
No pillow, no pajamas, no nothing. So you're just on the ground, wet and dirty, and there are rocks.

Speaker 32 My hips were killing me, my back. You wake up in the morning and you have to pull that pack onto your back and your hips and walk six, seven miles aimlessly.
The stress on my body was unreal.

Speaker 32 I was just cold and in pain and so grateful to be cold and in pain because I wasn't going about the day. I had a break.
In wilderness, I learned how to lucid dream.

Speaker 32 I just remember flying over everything and leaving and going home. In those dreams, I was with my family because I just want to be back and I want to show them that I really love them.

Speaker 32 Sleeping in those inhumane conditions was my favorite part.

Speaker 32 When did you first speak to your parents? We never spoke on the phone. We didn't have access to any technology, even a watch.
We weren't allowed to know the time. We wrote letters.

Speaker 32 I would handwrite my letters and then give them to staff, and they would scan them and send them to my parents. And then my parents would type letters and send them to the office.

Speaker 32 They would print them out and give them to me. So it was very primitive communication.
Also, staff was reading everything.

Speaker 32 I had to operate under the assumption that nothing was private, which really affected and controlled what I reported to my parents.

Speaker 32 Throughout the week, they would take photos of us and then send them to our parents. There was a series of, I think, three photos that they had taken of me right when I arrived.

Speaker 32 And I'm sitting in the group. The first photo, I look absolutely miserable.
The second picture, I have a smirk on my face.

Speaker 32 And my dad, in a letter, he said, I got your first letter saying that this was not for you and everything in me was ready to just fly out to Utah, take you home and get you out of this because I believed you.

Speaker 32 And then I saw the second photo. And then I realized you're just manipulating us again.
You just want to leave because you want the easy way out and you haven't changed at all.

Speaker 32 I'm not going to let you manipulate me anymore. So you're staying.
That was another moment where I was obliterated. You can smile and be devastated and be abused.

Speaker 32 On their website, they're literally saying that your child is going to say that we're abusing them and that they're not okay and they're lying. They just want to leave.

Speaker 32 My parents came for a visit for two days. They stayed with me in the way that I stayed, but they had little cots, I think.
They did see kind of where I was, but it was a preview.

Speaker 32 When parents come to visit the program, what they see and what they experience is very tightly controlled. I couldn't tell them really the details.

Speaker 32 I was too terrified to tell them until I was well beyond adulthood that they were going to send me back somehow to the adult group. There's an adult group there too, but that is technically voluntary.

Speaker 32 Paul was my therapist. He is a massive man.
He's towering. He talks very gently and quietly, but it is menacing and it is bone-chillingly cold.
I remember my first session with him. He was very quiet.

Speaker 32 I just remember him letting me talk and asking me basic questions and then letting me go. And that was the end of my session.
But after my impact letter, everything changed.

Speaker 32 At first, first, he was humoring me. I was saying, I'm not supposed to be here.
This isn't okay. I'm not okay.
He was just letting me believe that he believed me.

Speaker 32 I would meet with him, I think, once a week. The only involvement that Paul really had with our group was on the days that he did come out, he would be there two days in a row.

Speaker 32 I think he would run a group or two each day and sit with us and talk with all of us together, but then he would do his individual sessions with us.

Speaker 32 Or if there was a parent visit, that would only happen when Paul was there because you would do family sessions. This shocks me even to this day, but there was another staff member in our sessions.

Speaker 32 They had unprecedented access to therapeutic sessions with children unregulated in any other situation. You cannot sit in someone's session.

Speaker 32 I had an adult in those sessions and she was horrible to me.

Speaker 32 I think that's also really important to say that there were people that had access to information about us that absolutely should not have had access.

Speaker 32 And that was because Paul allowed them to have that access in the middle of the wilderness where there are no cameras.

Speaker 32 I can recall almost everything, but my sessions with Paul are like this weird black mist, and I can't see much beyond it. What I remember of Paul is that very calm, menacing presence.

Speaker 32 And it really surfaced in groups when someone would be saying something or he would think that they were stuck or lying. And it would get really serious, really fast.

Speaker 32 He had so much control and he knew it. When you would say something, he'd just stop and he would look at you.
He would be very quiet. And you'd just feel this weight like, did I say something wrong?

Speaker 32 What consequences is going to have? Did I just tack on three weeks to my stay? So he was really scary to me, but I knew that if I acted as such, I wouldn't leave. He was hand-selected for me by Jen.

Speaker 32 She picked him because I was a shitter and he would call me on it.

Speaker 32 And so I also knew that in the back of my mind, that if this doesn't work out with him, I'm fucked because this is who I'm supposed to be here with. I remember it was very physical.

Speaker 32 He very much encouraged hugs. He wanted us to hug him.
The girls told me that they always call him Santa because, like, he's so big and so round. But to me, he was Ed Kemper.

Speaker 32 The whole point was to force me to talk. So I went somewhere and was literally tortured for months, forced to scream my name, forced to be a number, to talk in groups.

Speaker 32 They programmed me out of me, and I had no other options. Looking back now as a diagnosed Autistic person, that was torture.
I never should have been there. And Paul was so on board with it.

Speaker 32 He was so happy that I talked in group. A huge part of this abuse and what Paul, his main focus was to take my voice away from me and make it his and make it theirs using their vocabulary.

Speaker 32 Would he communicate information between you and your parents, like as a middle person?

Speaker 32 They gave my parents progress notes. I'm not really sure how exactly they communicated with him, but I think that he did just write notes to them.

Speaker 32 And there's a chance that they had a phone call or two with him while I was there. He gave my parents assignments as well, baked into the program.

Speaker 32 They're sending me letters with photos of me as a child. Like, look at this girl.
We want her back. We want you to be happy again.

Speaker 32 And that's kind of, I think, the narrative that Paul was spinning for them was she's getting so much better. She's participating.
She's happy now. And I'm like, I was never fucking happy.

Speaker 32 Nobody listened to me. This is attachment-based trauma.
And she's also undiagnosed Autistic. Shockingly, Paul made me read the most inappropriate, traumatizing book.

Speaker 32 that you could ever assign a child like that in the wilderness. The first one is called One Day in the Life of Ivan Donisevic.

Speaker 32 and it is a book about One Day in the Life of a man at a Russian labor camp. And this whole book is about dehumanization and the struggle to persevere through that.

Speaker 32 One of the lines is, a man who is warm can never understand a man who is cold. I have never been cold like that.
You feel numb because you are freezing.

Speaker 32 That magnified every emotion, every feeling tenfold, if not more. That changes everything about you.
It changed me because I don't like to feel wind on my skin and I don't like being cold.

Speaker 32 I'm 30 years old now. This was 16 years ago.
And feeling the wind on my skin brings me right back to Second Nature. Was there educational programming at Second Nature?

Speaker 32 There was, but it wasn't real. I looked through my assignments and it was a whole lot of absolutely fucking nothing.

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Speaker 32 So you're technically in school and everything's independent study. I would say the only thing that was real was my independent study PE

Speaker 32 because we were in the wilderness walking aimlessly for months. I think I had to do a book report.
An essential required reading for everyone is Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl.

Speaker 32 He was a Holocaust survivor and he developed logotherapy. The concept is anyone can take everything from you, but you still have you and that is all that matters.

Speaker 32 We read Man's Search for Meaning because he almost died and he had nothing and they took his manuscript away from him, his life's work, right when he arrived. So he wrote it in his head.

Speaker 32 And then when he survived, he published it and he became famous. But they manufactured that adversity.
and that trauma that he went through and they just gave it to us.

Speaker 32 He talked about how some of the Jewish prisoners, when they were given responsibility, they were told to police their own.

Speaker 32 They abused their fellow Jews and it made them feel like they had to be more cruel. Otherwise, they'd lose that position and that safety.

Speaker 32 And I think that's really telling and it's really sad that we're reading that as our required information. And then they're making us do it to each other.

Speaker 32 The books, especially, I mean, One Day in the Life and Man's Search for Meaning are about imprisonment, dehumanization, and survival at all costs.

Speaker 32 And it's very interesting that that whole concept is what they did to us.

Speaker 32 It was supposed to be information that we learned to be more resilient. Like you can suffer and it's okay.

Speaker 32 You don't know that you're going to be funneled into another program because they don't tell you that. I was not funneled, but that became a huge conflict as well within my experience.

Speaker 32 Towards the end, I think I had told staff, I'm not going to a school next. I'm going home after this.
And they thought that was hilarious.

Speaker 32 They mocked me and they consistently said, you're not going home after this. You're going somewhere else.
Jen told me, and so did my parents, that I would be graduating eighth grade with my peers.

Speaker 32 So that's what I believed. But when I got there and I kept saying, like, they're going to come.
I'm going to get out of here. I'm gonna have my family visit soon.

Speaker 32 Staff consistently said, do not hope for that. You're setting yourself up for a huge disappointment because they're not coming to get you.
They literally taught us not to hope anymore.

Speaker 32 That was also another form of brainwashing and conditioning. To this day, I often find myself thinking, I cannot get excited about this until it's happening because they told me not to hope.

Speaker 32 When you force somebody who has a communication difference to fit into this weird little mold, it's like foot binding.

Speaker 32 You're breaking this person's feet to make them smaller, to make them fit into progressively smaller spaces. And that is the reward.
You fit into the mold. You are happy now.

Speaker 32 You are ready to be successful in life. And you're welcome.
We did this. And please shut the door on your way out.

Speaker 32 A lot of these people didn't go to college because their parents in a panic, trying to save their lives, were convinced to give all of this money, tens of thousands of dollars to these programs.

Speaker 32 And there goes their future. The point is to save our lives so we have one.
But in that process, they took it. My parents thought I came back and I was me again and I was dead.

Speaker 32 I don't know if they do this to everybody, but I thought I was graduating. They were hinting at it.

Speaker 32 Paul had been there for two days already and sat down with me for like maybe 15, 20 minutes and said, so you're graduating tomorrow. And I just collapsed.

Speaker 32 My parents showed up the next day and I also collapsed.

Speaker 32 I think there's a moment in one of the documentaries, the program, where a survivor is talking about when he saw his parents, he just dropped to his knees and started sobbing like he couldn't walk.

Speaker 32 It was such a powerful moment for him. And I did the same.
I just could not use my muscles. I couldn't believe that this was ending.

Speaker 32 And then it's this stupid graduation ceremony again, where they just gather some rocks and they make it into a really nice pile. Everyone's like, we did it.
And they hold hands.

Speaker 32 Then you pack up, you say goodbye to everyone and you leave. That's kind of it.
You go back to HQ and they give you your belongings. And I got a t-shirt that says, home is where the tarp is.

Speaker 32 They gave my parents and myself a nice glossy photo book, and it has photos of me in the program, and it has some random photos of the surrounding area, like nature shots.

Speaker 32 It's a photo book of what I went through. It's really disturbing.
I went home directly after wilderness, and the girls did not think that was okay. They were really mad at me and resentful.

Speaker 32 The staff were pissed that I wasn't going to a boarding school after that.

Speaker 32 And I think it's only because my mom was in the industry and was able to convince Paul that I did have help and will have continued care when I leave. You were there total nine and a half weeks.
Yeah.

Speaker 32 My parents came to pick me up and we drove home to San Diego. We stopped in Vegas for the night and I walked through Vegas with my pack on, smelling like an animal.
I was nauseating.

Speaker 32 I had to take three showers and I was still filthy. My parents didn't even want to bring my pack home in the car because it was a biohazard.
Then I went home and was kind of in shock.

Speaker 32 It was really hard for me to talk to people. I was terrified that I was out of earshot all the time.

Speaker 32 I had a really hard time with eye contact and speaking in general, but I was also so afraid that not speaking and quote-unquote falling back would get me sent back there because that was always a looming threat.

Speaker 32 I think a month after I got back, my parents, they said, we're taking you somewhere. It's a surprise.
I was so weak. I couldn't eat.

Speaker 32 I felt like I couldn't use my body for days because my parents, they wouldn't tell us where we were going. We got on a plane.
It turns out we were going on a cruise to Alaska.

Speaker 32 I was horrified to go on a cruise ship. I was just nauseous that I did something wrong.
I just constantly was like, I love you guys. I'm so happy and I'm so sorry for everything that I did.

Speaker 32 It was all my fault and I'll never do it again. And I just want to be your daughter and I just want to be your sibling.
And that's where I was.

Speaker 32 And after the cruise, we started high school. I got out of wilderness in June and I started high school in August.

Speaker 32 If I felt like there was a disconnect in middle school, when I showed up in high school, it was a chasm. They were all worried about tests and friends and, you know, all that stuff.

Speaker 32 And I'm remembering someone else's flashback and how my therapist in wilderness made her walk through her PTSD flashback in real time in front of all of us.

Speaker 32 I didn't know how to talk about a math test with someone my age. do group assignments and participate actively in class.

Speaker 32 So instead, I was leaving class for seemingly no reason, and I would literally just go climb a tree on campus and sit in a tree.

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Speaker 32 I was like, this is a joke. None of these people understand what life is.
This is a really insulated bubble and I'm not a part of it anymore and I cannot pretend to be.

Speaker 32 You can't tell people the realities of it. When you leave, I was told to say I was at a camp.
It was very strongly suggested that I just don't talk about it at all because it's not appropriate.

Speaker 32 They don't need to know where I was. When I left middle school, I sort of disappeared.
And the storyline was that I was going to New York to spend some time with my aunt and my cousins.

Speaker 32 I can't talk about it. but I did and it leaked out in my writing.
I was so disturbed. It was very obvious.
Looking back, I'm now disturbed at how nobody said a thing.

Speaker 32 Nobody did anything really to help me. I'm writing in my dream journal, in creative writing, that I have a dream where I'm drowning.

Speaker 32 I'm underwater, and I'm looking up through the water, and I'm screaming. And all of the people in my life are looking at me, and they're laughing.
And I'm trying to reach out to get out of this water.

Speaker 32 And then I black out and I die. I'm like 15, 16 years old.
I turned that in to my teacher. I turned in so many assignments.
I wrote about the storm we were in and how I thought I was going to die.

Speaker 32 And they told us to strip naked after because we were wet. And I was wet for two weeks.
My entire wilderness experience, a lot of the rhetoric, I was told I was an addict. I'm addicted to teachers.

Speaker 32 I'm addicted to writing to them. I won't talk to my parents because I'm seeking comfort inappropriately.
When in reality, reality, I didn't have any support.

Speaker 32 I just wanted help and caring and understanding in a way that my parents could not give me. I communicated that through my writing, but where else was I? I was nowhere.

Speaker 32 I didn't have coworkers or friends. I had teachers, but it was turned into this perverse addiction that I was so ashamed of for years.

Speaker 32 Still, to this day, I'm really trying to unpack that and forgive myself and understand that I was just not okay. I was really disturbed and I needed help.

Speaker 32 I never went to a school dance. I didn't go to prom.

Speaker 32 I went bowling with three of my teachers, and we all wore dresses, and they bought me a corsage. That was senior prom.

Speaker 32 And even senior week, when we did senior night, the overnight on campus, and it's supposed to be like this huge culminating moment and event. And I ended up finding this corner.

Speaker 32 I hid because it became so apparent to me in that moment that I literally have nobody. I lied and said I didn't take my medication.
I had to leave, and my mom backed me up.

Speaker 32 I really didn't have a high school experience to this day.

Speaker 32 It makes me really sad because I may have had a chance to connect with people and to have a semi-okay childhood if I hadn't gone to wilderness. But they took all of that from me.

Speaker 32 When I left Second Nature, I saw Paul again when I was in high school. He was going to a conference somewhere in Southern California.

Speaker 32 I went with my mom and I was with him in the hotel restaurant and bar for a couple of hours. But all of that is also a blur.
I really don't know what happened or what we talked about.

Speaker 32 He added me as a friend on Facebook, maybe six months to a year after I left Second Nature. So I was underage still.

Speaker 32 I think I had at that point made a group on Facebook for the girls I was with, the few of them that we could find and like connect with. And Paul joined the group.

Speaker 32 And then Paul started adding other teenage girls, ones that I wasn't in wilderness with. He also made another group for his group in Second Nature.
And there are a ton of members in that.

Speaker 32 And they are all girls and now most of them women that were in the program with him. It's really disturbing.
To this day, I believe he posts on my Facebook happy birthday every year.

Speaker 32 I don't use Facebook anymore, but he would continue to comment on photos like of my first boyfriend and myself.

Speaker 32 Paul, he has been unfortunately inextricable from my own life from the moment that he got his claws in me. He has been a huge looming dark cloud in my life.

Speaker 32 I graduated high school and then I completed kind of a year of college and then some community college scattered throughout. My pursuit of education was all but lost.

Speaker 32 I ended up in the service industry and was bartending because of the way that I look. I am queer and I cut my hair off.
I cut my boobs off.

Speaker 32 For my entire adult life, I have always felt like I was forced into silence. And essentially, they took away so many of my opportunities to succeed in life to the point where I'm serving them.

Speaker 32 I think a lot of us are stuck at a certain point in life and at a certain income level because it totally changed my self-concept and my self-esteem.

Speaker 32 I just want to emphasize the fact that a lot of survivors, we're not in a great place in life, even though it's been decades. A lot of the people that survived this are neurodivergent.

Speaker 32 They come from very specific backgrounds and were stuck in it. A lot of the people that I know are now working in the industry.
They're converting us and then sucking us in. It's very, very cult-like.

Speaker 32 At what age were you diagnosed with autism? I think I was 27 years old. And that was after I was working security at a bar and I was assaulted.
and incurred a brain injury.

Speaker 32 I hadn't been in contact with my parents in like three years at that point. So I had, after the assault, ended up back in contact.

Speaker 32 I had been diagnosed as bipolar in my early 20s, I believe, and I was medicated. But the whole time, I did not believe that I was.
I had a conversation with my parents.

Speaker 32 I just mentioned, I think that I might be Autistic. And my mom's jaw dropped to the floor.
And suddenly everything in my life seemed to make sense.

Speaker 32 I was tested for autism a couple of months later, diagnosed, and everything changed because I think they realized that what I was saying or doing and the way I behaved my entire life totally made sense.

Speaker 32 That one piece of information, it was really, truly a magic pill.

Speaker 32 It just makes me sad, though, that sometimes we as human beings need that information in order to believe people or see their intentions truly.

Speaker 32 So often in these stories, survivors' neurodivergency was just seen as them being defiant or troubled.

Speaker 32 And really they just needed support and resources and were trying to do their best in a world that's not really made for them.

Speaker 32 I'm curious what it's like for you today with your relationship with your parents.

Speaker 32 It's really hard for me to process it and talk to my parents about it. They don't really want to know in the sense that there's so much guilt.

Speaker 32 And the less that they know about what I really went through, the better for them emotionally. I know my trauma isn't just my trauma.

Speaker 32 That makes me really angry and sad because I can't talk about it with them without them feeling like I did this to her. And then it becomes not about me anymore.

Speaker 32 So it's really hard hard to try to communicate that with them, especially as all of these documentaries and things are coming to the forefront.

Speaker 32 Paris Hilton, the second that she started talking about her experience, all of us started coming out of the woodwork saying, wait, we're allowed to talk about this now.

Speaker 32 We're adults and this was not okay.

Speaker 32 I don't think they're able to watch the documentaries. And that's caused a rift.

Speaker 32 Because it wasn't specifically the program I was sent to, I don't think that they're able able to believe that that could have happened to me.

Speaker 32 And none of these documentaries are about second nature specifically in their minds. How could that be true? I was painted as an unreliable narrator.
That's still my life. And that never changed.

Speaker 32 No matter how I move forward in life or try to communicate, the water is already dirty. I've been unable to drain it because I'm not the one.
who can pull that plug and then refill the water.

Speaker 32 It's been a really huge challenge. I've had to accept that this is my experience and my experience alone.

Speaker 32 And I need to move forward in life and not get so attached to talking about this with my parents. Unfortunately, I'm a lot stronger than they are because of what they did to me.

Speaker 32 As much as I love them, it's not about them. So it's definitely caused a rift.
And I know they feel it.

Speaker 32 Perhaps in the future, we'll be able to talk about it and we'll be able to address the very real abuse that I endured. The Reddit community has been huge and it has changed my life.

Speaker 32 I have been able to speak with survivors about these things. We have a lot of commonalities and a lot of memories and experiences that are very real and extremely concerning.

Speaker 32 But these people like Jen, the educational consultant and all of the people that did this to me, more than likely they will not face criminal charges.

Speaker 32 They've been buying houses off off of our blood and sweat and trauma. My gut feeling is that as we pursue it, most of them are going to slip through the cracks.

Speaker 32 To me, they deserve to go out into the wilderness. The punishment should be the crime.
I would love to see them in the middle of the snow in a t-shirt, filthy.

Speaker 32 I would love to see them take a billy bath with a fucking tomato soup can in the snow. and scream their name.
That's my deepest fantasy. This is a huge issue issue and it is systemic.

Speaker 32 And I think the emphasis should be on the survivors. We should be getting help.
We should be getting resources and media attention so that we can bring to light what they're doing is not okay.

Speaker 32 But instead, after months of being in the wilderness, having to scream my name, something in me broke.

Speaker 32 That has seriously affected my life because I'm moving forward into music production and I'm afraid of the sound of my own voice. It directly conflicts with music.

Speaker 32 I think in that way, they paralyzed me and they destroyed my life and my sense of self and my future because I'm still there. I catch myself so many times a week.

Speaker 32 I think I was not supposed to say that to somebody. And I'm a grown fucking adult and I'm not in the wilderness anymore.

Speaker 32 My parents often asked me after I got out of wilderness, if it was positive or, you know, how it changed my life.

Speaker 32 I always said, yeah, wilderness taught me that i cannot depend on anybody else for anything that no matter what happens i will get myself out of it i think they create a world in which our experience doesn't matter it is you move forward and you graduate you became what they wanted you to become much like a soldier and it did work because i never went back as i have processed this i realized just how detrimental this has been.

Speaker 32 As my body is deteriorating over the years, it all stems right back to wilderness. After leaving wilderness, I remember bending down to shave my legs and I felt excruciating pain in my back.

Speaker 32 All of my joints that were connected to wherever that backpack touched, my body, my shoulders, my neck, my hips, my back.

Speaker 32 All of that became so compressed, carrying that pack that's more than three quarters of my body weight for months sleeping on the ground destroyed my joints. My left shoulder dislocates in my sleep.

Speaker 32 I've been doing a lot of physical therapy for that. My hands are not okay.

Speaker 32 I now have a lot of scarring. I used to rock climb for a decade and I cannot because my joints are failing.
My feet have been through the ringer because my feet were so compressed.

Speaker 32 my shoes were too tight, the boots that they gave me, and they didn't get me a new pair of boots that were a little bit bigger for over a month.

Speaker 32 It's really hard for me to walk and stand for long periods of time. I've had four surgeries on my big toe.
I no longer have a joint. The tendon had to be repinned to my foot.
That didn't work.

Speaker 32 So they put a screw in it. and bone grew through the screw and then they took it out.
So I can't bend my toe. My balance is really bad.

Speaker 32 At a certain point, I kind of hit a threshold where my body just couldn't hold up to day-to-day life. So I took a really sharp downhill turn.

Speaker 32 To this day, my physical therapists are trying to get the ball of my shoulder to roll back to where it needs to be because that backpack on it made my shoulders and my neck just slump.

Speaker 32 And all of that gravity pulled my neck down as well. It's not uncommon.
I think there are a lot of survivors like myself whose main issues are neck, back, shoulders, feet, and hands.

Speaker 32 What do you hope that listeners will take away from hearing these stories? I really want people to understand that there is no such thing as a troubled teen. That is just a lie.

Speaker 32 That's been a blanket term that's been manufactured by an industry that's making billions of dollars off of that concept.

Speaker 32 I think the responsibility lies with the community and within the family system. We need to stop sending children away.
They are dying in these programs.

Speaker 32 Even if just their soul is dying, that's changing everything. I also think that we have to start talking about it more.

Speaker 32 This isn't something that should be trending momentarily while Paris Hilton is fighting for our rights. This is the stepping off point.
She was able to use her.

Speaker 32 horrible life experiences and that trauma to start this conversation and it needs to continue. Paul is still working in this industry.
He has been doing this for decades.

Speaker 32 He has a PhD, but he has been hopping from program to program. These are the people that we need to start asking questions of and talking about

Speaker 32 why are they moving from program to program? What's going on at these programs? We need to know the specifics. Recognize that they are very, very good at covering this up.

Speaker 32 But what they do is they shut down their program and they just take on a new name. People need to understand that just because one shuts down does not mean that it's gone.

Speaker 32 In the last couple of years, a lot of these programs have shut down. A lot of these lawsuits that have started, unfortunately, because children have died in their care.
We have to continue with this.

Speaker 32 And it's going to be a really long process, but people are starting to wise up. and listen to what the survivors are saying, which is that your child is not troubled.

Speaker 32 there's something going on beyond this and behind it we have to figure out how to approach that in a way that does not completely damage and destroy them i cannot thank you enough for all of your time and energy

Speaker 32 next time on something was wrong

Speaker 32 I have conversations with my dad now too, where he's like, I never would have thought to ask if you were going to get three meals a day, if you were going to be able to shower, if you were going to get medical attention, because these are all assumptions that parents would make.

Speaker 32 We had timeframes every single moment of every single day. And the lesson to be learned there was that there are always positive and negative consequences to life of everything that you do.

Speaker 32 If you have anxiety, if you've skipped a class, gotten in a fight with your parents, this could have been you.

Speaker 32 Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production. Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B.

Speaker 32 Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

Speaker 32 Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist, and Marissen Travis from WME.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 The theme song this season is You Think You by Gladrags from their album Wonder Under.

Speaker 32 To hear more music from them, follow the link in our episode notes or search for them on your favorite music streaming app.

Speaker 32 Speaking of episode notes, there 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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S24 Ep3: A Carcass

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