S24 Ep10: My Own Mother Wasn't Going to Save Me

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Speaker 20 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 20 As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.

Speaker 20 Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken psychopedia. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Speaker 20 Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season.

Speaker 20 Something was wrong, and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

Speaker 20 Today, you'll meet Molly, a survivor of the therapeutic boarding school, Turning Winds.

Speaker 20 Turning Winds was founded in 2002 by John Baisden Sr. and his son, son John Baisden Jr., according to public documents.
It's described as a family-run program with its main campus in Troy, Montana.

Speaker 20 But back in the 2000s, when Molly attended, Turning Winds operated in Idaho.

Speaker 20 Before launching Turning Winds, the Basdens were reportedly involved in another Montana and Idaho-based program called Glacier Mountain Expeditions, which John Basden Sr.

Speaker 20 allegedly started in 1996 alongside Larry Bauer.

Speaker 20 According to a spokesman review article from that year, the program took quote troubled teens end quote on a six-week backpacking trip with the intent of behavior modification.

Speaker 20 However, according to an announcement made by StrugglingTeens.com, a website that connects families and professionals with programs for teens with, quote, behavioral challenges, the partnership dissolved in 1999, and co-founder Larry Bauer went on to become the program director of Glacier Mountain Academy in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Speaker 20 Meanwhile, John Baisden Sr.

Speaker 20 established Glacier Mountain Educational Services and continued his work separately from Bauer, but Glacier Mountain Educational Services operations ended under serious scrutiny.

Speaker 20 In early 2002, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare revoked John Baisden Sr.'s foster care license for Glacier Mountain Educational Services, as reported by the Spokesman Review.

Speaker 20 Although an official statement wasn't released by the Department of Health and Welfare regarding the revocation, the Spokesman Review reported that it was in connection to a student-to-student abuse allegation.

Speaker 20 Bonner County filed a criminal complaint against Baisden Sr. for operating his program without a conditional use permit.
Despite having his license revoked, Baisden Sr.

Speaker 20 allegedly continued to recruit new clients and house teenagers in his foster home. Just a year later, the Baisden family opened a new program called Turning Winds.

Speaker 20 Over the years, the program has been linked to controversy. In 2005, a major incident at the Idaho campus led to legal action against the leadership.

Speaker 20 Allegedly, a 17-year-old student had fled the facility and was later returned by John Baisden Sr.

Speaker 20 The Baisdens were accused of child endangerment for allegedly beating the student upon his capture. However, the Basdens claim the student was aggressive and attacked them.

Speaker 20 The misdemeanor charges were eventually dropped, but consequently, John Basden Sr.

Speaker 20 and several of his family members filed a lawsuit accusing Bonner County officials of maliciously prosecuting the operators of a former boarding school in Coca-Lala, Idaho.

Speaker 20 According to court reports, this this lawsuit was dismissed in 2008.

Speaker 20 In 2015, it's alleged a 17-year-old girl jumped from an eight-foot balcony at the Turning Winds, Montana campus in an attempt to hurt herself.

Speaker 20 It's reported a helicopter was paged and an ambulance responded to the campus.

Speaker 20 The Turning Winds, Idaho facility eventually closed in the late 2000s, reportedly in part because of legal issues and operations shifted fully to Montana.

Speaker 20 Turning Winds is open to this day and continues to market itself to families across the country.

Speaker 20 At the time of this episode's release, Turning Winds has not responded to Broken Cycle Media's request for comment.

Speaker 20 Please take extra caution when listening to today's episode as there is discussion of grooming, child sex abuse, and coercion. Thank you so much.

Speaker 20 I'm Tiffany Rees, and this is Something Was Wrong.

Speaker 19 Hi, I am Molly.

Speaker 19 I

Speaker 19 am thirty-six years old and I am a photographer, creative director, kind of a jill of all trades. I am a mother, a wife.
I was a part of the Turning Winds program in spring of 2002 for six months.

Speaker 19 I figured it was time to share my story because it's an important story for people to hear and to understand

Speaker 19 how deceptive these programs are, especially when it comes to marketing themselves and making themselves palatable for parents in desperate situations.

Speaker 19 My family tree is very complicated. My mom got married at 18 and had my oldest living big brother.
Then she divorced him. My mom's second marriage, she had

Speaker 19 my second big brother, who is

Speaker 19 the most wonderful force in my life. I could cry talking about him.
He's just like the biggest breath of fresh air. My dad, his first marriage, he didn't have any kids.

Speaker 19 My dad got married his second time and had my sister, Stacey, and my oldest brother who passed away in 2015. After that, they both divorced their second spouses and got together.

Speaker 19 They had been together two or three months, had me, and then had my little brother, Michael. My sister got pregnant at a very young age.

Speaker 19 She was a teen mom, and her husband, to this day, was just there when I was little. So he was always considered my brother.
They lived in the house with us, with their son. It started out wonderful.

Speaker 19 It was a big family. Kevin, my oldest brother, 17 years older than me.
And all of my older siblings were at least seven to eight years older than me. So there was a lot happening.

Speaker 19 Teenage boys in and out of the house. My mom was a stay-at-home mom.
And so there were a lot of her friends that came over.

Speaker 19 It was a really busy house, but it started out being really, really peaceful. I was a happy kid having a blended family.

Speaker 19 Kevin and Stacey would visit their mother in Texas, and my two older brothers on my mom's side would go see their dads. And so there were a lot of moving parts.

Speaker 19 My dad worked all the time.

Speaker 19 I don't have a lot of memory of a lot of family time together all at once, but when it was all together, it was a blast. I've got some really cool siblings.

Speaker 19 and then over time it started falling apart my dad was a very functional alcoholic i didn't know this until much older which actually was a lot of what healed my mom and i's relationship he was involved with his children my dad loved me a lot but if it came down to choosing whether or not he wanted to go drink or be with his family, he was actually given that choice.

Speaker 19 And my mom said he hesitated and had to think about it. I never really had a super close bond with him.
According to my mother, he was very controlling and

Speaker 19 stalked my mom. When she would leave the house, she would say, okay, on Thursday, I'm going to go play bunko with the girls.
And he'd get home and say, sorry, you can't. I have to work.

Speaker 19 And then he'd go sit in front of the television and drink. My parents separated when I was five and we moved to Texas to be close to my mom's mom and my aunt.

Speaker 19 We lived there for a little bit. And then my parents got back together for a little while.
And then we moved to St. Louis to live with my mom's.
friend because they split again.

Speaker 19 My dad ended up coming coming to Missouri and we lived in Chesterfield for a little bit, but we moved around a lot. My mom in the beginning was very good at keeping those conflicts away from us.

Speaker 19 At that time, I was like blissfully unaware and ignorant of the reality of what was going on in my parents' marriage. The year before I got sent away, my dad was in the hospital.

Speaker 19 I had a singing competition that weekend or something, and I guess he looked at my mom and said, you can't go this weekend because you have to stay home and take care of me.

Speaker 19 And she was like, Fuck that. I'm done with this.
She filed for a divorce. And that's when things really started to fall apart.

Speaker 19 Over the next couple of weeks, she basically just shattered my father's image and was like, He's a drunk, Molly. He doesn't care.
That's when the anger started. I already felt lied to.

Speaker 19 I just remember thinking, How could you keep this from me for so long?

Speaker 19 And then my mom threw herself into work and starting her own business. She still runs that business to this day and it's successful.
But her mental health, it was really, really bad.

Speaker 19 That's when the abuse started.

Speaker 19 And I was the scapegoat. I think my mom sees a lot of herself in me.

Speaker 19 Also, my mom was raised by a mother who was very emotionally empty and mean.

Speaker 19 Talking with my mom's siblings, there were a lot of behavioral issues with my mom growing up that I had no idea about.

Speaker 19 Apparently, her mother tried to put her into some sort of facility and my mom escaped. My mom lost her dad at 16.
She was very close with her dad. Her dad was also an alcoholic.

Speaker 19 You can see a pattern here. Her first husband was an alcoholic.
Her second husband was an alcoholic. My dad was an alcoholic.

Speaker 19 I believe that my mom was an extremely traumatized person that continued to stay in fight or flight and the divorce with my father was the breaking point.

Speaker 19 I don't know why necessarily I was the scapegoat, but I can tell you I am the most vocal out of all of her children. I am the most opinionated.
I was the most attentive to her patterns.

Speaker 19 Being neurodivergent, that was my full-time job, essentially. It was just studying people and figuring out how they worked.
And I called her on her shit a lot.

Speaker 19 I was a kid. And when kids are angry and sad, they're asking for help without having the words for that.

Speaker 19 I wasn't viewed as somebody that was asking for help. I was viewed as somebody who was an inconvenience and a problem, inappropriate, disrespectful, and dishonest.

Speaker 19 The rules that were applied to me were not the same for the boys. There's a lot of layers to it.
I used to think my mom couldn't stand me, but now as an adult, I scare my mom.

Speaker 19 because she is so uncomfortable with emotions. And I am so emotionally literate, it shakes her to the core.
I think it's something that she finds intimidating and she's jealous of.

Speaker 19 She has admitted over the years that she is jealous of who I am and my talent. I think she saw me as something to overcome rather than something to empower.

Speaker 19 It's complicated.

Speaker 19 My mom was extremely strict. We were very religious.
Sex was shameful. Disobeying your parents was out of the question.

Speaker 19 Just a very conservative

Speaker 19 way of thinking. There was a lot of sneaking around.

Speaker 19 I was lying about where I was and what I was doing. I was smoking pot.
I was sneaking out of the house. I was in a house with older siblings.
So I was around that stuff all the time.

Speaker 19 I think the lying was the biggest issue. The more she pressed, the more I ran in the opposite direction.

Speaker 19 There was no level of trying to understand the way my brain worked, why I was lying or why I felt the way that I did. It was just, you're disobeying, you're lying, no discussion.

Speaker 19 On top of that, there was a lot of fighting. She was drinking quite a bit at that point in time.
Her behavior was erratic. It started getting physical.
My mom's a provoker.

Speaker 19 She'll be the type of person to get in your face and say the meanest, nastiest shit you've ever heard in your life.

Speaker 19 And then when you push her back away from you, that's when she's like, okay, game on. My mom's temper is terrible.
It's scary and cuts you to your core.

Speaker 19 She was constantly calling me names. I was a slut.
I was a liar. I was fat.
All of these things.

Speaker 20 You mentioned that you and your mom got into some physically charged interactions. And as a result, she decided to place you in a 72-hour hold facility.

Speaker 20 Did she think that you were going to harm yourself or others?

Speaker 19 I don't think so. I think my mom wanted me out of the house.
It was just like, this is where you deserve to go, type of thing. And I was there for 72 hours.

Speaker 19 I don't remember a lot other than the actual people around me. It actually was a nice break.
I came home and on and off the fighting continued.

Speaker 19 And there was one fight where my big brother and my little brother is in the house, and my mom is on top of me and hitting my face into a brick entryway.

Speaker 19 I am being pinned down, and she is slamming my face into the floor. I could see stars.
That's how hard she was hitting me, and she bruised my face. My big brother yelled, stop, this is horrible.

Speaker 19 She said, nope, Danny, call the police.

Speaker 19 That evening, my big brother, Kevin, was coming in from out of town and he came in and he was like, what's going on with your face? And I said, my mom did that.

Speaker 19 And he got down on my level.

Speaker 19 It makes me cry to think about because it was the first time in a long time that anyone had gotten down on my level and cared how I felt. He just held my face in his hands and he rubbed my cheek.

Speaker 19 He just said, nobody should do that to you. That's not okay.

Speaker 19 But nobody could save me. Kevin had his own demons and he was a wild child and didn't live in state and my sister had children and Danny was still in the house.
He doesn't like confrontation at all.

Speaker 19 And my little brother is withdrawn. So I was just alone.

Speaker 19 It wasn't long after that

Speaker 19 when

Speaker 19 I was placed in the facility.

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Speaker 19 My mom works in real estate and

Speaker 19 she said that there was this real estate convention that she wanted me to go with her to. We flew into Corda Lane, which is like a big mountain lake town.

Speaker 19 It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

Speaker 19 That first night, my mom is driving us around and We're looking at mountains and she's showing me downtown Cordelaine and taking me me to a restaurant next to this beautiful crystal clear lake.

Speaker 19 She starts having some really down-to-earth conversations with me, which my subconscious was just begging for it. Like, please just talk to me.
I need help. I'm sad.
I'm confused.

Speaker 19 I thought there's a breakthrough happening here. So that night, we go back to the hotel and we had a lot of fun.
And the next day,

Speaker 19 she says that she needs to leave to go to part of of this convention. So she leaves me in the hotel room.
I had never stayed in a hotel room with room service or cable or anything in my life.

Speaker 19 I didn't know it cost money. So I racked up the bill.
She comes back and she was like, I met some friends at this convention and they want us to come over this evening for dinner.

Speaker 19 We're going to have a great time. They've got a pool.
I can't remember how long the drive was, but I started getting nauseous on and off on the way way there. I was like, something's just weird.

Speaker 19 We pull up to this beautiful house in the middle of nowhere. They open the door, let me in, my mom comes in, and there are kids of all ages everywhere.

Speaker 19 Come to find out, they had, I think, 10 children. They were of the Mormon faith.
This large man walks into the room, and I remember exactly what he was wearing.

Speaker 19 Bright orange cargo pants and like a polo athletic shirt.

Speaker 19 He probably was 6'3,

Speaker 19 towered over me. And he just said, hi, Molly.
I'm John. And he said, Molly, why don't you sit down?

Speaker 19 Your mom has enrolled you in a program for struggling teenagers and she's about to leave. That entire moment started going in slow motion.
What is happening? What do you mean you're about to leave?

Speaker 19 She's like, I am leaving you here and you are not coming home with me.

Speaker 19 I said, you lied to me. She said, you've been lying to me for the last year.
She gave me a hug and she walked out the door. They took my bag and put me in a van with another resident.

Speaker 19 They're going through my things in the front seat. The other resident is telling me how great this program has been for her, trying to encourage me and trying to cheer me up.

Speaker 19 And I'm just sobbing and saying, I want my mom. They just kept saying things like, well, you had that chance.
Your mom's not coming to save you, Molly.

Speaker 19 We make our way to the actual house, which I called the house with the green roof. And it was up this road and it was a long driveway completely surrounded by trees.

Speaker 19 Next to a Christmas tree farm, it looked like a normal house. I believe it was like an 80-acre property.
Everything just moved so fast.

Speaker 19 I think I was at the facility in less than an hour and a half from the time my mom abandoned me there. I do not blame my mother a lot for making the choice.

Speaker 19 I can see why she was manipulated into thinking that it might be a safe option.

Speaker 19 She was told that I'd go horseback riding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, skiing, that I would have all these outdoor opportunities and all these skills that I could build and access to all these things that she wouldn't be able to provide for me.

Speaker 19 None of those things were true. And my mom even told me, John Sr.
took me up to a pasture with horses in it and said, these are ours. She can ride horses.
And they weren't theirs.

Speaker 19 They didn't have horses. My mom thought I was also going to be getting equine therapy and all of this other stuff that was just not true.

Speaker 19 They positioned themselves very well to look like the most empathetic.

Speaker 19 That is not who they are.

Speaker 19 John Sr.,

Speaker 19 one of his daughters, was tragically murdered by her boyfriend before Turning Winds started, but that's kind of what the catalyst was.

Speaker 19 And then they used it basically as a marketing relation point to make it seem like, we've been there. We've been through terrible stuff.

Speaker 19 John Sr.,

Speaker 19 he was not the

Speaker 19 highest up person anymore. It was his immediate son, John Jr.

Speaker 19 John Jr.

Speaker 19 was

Speaker 19 the owner of the company at that time. A lot of the direct care staff were a part of the family as well.
A few of the brothers, John Sr.'s sons.

Speaker 19 John Jr.'s wife at the time was a nutritionist. I was always in some way in contact with the family.

Speaker 19 John Jr.

Speaker 19 would talk a lot about the fact that he was a rough person until he went through a big life change. And that's why he was so hard on all of us.
He was that troubled teenager.

Speaker 19 First day, there's an adjustment period where they realize that I'm in shock and so they're a little bit more gentle with me. They pair me up with a graduate girl and she kind of helps me get settled.

Speaker 19 The older resident had been there for quite some time and I believe she was just about to turn 18. She had already gotten her GED.

Speaker 19 She was already enrolled in college classes and she was actually in the last month to six weeks before she was about to go back home.

Speaker 19 The first day for me was like an observation day where they showed me everything.

Speaker 19 I arrived with two days worth of clothes. It took weeks to get more clothes and more items to me.

Speaker 19 I would go a week or two with wearing the same clothes and maybe get it washed once a week, but when you're a new resident, working you into the schedule becomes a tension point

Speaker 19 for staff. I was made to feel like an inconvenience right from the start.

Speaker 19 I was asking for soap and being punished. The only act of compassion that I got was my first day when I showed up.
I was sick to my stomach. The staff at the time gave me an apple.

Speaker 19 After that, any special request was greeted with such utter annoyance and disregard that sitting in dirty clothes for weeks felt like the only choice to prevent bringing attention to myself. But then

Speaker 19 I was told that I smelled and I was disgusting.

Speaker 19 Being that age, I started a period. And I had to wear the same underwear and I wasn't allowed to wear tampons.
I was only allowed to wear pads. That is how the tone started.

Speaker 19 And then I could see the program evolving.

Speaker 19 We were test subjects because Big John's still trying to recruit children. So, this new structure was

Speaker 19 something that they were trying to figure out. Girls stayed upstairs, boys slept downstairs.
There were two bedrooms upstairs. For the girls, it was two

Speaker 19 people per room when I got there, and eventually three people per room. All twin beds, very small rooms.

Speaker 19 The boys were downstairs in one large room, and that's kind of where the main office area was and the classroom. There was a woodshed outside where we stacked wood.

Speaker 19 You're in the middle of Idaho in the mountains, so there's tons of firewood everywhere.

Speaker 19 There's a rickety sand volleyball net set up outside, and then the rest is just woods and property in the middle of nowhere. When people are like, Why didn't you try and run away?

Speaker 19 Why didn't you escape? There was nowhere for me to go.

Speaker 19 I was completely secluded from the rest of the world on foot.

Speaker 19 Every week was different, but our typical day,

Speaker 19 we would wake up at 5.30 in the morning. We were given 10 minutes total.

Speaker 19 We could change into our workout clothes, brush our teeth, go to the bathroom, fill up our water bottles, and head outside for exercise group.

Speaker 19 Exercise group was grueling, and most of the time we had to work out on sand, Push-ups, lunges, any of those things were done on the sand volleyball court. My hands would bleed.
My knees would bleed.

Speaker 19 Eventually, they provided us work gloves to do these workouts in. But it was military style.
Some days it would be easier than others.

Speaker 19 Some days we'd get in a straight line and we would have to walk at an incredibly fast pace up the hill.

Speaker 19 And whoever was in the back of the line had to run to the front and they would make us walk faster and faster.

Speaker 19 And if the person at the back of the line couldn't sprint to get to the front, then we had to stop and do more exercise. It was this exhaustion technique.

Speaker 19 If we didn't push through, then we weren't compliant. If I couldn't couldn't do my 150th push-up or my 30th sprint in work boots, then I was made to feel like I didn't try.

Speaker 19 I was just giving up on myself and giving up on my team. Sometimes it was two hours.
Sometimes it was an hour.

Speaker 19 Sometimes it was 30 minutes if they were having an off morning, but those 30 minute workouts were more intense. When new people came in, we knew the workouts were going to be longer.

Speaker 19 It was this community feeling of, I'm sorry, you're here, but your presence is making this so much worse. The mentality that they were instilling started permeating and having a ripple effect.

Speaker 19 If we didn't perform well during those workouts, then we were verbally teased and taunted the entire day by staff. We would go inside and we were not allowed to take showers after that.

Speaker 19 We would have about five minutes of refresh time.

Speaker 19 Your goal was to get it done as fast as you could because then you were impressive.

Speaker 19 So hygiene went to the wayside in order to be able to avoid banging on the door, yelling, what are you doing in there? And eventually them opening up the door and not asking.

Speaker 19 The men that were in charge would just open the door and stand to the side and not come in, but I was still exposed.

Speaker 19 After that, we would cook breakfast and we had to do everything.

Speaker 19 We cooked, we cleaned. We had a set menu that John Sr.'s wife made for us.
We had to make these recipes each day.

Speaker 19 If somebody burnt the food or didn't rinse the potatoes, we still had to eat it and act like we liked it. If we didn't clear our plate, then once again, we were ungrateful.

Speaker 19 Even if we were saying, this tastes like dirt. I can't chew it.
We were forced to swallow.

Speaker 19 Everything became a a test. It was interesting to see how that changed over time.
When new residents came in, they'd lighten the mood a little bit and they'd give us some leeway.

Speaker 19 And then it was a matter of time before it just started all over again. It was this back and forth feeling of, oh, maybe this is going to change.
Maybe they are letting up a little bit.

Speaker 19 And then it would start right back over.

Speaker 19 After cleaning up, doing the dishes, wiping the countertops, sweeping the floor, vacuuming, making sure all our beds are made. We went into this short group and we were given a quote.

Speaker 19 These quotes were what you would see on a hobby lobby sign. They would ask us how this quote applied to our lives.
It was a calming point of the day because we got to sit and talk.

Speaker 19 And so a lot of us would create these long, elaborate answers where it was like, I'm giving you this long hyperbolic answer so I can sit here because we knew what was coming next.

Speaker 19 And that was going outside to work.

Speaker 19 We would finish this group. We would get our work gloves and we would put on our boots.
We never knew what we were going to do. But basically, all of us were the employees that kept up the land.

Speaker 19 We were operating chainsaws, cutting down trees, and carrying full logs on the back of our necks.

Speaker 19 At 13 and 14 years old, I'm picking up tamarack tree trunks and carrying them up and down hills for hours and throwing them on brush piles to burn or to chop up into firewood that they sold.

Speaker 19 So we were funding their side business. Sometimes we would walk and walk.
It was almost as if they were looking to try and find something for us to do some days.

Speaker 19 If we ran out of water, then we ran out of water. We weren't allowed to share water bottles with each other.
From the time we left First Group up until lunch, we were constantly doing manual labor.

Speaker 19 Most of it during the hot summer months and spring months was lumber. During winter, it was shoveling snow.
And even in the snow, it was still

Speaker 19 something having to do with lumber, preparing the land and cleaning up.

Speaker 19 After

Speaker 19 we were finished, we would go in. for lunch and repeat the process of what breakfast was like, preparing the meal, eating, cleaning up, doing chores, and going right back out and doing it again.

Speaker 19 When we were working, if there was ever a point where we stopped or we struggled, then that's when the attack therapy started. If I wavered in strength, if I wavered in endurance,

Speaker 19 then I was selfish. When I was asking for clarification and they would say, well, you probably wouldn't feel so uninformed and stupid if you hadn't done what you did to get here in the first place.

Speaker 19 So I was not allowed to ask. We would work and work and work.

Speaker 19 Dinner would come along and same routine. We'd finish up dinner.
We'd do chores. We would have an hour of recreation time.
Usually that was just a lot of sand volleyball.

Speaker 19 At night we were allowed to take showers and we were allowed five minute bathroom time total. I was not allowed a razor.
I was always monitored in the bathroom.

Speaker 19 Even with the door shut, the staff would stand outside and give me a knock at one minute, two minutes, three minutes, all the way up until five. And if I had to wash my hair, then that took longer.

Speaker 19 So eventually I just stopped washing my hair. Bathroom time was a huge, what they called a moment of trust because they were actually

Speaker 19 allowing us to be in a room without supervision. So if we didn't do exactly as we were supposed to in the bathroom, then that was the ultimate sign of disrespect.
You were constantly watched.

Speaker 19 Your hygiene stuff was constantly locked up. If they thought you were going to self-harm, you weren't allowed to have shoelaces.
Our shoes were locked up constantly.

Speaker 19 At the end of hygiene time, we'd have the longer group where we would have to rate our day out loud. That was the point where you could see the people around you complying.

Speaker 19 You didn't want to go first

Speaker 19 because what you said set the tone. And if you said something that didn't align with the program's values, then that's when the major attack therapy started.

Speaker 19 Other residents would have the ability to confront you on things that you did. It became this arena to fight each other to the death and not wanting to, but you know it's your life or theirs.

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Speaker 19 Everyone in that place

Speaker 19 became compliant. And the more compliant you were, the more privileges you got, the further along you moved in the program, the closer you got to going home.

Speaker 19 Whoever the staff was at the time had the ability to engage in those group therapy sessions. Staff would back up what these children were saying to me or to another resident.

Speaker 19 Anything could be twisted to the point where the context never mattered to them. I mentioned earlier racking up the bill on accident at the hotel room.
John Jr.

Speaker 19 took it upon himself to publicly say in front of the group of residents, Molly stayed at the hotel and ordered room service and racked up $120 on the hotel room bill.

Speaker 19 If you want to talk about somebody who doesn't appreciate their parents, there was a lot of that where things that I wasn't even intentionally doing were used against me to paint this picture that I was just a terrible kid.

Speaker 19 I have this one memory of before we were going to bed, one of the girls that was in my room, we had about 30 minutes to keep lights on and read and talk.

Speaker 19 I think we were talking about where she was from and there was a lot of gang activity in the area. I was empathizing with her in a way where it was like, wow.
you obviously had a rough upbringing too.

Speaker 19 One of the staff members overheard it and then the next day I was punished for speaking about gang activity and trying to incite volumes. It was like the most isolating.

Speaker 19 Even the people I was going through it with, I could not trust. That wasn't their fault.
It just went like this over and over and over again, day in and day out.

Speaker 19 I saw the therapist probably once a month when I was there. As far as actual clinical therapy, I didn't get a lot of it.

Speaker 19 I didn't know if this therapist was of the same faith, which whether or not they said they were not a religious facility, there was a lot of influence there, a lot of moral shaming there because of that faith.

Speaker 19 So even if I did see the therapist, I wasn't 100% honest with him and there wasn't a lot of feeling statements.

Speaker 19 It was more just trying to tailor my answer so whatever he was going to write down wasn't going to get back to the family. Even speaking my truth wasn't believed.

Speaker 19 So there really was no therapy. The only way I was going to get better was for them to torture me.
The hardest part was knowing that my mother wanted that for me.

Speaker 19 Granted, she didn't know the extent and she has apologized. But even

Speaker 19 talking about it, she would say, up until a few years ago, Molly, I was trying to save your life.

Speaker 19 Over time, we earned school and start to go to school probably four hours a day. None of us cared about the education.
We just cared about the fact that we were exhausted.

Speaker 19 School was held over our heads as the education education that you should have appreciated beforehand, but none of those credits transferred back to my regular high school when I went home.

Speaker 19 So the education was a facade.

Speaker 19 There was so much verbal abuse

Speaker 19 and calculated emotional abuse.

Speaker 19 If you woke up and didn't respond in a certain way, then you were immediately punished. School was taken away and having to work outside was the minimum punishment.

Speaker 19 Their term for punishment was a ban. You are banned from doing this.
So talking bans, I wasn't allowed to speak for days at a time.

Speaker 19 And that was caused if we were supposed to be quiet, but we would slightly whisper or giggle about something.

Speaker 19 If we even talked out of turn, our ability to speak would be taken away for days, sometimes weeks. I would have to sit away from the group, eat outside, not talk to anyone.

Speaker 19 And that happened often. I would go days and days without speaking.
And if I did speak, they'd add on more days. The only time I could talk was to staff.

Speaker 19 about a specific task or asking to use the restroom or if there was a medical emergency. That's it.
We did have access to medical care.

Speaker 19 There was a home visit doctor that would do checkups and monitor medication, give us a physical. He was very nice, actually.
The doctor was pretty great.

Speaker 19 I honestly loved when he came because it was like, oh, somebody doesn't hate me. If we were sick, they took us to the doctor.
At that point in time, they also were our legal guardians.

Speaker 19 They signed over a temporary guardianship. All the parents did.
So if they didn't take us to the doctor, they could also get in trouble for neglect.

Speaker 19 They did have to show that they were taking us to the doctor to keep their license. There was a period of time in my facility when I came off birth control.
I bled for weeks.

Speaker 19 That's a normal bodily reaction to a withdrawal from a synthetic hormone. Because I was bleeding for weeks at a time, they accused me of having a miscarriage.

Speaker 19 I had had sex twice, maybe three times at a young age, but I wasn't irresponsible about it. And I was still on birth control.
It was physically impossible at that point in time.

Speaker 19 I don't know if it was because they were religious and so out of touch with actual science. When I started working that much outside, I was constantly hungry.

Speaker 19 We would eat decently sized meals, but I'm doing manual labor all day long.

Speaker 19 We started gaining weight. The menu supposedly was based on your 2,000 calorie a day nutrition label diet.
So we quote unquote shouldn't have been gaining weight.

Speaker 19 A lot of us are at the age of puberty. At 13 years old, I had a normal body.
For the first three months that I was there, I was on birth control. I probably gained 30 or 40 pounds while I was there.

Speaker 19 And some of that is muscle, but also some of it is stress and hormones. When that started to happen, they started not allowing us to have sugar.

Speaker 19 If we did gain weight, we would have Malto meal and we were allowed one tablespoon of sugar on our corn flakes. We were not allowed to have that.
We were not allowed to have jelly, sauces,

Speaker 19 butter. I would eat so fast

Speaker 19 and they would comment on it. I had already come from a home where my weight and my appearance was a constant topic.
So this wasn't very alarming to me.

Speaker 19 I think there was an entire month where all of us weren't allowed to have sugar because we were all gaining weight. We were allowed to have as many fruits and vegetables that we wanted.

Speaker 19 I remember thinking, if I can think about fruit as dessert, then I'll be okay, because there was no joy when it was like we got ice cream. It was the best part of the day.

Speaker 19 It was the only comfort we had. I've always struggled up and down with gaining and losing and gaining and losing because my mom taught me anorexia.
Then this just compounded it.

Speaker 19 One night, I think I stole a sleeve of crackers and that was found tucked in between between my mattress and the wall. I was not allowed to be in the kitchen.
If I needed water, I had to ask.

Speaker 19 I was not allowed to speak on top of that. I had to wait to be acknowledged by a staff.
If you did something so against the rules, then they would just come and take everything from you.

Speaker 19 I got a sheet, a blanket, no pillowcase, my clothes, my basic hygiene items, and everything taken from me. I wasn't allowed to look at pictures of my family.
I wasn't allowed to send letters out.

Speaker 19 I wasn't allowed to receive mail. I wasn't allowed to exist

Speaker 19 without feeling like

Speaker 19 everything

Speaker 19 that I loved was being robbed from me. And I wasn't allowed to have those things in the beginning either.
I had to earn those things through compliance.

Speaker 19 All of my mail was read before it was given to me. All of my mail that I was sending out was read before I sent it.

Speaker 19 So if I even attempted to try to send a letter to my mom to say, this program is not what you think it is. Please help me.

Speaker 19 It would immediately be tossed aside, torn up, and then I was punished for even trying to attempt to tell my mom anything.

Speaker 19 I was not allowed to speak to her on the phone or anyone at all until much later on.

Speaker 19 I got there probably

Speaker 19 end of May, early June. I would not talk to my mom until Thanksgiving Day that year.
I could get mail, but I did not hear anybody's voice on a phone until Thanksgiving Day.

Speaker 19 So those things being taken from you didn't feel like a loss. It just felt like another day and somebody woke up on the bad side of the bed that morning and I was the scapegoat for the day.

Speaker 19 Eventually, they took those things from me. I have countless pictures of my childhood, of letters, journals that were taken from me and never given back to me.
It hurts more now than it did then.

Speaker 19 There were physical restraints. I saw a physical restraint my first day there.

Speaker 19 He was 12. and he was cleaning up from dinner.
He was trying to scrub the burnt rice off the bottom of this pot, and a staff member was saying, You need to put it down.

Speaker 19 And when he didn't, they said, If you don't stop, we're going to have to restrain you. He turned around and said, I'm not even doing anything, man.
I'm trying to clean this pot.

Speaker 19 They whipped him around and slammed him up against the wall and took his arm behind his head to the point of his fingers touching his opposite ear.

Speaker 19 There was this constant risk risk of being physically restrained, tackled, and held.

Speaker 19 I can't tell you how many residents came back in from one of those situations with blood on their face or with bruises.

Speaker 19 I was never physically restrained.

Speaker 19 Not a lot of the girls were, and I think that's because we weren't as physically confrontational because we knew that the power above us most of the time was a stronger man. My program was co-ed.

Speaker 19 You'd pass notes to boys, boys would pass notes to you, and you'd form little crushes on people.

Speaker 19 We didn't say anything other than what was actually written in the notes. It was like, I love you so much.
And when we get out of here, we're going to find each other and all of those things.

Speaker 19 And it wasn't real, but it was the only thing we had. We stored them in hiding places in our room and we had backpacks.
We'd cut open the lining and shove them down there.

Speaker 19 But eventually they found it. The boy that I was writing notes to,

Speaker 19 we were never allowed to speak to each other again. We were never allowed to look at each other again.

Speaker 19 If he looked at me or if I looked at him and somebody saw it, Our punishment was extended weeks at a time. It was

Speaker 19 probably eight weeks at the fullest, I think.

Speaker 19 Four weeks of that. I was not allowed to speak to anybody.
I had to be separate from the group. I had to eat outside away from everyone while they were eating, but I had to sit and watch them eat.

Speaker 19 There was also this role that these boys played in our lives and we played in theirs.

Speaker 19 where we knew that if we bonded with them, then they weren't going to be the one in group to come back and turn things back on us. We would defend each other.
Same gender would attack each other.

Speaker 19 But if you had somebody of the opposite gender, then you had backup. It's interesting because I'm still friends with that guy and I haven't seen him in probably five or six years.

Speaker 19 Every now and then we get texts from each other.

Speaker 19 It never meant anything other than what it meant at the time, but there is a bond there that I know that if I needed something, he would still come running.

Speaker 19 Not everybody is like that. He

Speaker 19 and one other resident are the only two people that I've really spoken to since then.

Speaker 19 The worst part was how lonely and scared I was.

Speaker 20 Every single day.

Speaker 19 I just remember chopping wood one day and looking out and thinking, there is nobody coming to save me. There is nobody coming to rescue me from this.

Speaker 19 At 13 years old, that is the most damaging feeling.

Speaker 19 Knowing that even my own mother wasn't going to save me because she put me there.

Speaker 20 Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production. Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Rees, associate producers Amy B.

Speaker 20 Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

Speaker 20 Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist, and Marissen Travis from WME.

Speaker 20 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 20 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.