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

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

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

As always, please consume with care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turning Winds was founded in 2002 by John Baisden Sr.

and his son, John Baisden Jr., according to public documents.

It's described as a family-run program with its main campus in Troy, Montana.

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

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

allegedly started in 1996 alongside Larry Bauer.

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.

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.

Meanwhile, John Baisden Sr.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong.

Hi, I am Molly.

I

am 36 years old and I am a photographer, creative director, kind of a gill 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.

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

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

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 my

second big brother, who is 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.

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 got together.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was a really busy house, but it started out being really, really peaceful.

I was a happy kid having a blended family.

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.

My dad worked all the time.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

My dad ended up 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

That's when the abuse started.

And I was the scapegoat.

I think my mom sees a lot of herself in me.

Also,

my mom was raised by a mother who was very emotionally empty and mean.

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

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.

You can see a pattern here.

Her first first husband was an alcoholic.

Her second husband was an alcoholic.

My dad was an alcoholic.

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.

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.

Being neurodivergent, that was my full-time job, essentially, is just studying people and figuring out how they worked.

And I called her on her shit a lot.

I was a kid.

And when kids are angry and sad, they're asking for help without having the words for that.

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.

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 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.

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.

It's complicated.

My mom was extremely strict.

We were very religious.

Sex was shameful.

Disobeying your parents was out of the question.

Just a very conservative

way of thinking.

There was a lot of sneaking around.

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.

I think the lying was the biggest issue.

The more she pressed, the more I ran in the opposite direction.

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.

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.

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

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.

She was constantly calling me names.

I was a slut.

I was a liar.

I was fat.

All of these things.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

She said, nope, Danny, call the police.

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.

And he got down on my level.

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.

He just said, nobody should do that to you.

That's not okay.

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.

And my little brother is withdrawn.

So I was just alone.

It wasn't long after that

when

I was placed in the facility.

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

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my mom works in real estate and

She said that there was this real estate convention that she wanted me to go with her to.

We flew into Corda Cordelaine, which is like a big mountain lake town.

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

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

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.

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, she says that she needs to leave to go to part 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.

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.

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 there.

I was like, something's just weird.

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.

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.

Bright orange cargo pants.

and like a polo athletic shirt.

He probably was 6'3,

towered over me.

And he just said, Hi, Molly.

I'm John.

And he said, Molly, why don't you sit down?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

That is not who they are.

John Sr.,

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

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.

John Sr.,

he was not the

highest up person anymore.

It was his immediate son, John Jr.

John Jr.

was

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.

John Jr.'s wife at the time was a nutritionist.

I was always in some way in contact with the family.

John Jr.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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

I arrived with two days' worth of clothes.

It took weeks to get more clothes and more items to me.

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

for staff.

I was made to feel like an inconvenience right from the start.

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.

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

I was told that I smelled and I was disgusting.

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.

And then I could see the the program evolving.

We were test subjects because Big John's still trying to recruit children.

So this new structure was

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 people per room when I got there, and eventually three people per room.

All twin beds, very small rooms.

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.

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

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?

Why didn't you escape?

There was nowhere for me to go.

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

Every week was different, but our typical day,

We would wake up at 5.30 in the morning.

We were given 10 minutes total.

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.

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.

Eventually they provided us work gloves to do these workouts in, but it was military style.

Some days it would be easier than others.

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

And whoever was in the back of the line had to run to the front.

And they would make us walk faster and faster.

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.

If we didn't push through, then we weren't compliant.

If I 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.

I was just giving up on myself and giving up on my team.

Sometimes it was two hours.

Sometimes it was an hour.

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.

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.

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.

We would have about five minutes of refresh time.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Even if we were saying,

this tastes like dirt, I can't chew it, we were forced to swallow.

Everything became 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.

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.

And then it would start right back over.

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.

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.

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, and that was going outside to work.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

After

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.

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, 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.

So I was not allowed to ask.

We would work and work and work.

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.

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.

Even with the door shut, the staff would stand outside and give me a knock at one minutes, two minutes, three minutes, all the way up until five.

And if I had to wash my hair, then that took longer.

So eventually I just stopped washing my hair.

Bathroom time was a huge, what they called a moment of trust because they were actually 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.

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.

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.

You didn't want to go first

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.

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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Everyone in that place 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the staff members overheard it and then the next day I was punished for speaking about gang activity and trying to incite violence.

It was like the most isolating.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Granted, she didn't know the extent, and she has apologized.

But even

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

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.

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

So the education was a facade.

There was so much verbal abuse.

and calculated emotional abuse.

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.

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.

And that was...

caused if we were supposed to be quiet, but we would slightly whisper or giggle about something.

something.

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, 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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, 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.

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,

butter.

I would eat so fast, 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.

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.

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.

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.

One night, I think I stole a sleeve of crackers and that was found tucked in between my mattress and the wall.

I was not allowed to be in the kitchen.

If I needed water, I had to ask.

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.

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.

I wasn't allowed to receive mail.

I wasn't allowed to exist

without feeling like

everything

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, 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.

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, it would immediately be tossed aside, torn up, and then I was punished.

for even trying to attempt to tell my mom anything.

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

I got there probably 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.

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.

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.

There were physical restraints.

I saw a physical restraint my first day there.

He was 12 and he was cleaning up from dinner.

He was trying to scrub the burnt rice off the bottom of this pot.

A staff member was saying, You need to put it down.

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.

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, there was this constant risk of being physically restrained, tackled, and held.

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

I was never physically restrained.

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.

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

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.

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.

But eventually they found it.

The boy that I was writing notes to,

we were never allowed to speak to each other again.

We were never allowed to look at each other again.

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 probably eight weeks at the fullest, I think.

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.

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

Every now and then we get texts from each other.

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.

Not everybody is like that.

He

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

The worst part was how lonely and scared I was every

single day.

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.

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

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

Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you so much for your support.

Until next time, stay safe, friends.

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