Something Was Wrong - S24 Ep16 Attack Therapy

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

*Content Warning: distressing themes, violent abuse of a child, step-parent abuse, domestic violence, abduction, kidnapping, childhood abuse, emotional violence, physical abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and institutional child abuse (‘troubled teen industry’). *Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips:  somethingwaswrong.com/resources    Snag your ticket for the live Home for the Holidays event here: https://events.humanitix.com/swwxtgi  Check out our brand new SWW Sticker Shop!: https://brokencyclemedia.com/sticker-shop  *SWW S23 Theme Song & Artwork:  The S24 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com  IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me  IG: instagram.com/lookieboo *Sources  Keeping “cult” out of the Case, culteducation.com/group/1274-straight-inc/19713-keeping-cult-out-of-the-case.html Kubler, Katherine, creator and director. The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping. Netflix, 2024 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31183637/  Melee Keeps Spotlight on Hard Life at Academy (Published 2005), www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/nyregion/melee-keeps-spotlight-on-hard-life-at-academy.html Mater, C. Jamie. “The Troubled Teen Industry and Its Effects: An Oral History.” Inquiry Journal, 1 Apr. 2022, www.unh.edu/inquiryjournal/blog/2022/04/troubled-teen-industry-its-effects-oral-history O’Brien, Tim. Keeping “cult” out of the Case, Cult Education Institute, 7 July 2003, culteducation.com/group/1274-straight-inc/19713-keeping-cult-out-of-the-case.html

If you're serious about growing this new year, what you put into your mind actually matters. And as someone who lives and breathes careers and self-development, even I get overwhelmed trying to do it all. Between work, life, and trying to better yourself, self-care can start to feel like just another thing on the to-do list. But investing in yourself doesn't have to be complicated. And with Audible, it isn't. It's time to take care of you. And who better to help than the top voices in well-being all in one place. With Audibles' well-being collection, you can level up your career, finances, relationships,

sleep, parenting, or mindset. Whether you want motivation, clarity, or practical advice, there is something there to support you every step of the way. I listen while I commute, clean, work, or just when I need a little bit of downtime. You'll hear from best-selling authors Brene Brown and Jay Shetty, Chef Jamie Oliver, finance expert Rachel Rogers and popular parenting guides like raising good humans kickstart your well-being journey with your first audio book

free when you sign up for a 30-day trial at outable.com membership is 1495 a month after 30 days. Cancel any time. There's more to imagine when you listen. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics. Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children. which may be triggering for some listeners.

As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken cycle media. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season. Something was wrong and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong. My name is Marie. I went to Ivy Ridge when I was 17 years old from April 2005 through most of December 2006. I was there for 20 months, and this is my story. Most times when people meet me, they go, whoa, why do you have so much energy? I used to joke that I just eat my weaties, but I actually was born that way, just very exuberant and excited.

In most pictures with me and other kids, I'm the one with my mouth wide open, smiling in a wonder. Part of it is ADHD, but another it is my mom's exuberant spirit. She just had that, like, fire in her. She raised me until I was five and a half when she passed away from cancer, and I got a lot of my personality from her.

She was just a lot of joy and a lot of fun. Everybody remembered her as being jovial and organized at the same time. I wish she would have lived a little longer so I could get that organization part. So sorry for your loss. That had to be so incredibly hard. What was your relationship like with your dad growing up? I loved my dad and I think he's a good person. We had a lot of good inside jokes and stuff growing up,

but he was very easy to anger and paranoid about a lot of things that made him lash out at me. when I wasn't really doing anything worth lashing out at. In my mind, I'd feel like nothing was going wrong. And in his mind, he'd taken something so small and made it something so big that he felt like he'd to punish me for it. My biological mom had encouraged him to find a new wife. Six months after my mom died, he got remarried. I was ready for a mom, but I just didn't know if I was ready to call her mom yet.

And then they had a baby. I was seven when he was born. Ever since my brother was born, there was a difference in how they treated him. My little half-brother, he is awesome to have him as the result of having my dad remarry and have him. Like, I wouldn't trade it at all. The lady that he married didn't really have a connection with me, so it strained my relationship with my dad because this lady would report back what I was like, and he felt embarrassed or ashamed of me, even though not all of her reports were very accurate about me or what I did.

I was like a little kid and she was making it seem like I should have these adult skills to like regulate my emotions. She and I had a falling out early on. She didn't really want to be that involved. And so my dad had to be the one to like take over driving me to school or social events. I just didn't feel like a very celebrated member of the home. When I was younger, there were some neighbor kids that were very freaked out by my dad seeing how he treated me in front of them. One, she peed her pants when my dad was yelling at both of us. Another girl decided to become a child social worker.

After seeing my dad drag me up the stairs by a foot for not going to bed at a Christmas party that we had just started hosting. I was nine, he was like, go to bed, and I was like, oh, that's so funny. I'm hosting this party with you guys. And he knocked me down and dragged me by the foot, up the stairs. My stepmom followed upstairs, and they, like, yelled at me for nothing. She didn't even know what the problem was. He was always trying to, like, shut me up, but it didn't.

makes sense. We were at my brother's softball game. I would cheer him. My dad was like, you're just trying to embarrass me and you're trying to distract him. You shouldn't be cheering like that. One time I broke my toe, I was running back into the living room to catch the next part of the show we were watching. And I saw one of my toes on the couch and I could tell right away it was broken. And I was like, I broke my toe. And my stepmom said to my dad, she's just doing this for attention. So they literally talked over my cries for help to each other saying don't do it, don't give in. The whole idea of parenthood was just to like not believe me. They would put these impossible criteria up. I have a struggle with getting up in the morning because it's like you have to be

on the bus by 7.10 a.m. I would be like out the door as soon as I could and sometimes I would just not make my bed in order to make that happen. And I got home, they were like, you never made your bed. You're in so much trouble. And I was like, okay, are you giving a tour of the house? Why is this such a big problem? And they were like, oh, are you talking back? I would have to write an essay or I'd be grounded. Most of the time of my two years before getting sent to Ivoryage, I was grounded from everything.

They needed to have something else be wrong with somebody to like function. So it didn't have that much to do with how I was being. Because I wasn't behaving bad. I was a very risk-averse person because I knew I was the oldest and there's nobody really having my back. I was definitely like love starved growing up, but I feel like I was able to get my needs met through friends at school or through my karate.

I always tried to be very good. I was very involved in Catholic youth group, and I helped lead worship, and I played guitar and sang. I was part of the youth group band, and I was volunteering for the middle school program to help them with their faith formation, and I would teach Sunday school to the first graders. I loved my church community.

My dad was getting, more and more physically abusive. Every age I turned, it was getting worse. When it did happen, it was like, why is this still happening? Because you say you're sorry and you're still doing it. And I'm not feeling like I'm provoking it. After physical abuse, he would usually apologize.

Not for everything, but for some of the things he really would. I actually learned to keep a journal in my freshman year of high school. There was some really disturbing stuff that I had to go through. in my freshman year of high school, I wrote down that I was trying to ask my stepmom what to do because I had accidentally like perioded onto myself and I needed help. I was very embarrassed about it.

She was giving me instructions from the kitchen on what to do like cold water. And so while I was in the back room doing the instructions, well my dad came upstairs from his office thinking that we were fighting and he goes into the laundry room and goes, what's going on here? And I go, I'm in the middle of something. I was embarrassed. And he's like, why don't you come here?

And I left my Andies in the basin and I went around to the bathroom side and I said, I have to wash my hands first. As I was washing my hands, he was like, what's going on? What are you doing, yelling? I was like, I'm not yelling. And he, like, pushed me.

And then I turned off the sink. He shoved me really hard and then punched my arm. And the water went all over the counter. Even when there wasn't anything really going on, They created drama. The fact that she didn't rescue me from that lets me know that she likes that we're fighting. And she would do that often.

She would create these scenes of drama between her and I to make my dad think I'm being a bad daughter because I could never fully accept her after my mom died. That was their whole thing. Sometimes you'd get really paranoid where it didn't count. After he picked me up from karate, I went on a two-mile dog. Our neighborhood's very safe.

And I get home and he's pissed that I wasn't home. He like picked me up, threw me on the concrete ground to punish me because I wasn't safe. And I'm like, there's literally nothing more unsafe than being home right now with you. Another time he pushed me down the stairs and another time he choked me against the corner where the fridge ends and like the wall begins. He just had no patience and he flew off the handle a lot. when I turned 17, my biological mom's side of the family had me over for Christmas, all of the aunts and uncles staged an intervention for me and said, we believe that you're being mistreated and abused at home.

And I was trying to deny it. I actually always defended my parents. They were like, no, we actually think that this is what's going on. And if you believe it to be true, you can stay here with your aunt. You don't have to do this, but we want you to know this as an option. They even drove me around the school that I would have. attend. So I thought about it for a few months and I actually decided to go ahead and do it. Once my school semester was over, which was going to be in like May or June, and this was still April

because I would have been able to move out and live with my aunt, I think that scared them and made them realize that I could be speaking out against their abuse. And I think that they wanted to preserve their reputation and that's a big reason they sent me away. My behavior that they're trying to make seem really bad was just smoke and mirrors for them to try to protect their own image. My parents, they would routinely, like, bring me into these meetings that were so intense. They would instigate fights by grilling me. They would just sit there until I was too frustrated, and then that's when I would get a punishment. There was a conflict to my parents staged. I don't recall what was leading up to it, but they sat me down in the office.

office. Them two were together and I was by myself on the other side of the room. There was never going to be an answer or something that I said that would have shortened this meeting ever or let me leave without being in trouble. They said, we think that your behavior has been so bad that we're considering sending you to a military program. We've already gone to your karate school and said, yeah, Marie has really badly behaved disobedient. And then they also said, said, yeah, we told your school also. So they did a defamation campaign. And then they said, you're probably going to be going to a military school. I was 17 when they told me that. We were literally getting along, like the last two weeks before I was sent away, which is the crazy part.

My dad and stepmom finally stopped doing these interrogation sessions. And they were just letting me exist in school. I ended up having an impromptu essay. They were like, sit here and write us a how-to essay. The first thing of my brain was I'm going to figure out a way to, like, escape my parents. I think my teacher might have showed them the how to run away essay instead of asking me if everything was okay at home. All this sets the tone for what happens next. My dad wanted to blindshead me. And they said, we have a dentist appointment.

Make sure that you are ready to go really early. It's going to be like a 6 a.m. dentist appointment. I was like, okay, yay, I'm going to fix my tooth. I get in the car Friday morning, April 22nd, 2005. My step-mom comes out and, like, hands a bottle of pills to him, and I think it's my ADHD meds and puts it in a pocket of his car and then drives to the dentist. My dad gets a call halfway there on his cell phone,

and he's like, yeah, we'll be there soon. We park and pull up, and the lights are off in the dentist office, and I go, Dad, are you sure they're open? and he turns to me and goes, do you see that car over there? It was two parking spots over. That's going to take you on a tour of a boarding school. And you're going to return when you're 18. I was 17 and 5 months old.

I immediately burst into tears because I was scared and I didn't understand what my move was. There was nowhere to run. It was just countryside. And the closest house of people that I knew was a couple streets over. I could probably have outrun all of them, but my brain tells me that would have been a, a dangerous thing to try. So I ignore that idea and I just comply. I'm like, Dad, this is so unreasonable.

I have a 10-page paper due Monday that I've been working on. I have a play that I'm volunteering to set for this weekend and I'm supposed to go to my friend's soccer game. Don't you care that I have a life? This isn't right. I can't say by to my friends. Are you serious? And then I accepted it and I go, okay, but can you send me my calendar and my guitar? That's all I want. He didn't send me that. And he knew I wouldn't be able to have those things because you're not allowed to know any dates or have any music at the school I was about to go to. He just said, okay, the people opened my door. They were like, yeah, you can hug her goodbye if she'll let you. My dad popped the trunk and they took the luggage to their trunk. I didn't know there was luggage until that moment. That's how they had really

planned a big con on me. There was a guy and a really big lady who was middle-aged. They put me in the back and it was child protected locks. And the guy was like, good thing you didn't struggle because we have these zip ties that we would have used on your wrist if you had. They were taking me on an 11-hour journey through Michigan, down through Ohio, and then up to New York. Most of the 11-hour drive, I'm actually like crying. He was just so insensitive. He's like, oh, you're crying.

You make me feel so bad for you. Let me get you some tissues. And he like pulled into this supermarket parking lot. And this is where my nightmares go a lot of the time. He left the car with me and this lady. She was like, I know you probably do drugs. You're probably like terrible to your parents. Like all the kids we do this too.

And I was like, why are you doing this to me? And then the guy came back and he gave me one of those pocket tissue things, a packet of them. And he was like, they're there. Don't make me feel so bad. So they got on the highway. I was explaining the situation at home. I was like, maybe he'll just see him a good person and they'll turn around.

They looked at each other and, and one of them said, should we turn around? And then they were just like, no, let's keep going. We stopped at a diner to eat, and it was my last meal outside of that place. I had a burger with lots of ketchup. I should have asked for help, but we're very far from home at that point. And my brain told me that would have been very dangerous to try to stop it. It's actually taken me a very long time to accept that I didn't try to escape this process.

I finally, in the last year, I found a way to just make peace with the fact that I was just trying to keep myself alive. Ivy Ridge is called a school for the future and it's touted to be this behavioral modification program and it's marketed to parents to have all these wonderful effects on kids and give them these positive experiences and it shows horseback riding, it shows outdoor walks. I was picturing New York City but it was upstate New York where there's just like cow farms

that was very cold up there. I was greeted by Miss Sis. On the program she seemed pretty normal but she actually screams a whole lot and she was mean to me. Nobody knew my situation and they all antagonized me right away, but she let me skip the weight and drug test.

So I didn't have to go into the nurse's office, but they did send me right to intake. A staff took me to like the door of the back of the building and there was a bus. And then the bus took me to like a stone's throw away dormitory. It's probably like 9 o'clock at night and there was two girls my age to greet me that were in uniform. I went to shake their hand and be friendly,

and they withdrew their hands really fast, and they said, we're not allowed to touch. They escorted me all the way through this long maze of a dormitory, through this very mildewy basement, which ended up being something we had to walk through every day. It smelled really bad of mildew and mold. So there was like a dilapidated building. They used to be a college that was just turned into this prison for kids.

There was this upper level lounge, which upper level means kids with privileges. They like had watches on and their hair down and they were like, okay, this is Christy. She's going to do your intake and she was a staff member. She was like, okay, we're going to go through the stuff in the luggage and make sure that it's all okay. And they were like, oh, look at your pictures. You have all of your friends. How cute. And they like got rid of those pictures.

I had actually been holding on to a little statue that my friend gave me. It's a little finger-sized statue of St. Teret. who was holding a bouquet of flowers. I was taught that if you pray and ask for her help, she sends you roses. I was just holding onto that statue, the entire 11-hour transport. Somehow they didn't get rid of that, and I guess sent it back to my parents. I actually ended up getting that back. They did a strip check, which they let me behind a towel at least.

They did me like do jumping and bending over, and they gave me some pajamas and then told me to go upstairs. to the cells that the girls were in. I'm calling themselves because it's literally what it looks like. It's the cinder block dorms. It's just four bunk beds to a room. There was like 20 girls. So there was five rooms of girls. They assigned me to this girl to take me from zero knowledge

to all the knowledge in three days. She was probably like 16. Actually, it was a lot older than a lot of the kids there. A lot of them were like 15, 16, and I was 17 and a half. She was a lower level, just like me. so she was with me nonstop, and she was behind me at all times in line structure. I'm just trying to, like, wrap my brain about where I am, and she's explaining everything to me already, and it's 9.30 at night.

I can't process anything, and I'm, like, grieving. I remember her saying, you have to make a thousand points to get up to a level where you're allowed to call your parents, and you only get 16 to 18 points a day. A lot of times your points are taken from you, and I remember going to sleep, doing math in my head, like how many times does 16 go into a thousand? Probably not figuring out the answer to that question, but trying to figure out how long it would take me to be able to call my parents. I was laying in bed with my eyes open, and this lady walked past, and she'd said, close your eyes. I learned you couldn't even have your eyes open

after shut down. I woke up to the same cinder block walls. It wasn't a dream. They yell at you to wake up in the morning, and then you have a certain number of seconds to scramble out of your bunk and make it to the hallway to count off. They count one, bunk, two, bunk, three, bunk. The whole day, I counted how many times we have to say that between brushing our teeth and getting into the breakfast hall. I had to say bunk through every doorway, around every stair, every corner that you pivot.

You had to say bunk a thousand times a day, basically. Everybody seemed very adjusted to it, which was very creepy. Our uniform has knee socks. and a skirt and a sweater vest, and you had to braid your hair. At the beginning, you could only have two hair ties at any given time, because you could do one braid or two braids, but those were your only hairstyles. Despite the fact that the program was about $40,000 a year, we had to pick out items for hygiene that our parents had to additionally pay for

from some of the cheapest brands you could possibly imagine. To have a hairbrush, it was something that your parents had to mail to you. Our dorm mom was quote unquote cool and she would occasionally bring a hairbrush for a girl that had been asking for some. There was the girl's deodorant or the men's deodorant and a lot of girls opted for the men's deodorant because the girls one didn't really do anything.

You're allowed to write letters once a week on Sunday and I was set there on a Friday. So my first letter home was like, help me. I can't dance. I can't talk. I can't do anything. I need to not be here. I can't say bye to my friends.

I have one friend going to the, convent. I'll never see her again. Please let me stick goodbye to them. I think they redacted a lot of my letter because you're not allowed to complain about the facility at all. My dad always wrote once a week, which was nice. I remember I didn't get letters from my stepmom. She wrote on my birthday. I was given a copy of the letters when I went home. I do distinctly remember there was a strong theme in every letter and it was like, you're here because you're intolerable to live with. The only time anybody is allowed to talk is in group, which is one hour a day. You have to be given permission to talk.

And even then, you don't want to talk because you're put in the throes of attack therapy. So if it's your turn to talk, sure, you can share whatever you want. Get it off your chest. But then they're going to have three people stand up and grill you afterwards about what they really think about you after you're done sharing. You would say things that were pretty rough to hear. and the recipient was not allowed to react with their own emotion. And you have to stand there with your hands open facing them to indicate a posture of receiving feedback.

It was a very bizarre experience, not just because people that you wouldn't normally associate with in your group giving you feedback. It doesn't feel like they really know you enough to really be saying that. But it would especially hurt when you knew a girl had your back and she would be forced to go up and say things that made you feel like it was a slap in the face. I was given a turn to speak in group. I said, my parents think I deserve to be here, but I don't think I should be here.

I literally go to church and go to school and try to be involved in activities. I guess I like talk back to them, but it's because they're being unreasonable. The dorm parent went first. So like, well, there's always two sides to every story. You can't go by your story alone. You're probably just playing the victim right now, and that's because you're still new and you don't want to acknowledge what hell you put your parents through

that made them so scared that they had to send you here. The other girls stood up and said they didn't believe me and they giggled about it. Like, we get it. Everybody likes to play that they're good when they first come here. I didn't feel very believed, and that ends up being a pretty big theme the whole entire time I was there.

At Ivy Ridge, they make you. you think that your relationship with your parents is all that matters and that you'll do anything to have that back. And I believed them. And they said, if I behave a certain way, I can have my parents' approval. And I was like, let me try this. So in a way, I did believe in the program and want to make it work. When you're a lower level, you don't really have to call anybody out because it's not your job. You have to call people out later on in the program when you're like the big kid. Right now I was like the little kid, walking in line structure, having a stand and look at the person's head. for like the whole day. We were in medical line for like 10 minutes all everybody gets their med,

and then we go into another line to wait for the cafeteria to be available. One day I went and they gave me bacon and it was raw. It might have been warm, but it did not look cooked. Knowing that that must be a mistake, I raised my hand and asked the dorm parent to help me get new food and they were like, no, you have to eat it. And I was like, but it's not cooked. And she's like, if you don't eat that, you're going to get a correction. And a correction is when they take your day's points from you. You only get 16 points a day. And if you refuse to do something like that, you lose 25 points.

So I had to eat this raw bacon. And for like three years, I did not want bacon. It was disgusting to me. Even the thought of bacon because of that. There was curdled milk. I took one sip and it tasted really bad. And then I looked and there was pieces in it floating. And then I said, I need help.

I think my milk is curdled. And the chef came and said, no, it's just frozen. You're fine. And I was like, it's not frozen, though. And she goes, are you arguing with me? You're going to get a correction. Some of these staff don't know what a correction is. They just like the idea that they can get you in trouble.

The corrections were crazy. They would make up rules all the time so that you would lose points. I went to study hall a lot, which is what happens when you don't make enough points to supplement the corrections you get. They'd make us sit up really straight with our feet together and write out sentences about etiquette over and over and over. and that would be the entire day until you burned out your time

and then you could rejoin the group. But it was a waste of time because you couldn't earn points that day. There was also isolation room, which I never went. You go to isolation if you're sick, if you're having a panic attack, if you're in pain, if you're just unable to physically cooperate.

I saw a girl get a panic attack and she got escorted away to, they call it intervention, but it's just isolation room. They were just make you sit there and you couldn't do anything. Can you walk us through a little bit about what your school day looked like? We'd sit there for like hours a day. I hated it.

You couldn't look out the window. You couldn't talk and you couldn't even carry a pen. Like if you had a pen to write something and you didn't return that pen, everybody had to get strip searched because nobody was allowed to write notes to each other. There's one tutor for like 20 minutes at the end of the day. And there's no teachers. We had switched on schoolhouse, which was just like a random CD download. So science, biology, whatever, you would have to learn all the modules and answer little quizzes, like regular online learning.

You could easily pass tests after taking them the first time. You would just take it, fail, and then take it again until you passed. I whipped through those classes and then went to the college part pretty early. They only let us go to the Mormon College, Brigham Young University, virtually. P.E. was every day. At gym class, you wear shorts and a... Ivy Ridge T-shirt. They saw I had this scar on my leg, a brand new cut. Like, it was a gash in the back of my leg on my calf, and it was from working in my parents' yard. Then Jim, you are allowed to

talk. And this upper level goes, hey, what's wrong with your leg? And I was like, it was from yard work. That was the only attention I ever got was another girl my age pointing it out. They knew about it, and they never had any nurse come address it or anything. It's a big gash. I still have a scar from it. it seemed like no adults in my life cared about my physical well-being at the time. We didn't get medical clear. I didn't see a doctor or a dentist the whole 20 months I was there. I'm a developing girl at that time. I need help.

It was just so cruel. What about the weekends? What kind of hobbies were you guys allowed to have? So there was no weekend. You even did school on Saturdays as if it was a regular weekday. We scheduled things at upper levels, according to when our shifts were. So we would have two days on, two days off, two days on, three days off or whatever. You might be on shift and you have to work the whole weekend.

And by work, I mean, you have to put in hours as child labor with no pay. When we were off shift, all we did was focus on school. We would go in front of these padded walls in the gym and take a family photo. And we all have to be together and smile. That was to promote the program and to show our parents that were happy. and it was all staged. It was a required thing. Like, you actually had to do it.

You couldn't opt out and you couldn't not look happy. It was all very strict and very serious. Another thing that happened was they wouldn't let me go to church. I have to go to church every week and get communion. And I have to stay out of serious sin

and have to be able to have access to confession and priests. There was none of that. They were not going to allow us to go to church. So I asked for a meeting with the people in charge. And they actually put me in front of a couple people.

Then they said, why are you here? And I was like, I have to go to church and get communion. And they're like, do you know what communion is? It's wine? You're trying to ask us to get alcohol. And they just shut down my whole case. I did feel slighted that I couldn't have communion. It was very bizarre that even though my parents had a different view of their faith,

they were always very devout. why would they want me to be in a situation where I can't even go to church? There was a Mormon service that took place in this random room that we had to walk through every day to get to the school bus that took us into the dorms, but I never went because I'm not Mormon. Let's talk about the riot. We didn't know anything leading up to it. It was nighttime. It was an hour and a half past our time we were supposed to be in bed.

The boys apparently started rioting, and I didn't know what. what was going on. There was just this loud alarm, and that's 90% of what I remember. This alarm was so terrifying. You could even feel the sound of it in your shins. We had to stand in line formation against the wall for like 10 to 15 minutes while these alarms were going off, while we heard screaming and shouting over the radios of the dorm guards and the night watch radios. I actually ended up one of the only times in my life I've actually blacked out. I felt to the ground. I think it was just very overwhelming hearing all those sounds. We didn't really know what was going on except they used the word riot. What have you learned since about the riot? Before the documentary

I talked to a guy who was there and he told me all about his side of things, he said some kid first broke into the vending machine and gave out a bunch of candy bars. Two of the kids were assigned to like hold some of the dorm dads back. One of the kids was, you know, using the fire extinguisher against the dorm dads. They had the whole plan. Miss Sis acted all of a sudden after this riot, like she cared about us. I think it was just a PR thing she did because she went around to each individual person the next day. She was like, are you okay from it? Good. Are you okay from it? Good.

And she just got like a verbal from every single person individually. Before we could really think about if we were even okay. I remember that being like really weird. What am I supposed to say? They forced us to go through behavioral modification programs every six weeks called the seminars, inspired by the cults like Sinanon. We went to this orientation seminar for two days. You have to graduate that program in order to move up in levels.

So you would have to do everything they asked. It was kind of dehumanizing. The second seminar is called Discovery and it's three days long and you have to do all these exhausting exercises and a lot of crying. There was like a towel wrapped in duct tape and you hit the ground for like 30 minutes screaming. After you get all of your anger out, you're like sitting there in this quiet place. And I was actually crying more in that part. Not because I was exhausted from all the hate I let out, but because I really missed home.

The most traumatizing seminar was parent child too in Atlanta, Georgia. Every part of it, I felt like my dad and my son were attacking me. On the second night of the seminar, I was so discouraged because the program had me thinking, As long as your relationship with your parents is good, then you're a good person and you're worthy of leaving this disaster. And I was like, well, since that's not going to happen, they're never going to be happy with me. Now what? There's no way out. And I felt like dying that night.

I was so upset. I felt very isolated. My first months there, people knew I was Christian and they were making fun of me for it. I would love playing basketball in our P.E. time. But I made a basket. And then at lunch, one of the cool girls was like, oh, did Jesus help you make that basket? You're such a prick. I remember one of the girls didn't like that I was her bunk leader.

She thought she deserved to be the bunk leader. She would always be like talking without permission at night trying to make me feel like I don't fit in or don't belong. I just ignored her. But she was adamant that she wanted to put me down for at least a month straight. It got pretty uncomfortable, but I didn't. feel a need to call it out because she just had her own issues. I was clearly like one of the older kids. I was able to be there as somebody who can answer questions and I felt the need to parent them whenever I got the chance. I think I saw them as little sisters. I don't think it was like a peer.

When I was on shift with them, I felt the need to look out for them. I remember strongly advocating for people starting at Ivy Ridge. I don't remember having that fierceness before, but I'll still do that to this day. I don't know if it's like my own trauma, but I feel like I have to advocate for people who need it. For the last year or nine months, I was there. I was an upper level. I was a guard. So I also had to share duties to like tell on people and keep people in line formation and make sure everything was going to the rules. And I would get in trouble if I didn't call out people. So that was a very taxing thing. But I tried to bring my joy to people in that situation and mentor people when I could. The only book we're allowed to bring into the

dorms is the Bible. After being there over a year, a lot of girls actually had sort of an interest in it. And I feel like I had a big part of that because I kept my faith at the center of everything that I did and was very intentional about praying for people and being there if they wanted to talk about God. But in the last six months, there were maybe seven of us girls who were getting together in the library talking about what verse showed out to us in the Bible that we were reading. Everybody went around and it was the most beautiful thing. We met maybe two times and by the third time, they said we weren't allowed to do it and they didn't give us a reason. It was just really sad because that was like the one joy that we finally got. They just come up with their own rules and you

don't really get a chance to defend yourself. There's a grievance process, but I was never overturned on any of my cases, which were all very valid. I was dropped two times because of things revolving around the laundry. A drop is when you lose four to eight weeks of progress in your program, and you have to live like a lower level again. The laundry person was mad that she had to move my stuff to the dryer. And the other time was my friend had left her stuff in the wash and I needed to use the wash. So I just put her stuff in a basket and used the wash. And when she came back, she was like, my clothes aren't dry. So I'm going to drop you.

In some of the files involving Ivy Ridge, former employees reported that they would get in trouble if they weren't dropping kids enough. It's true. There was a clear quota. I was a third person and a third is somebody who has to. go with you when you're with a staff member. So you always have a third person as like a witness. So I was just randomly drafted to go to the med run with this girl. And on her med run, I saw right on the desk this note that said her parents were pulling her out of the program that next day. Because we're told to tell on ourselves or else we could get in worse trouble, I just let somebody

know. I glimpsed at this. I'm aware that she is getting pulled. And I just thought I'd make that known. Looking back, I shouldn't have told them myself. Because I had spent time with her, I was like, by the way, you need to take your final exam. I really strongly encourage you to take that tomorrow. Because in my mind, I'm like, she's going to want to finish her class before she gets pulled. One of the dorm moms said, have you been spending time with this girl? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, okay, well, you're dropped because you probably told her she was getting pulled tomorrow. And I was like, no, I didn't. And they dropped me anyway. ways. Five times people were petty and I got dropped. Getting dropped is a very traumatic experience.

I thought I was going to be there for a couple weeks until my parents figured out what kind of police this was. And then I thought maybe I'll be here for like three months. And then I thought maybe I'll be here for seven months like my dad said until I turned 18. But I ended up being there for 20 months. How did they convince you to stay in the program after your 18th birthday? My parents were like floating the idea of pulling me. They were telling the program, it'd be nice if they could take Marie out and put her into like a different type of thing that wasn't going to cost them so much money. But the program said, we just don't recommend it. How are you going to know if she's better if she hasn't graduated?

And my parents decided to keep me there until I graduated. They said they would disown me as their daughter. If I didn't graduate the program, they said I wouldn't have any money or way to pay for college. If I left, they would only give me two weeks worth of groceries. and one month of rent. And I didn't even know if I had any money. I didn't have a way of checking like a bank account. I assume I will just be like homeless.

They manipulated me by saying my biological mom's family had issues that would make them bad to live with. I wasn't even allowed a phone call to an aunt or an uncle. So I didn't even get to connect with them to like talk about plans of living with them. I could only talk to my dad. And then they had Mr. Eric come in during group, pull me out and just say like sign these papers and he didn't give me time to read them. He quote unquote summarized what they were,

and that wasn't what they were. They were just to sign my own rights away to the facility. He just pressured me into signing all these papers, and to this day I will never sign anything without reading it. My dad and stepmom, they were running out of money for Ivy Ridge and didn't even do their part to help me graduate, which is attending the final seminar, the graduation ceremony. I woke up very early December, 2006.

All of the graduates of the class got to all go to one bigger airport to go to the L.A. final parent-child seminar three, which is where the graduation seminar happens. And I unceremoniously took a flight home. It was just sad because everybody else got to get celebrated by their parents. I never had a high school diploma or graduation celebration. And all I knew was I had finished my last test on a particular class, and that meant I was done with high school.

Did you live with your parents directly after you graduated? Yeah, I was living with them until I finished one semester at community college and did a bunch of jobs. When I got back from Ivy Ridge, my stepmom told me, don't tell anybody that you went to Ivy Ridge because they're going to think you're weird. I was basically like encouraged not to talk about my experience. experience or anything. For those first few months, the family that I thought I was going home to, which would be full

of mercy and grace and understanding, never existed in the first place. I'm 19 coming back there, and they're treating me like I'm 11? My dad wanted me to work at Blockbuster, so I worked at Blockbuster. He found me the job. And my coworkers who knew I was very innocent and pretty religious were like, you've got to watch the movie, saved with Mandy Moore. It reminds us of you. I was like, I love Mandy Moore, so I rented it.

So excited to watch it. And my dad threw it on the ground and yelled at me and like attacked my character. What do you think was the strangest day to day getting your freedoms back after leaving the program? The strangest thing for me was getting to reunite with people that I thought I'd never see again. The thing is with Ivy Ridge, they give you a limit to who you can access. So you have to write out all of your friends and mark them with A, B, C, or D category. A, people were people that your parents approved you talking to, which was literally like nobody. B was people who were okay before the program.

C is like use caution and D is don't talk to these people. And anybody who truly supported me got C. Before I even left, Iveyore age, I just got used to the idea that I wouldn't be allowed to see anybody I cared. about for a while. I wasn't allowed to reunite with my own cousin, who was my best friend up until Ivy Ridge. I didn't even get to talk to her for five to six months after I left. So I was not expecting to hear from people I cared about. My karate instructor from my whole childhood made a Facebook account just to try to find me. And it was such a joyous reunion. But the other side of that was I had family who I was brainwashed into thinking they were

crazy and that I couldn't rely on them or they had it out for my parents. To realize that that's my family who loves me was a huge shock. This is the real world, not the world that my parents created for me through letters. The real world is that I'm allowed to have bonds with my family. Once I was finally reunited to them that summer, I was so overwhelmed with joy. We actually all got together that summer in July 2007. I hadn't seen them in so long and I wasn't sure what they were going to think of me. I had actually produced a song

about one of the girls that graduated right before me. She's big in advocacy, pushing legislation to stop programs like this. We put it on some CDs and then we played it for my biological mom's side of the family. They cried and they wanted to hear it two more times. I worked 50 to 60 hours a week and that kept me busy enough

to not have to think about the program, and I had a very full social life from all my friends from high school and community college combining to meet a supergroup. But I did leave to go to a place in Texas called the Honor Academy I think eight months after my return from Ivy Ridge, and that was where it re-triggered a ton of my trauma.

Honor Academy was a place run by Teen Mania. It's essentially a one-year-old. year leadership and a missionary program where you go to learn and praise God, as well as working in ministry, serving the campus or helping the teen mania brand expand by putting on events for youth that filled stadiums. There were concerts, prayer sessions, and lots of, like, cool things that youth might be attracted to. I was starting the Honor Academy in August of 2007. Immediately, my first night there, I had my very first full-blown panic attack. There was an alarm that went off during a praise and worship session, and I did not know what was going on with my body,

but I completely had a meltdown. I had to go outside, and fortunately, a lady noticed. A lady noticed, and she came out with me. She happened to be in charge of my dorm experience. She was able to walk with me and help calm me down, but she was like, what's going on right now? And I was like, that alarm is really scary. And I was shaking, and I wanted to fall to the ground. But because she was there to intervene,

my panic was reduced significantly. That was my very first time being like, there is something incredibly triggering happening. When I went into the cafeteria one of the first times, I saw the cups were just like the cups at Ivy Ridge. They were stacked right by the drinking machine, and they had the same cartons that they were stacked into. When I went to pick up my cup,

I immediately had a flashback and could not be in the present moment for a full minute. I would continue to have things like this happen. I saw a girl standing up braiding her hair. I was reminded of all the times I had to drop or watch somebody drop to lower levels, and it really scared me. Another time, people were walking on the sidewalk to go from one building to another, and it looked like line formation.

My chest felt tight. I was breathing really shallow. The most awful panic attack that I had was when we were leaving a ballet later on in the course of our year there. It was a gorgeous time with the girls in my dorms. We went on to a school bus to take us back to campus. As soon as I got on the school bus, it reminded me. of getting onto the school bus that took me from my very first ride when I arrived at Ivy Ridge, and it reminded me of feeling trapped and kidnapped. I fully was in like a shrimp position on one of the seats of the school bus, and I was very fortunate that two of my roommates who were very close to me immediately just understood I was having a trigger, and they hugged me really, really tight, and one of them was just sobbing. There was like a football game on the camp,

One time the buzzer went off to signal the corridor was done, and I immediately collapsed on the sidewalk. That's when I knew I had to go to see like a campus counselor. I first learned there that that's called acute post-traumatic stress disorder. And apparently the skill to cope with acute PTSD is to simply remind yourself of where you are right now. He said, say, this is a football alarm for a football game that is going on right now and that you have to specifically like be in the moment and state what's happening right now. After I left the Honor Academy, I did some counseling for free at my campus at college. It was just very informal.

It wasn't like a trauma intended type of program. But getting to talk about it helped me understand a little bit. One of the problems that I perpetuated was thinking that the seminars had been a good tool to process problems. I had a roommate and I thought that using some of the tools from the seminar would be helpful. I didn't know that she had asthma, but I brought her to like a place outside and I had her do one of the exercises releasing your pain and stress. You either hit the ground with something or pretend you're pushing a bowl. her up a steep hill talking to her like one of the seminar facilitators. You have to think about all the things you're mad about and get that out of your system and like this is going to help you.

And she was just crying. I thought she was getting a benefit out of it. But then it turned out she was having an asthma or like a panic attack. The very first words that she uttered during this experience were like, I can't breathe. I felt so bad and guilty. I immediately ran to get help. She was fine, but that was super scary, and I couldn't have been farther off the mark. Nobody should do that to each other. It just really made me feel, like, super aware that I was not psychologically providing safety, nor had I experienced safety myself.

That's partly how I had to start my healing journey, but I wasn't ready to fully accept that everything was bad, just that the seminars may have been bad. Everything clicked for me one day. I was 26. In a movie preview for the movie Cinderella that was coming out, and the portrayal of the wicked stepmother opened my eyes immediately to, there's something actually off with how I'm treated by my stepmom.

The whole night and next day, I was recounting all of the high schoolers and their moms that I had ever encountered and remembered that I thought after going to everyone's house, this mom is too nice. then I realized it's actually not them that were too nice. I think they just love their kids and are interested in hearing about their friends' days as well. It turned my world upside down and was like, wait a minute. I think my own family of origin may have had it wrong.

That's when I realized the normal isn't to be rude and distant. It's to be encouraging and inclusive. And that's when I was like the Ivy Ridge thing wasn't because I was, was a problem. For four years in a row, I asked my dad to go to like virtual therapy with me. He said no. And then last year he said, yeah. And we went to like one or two. And it was so bad. The therapist was like, your dad is not ready, willing or able to do this. This man is very detached from you. He sees no reason to do this. It was what I needed to hear. It's hard for me to learned that he's also been one of the ones to make up stuff against me. For years, I thought that

it was just my stepmom making him not like me. I thought if I could rescue him from my stepmom's lies that he would see me clearly and be able to love me correctly. But then I realized he's been the reason a lot of the bad stuff has been happening. He's not innocent. My dad expressed regret when the Netflix dot came out. I don't think my dad saw it, but my uncle crossed my dad. and said, do you think going back you would have done it? And he was like, no, I think I would have let her live with aunt, blank, blank. So I think he did know that I was going to plan to move away to live with her specifically. My dad still hasn't apologized.

He told up to my uncle that he wished you would have sent me somewhere else, but he won't apologize to me. And I've asked him many times. Do you still talk to your dad? We'll have like one or two formal conversations a year. That's it. I don't really email with him either. in the last eight years I've been trying to keep him really at bay.

He doesn't know my address or like anything about where I work. I just hate when he sends self-help books that feels like a slap in the face. I don't want another. Here's how to help your emotional life. My stepmom and I, it's as though neither of us exist. There's not a strong animosity on my end. I went to my brother's wedding two months ago. When I was with them at the wedding, I was able to just sit beside them and feel like

grateful that I could be physically near them and not need anything from them. I didn't feel hurt by them or anything. I was just joyful to be there and like share our attention on to my little brother. A couple people came up to me and acted like they had some intel. They thought that they were referring to some common knowledge about a conflict with me and my stepmom, which we don't have. They're like, you know, why don't you try to repair things? It's very clear to me that she's been very hurt by you over a number of years. I wasn't even reactive because I had no context for what they were saying. One of my favorite funny aunts on my stepmom's side of the family. At the end of the wedding, she oddly came up to me and was like, everyone has problems. It's okay. And I was like,

oh, okay. It's been at least 20 years since they sent me to Ivy Ridge. And I wasn't even the troublemaker. So it's just kind of funny, but there's still like this attention they get from the idea that I was a problem. So my relationship with them is very at arm's length. What is it like to live with the experience of being a survivor of Ivy Ridge on a day-to-day basis? Are you still experiencing those PTSD symptoms? My nightmares for the first 15 years were how do I avoid the kidnapping? It was always the same scenario like the kidnappers were coming and I had narrow options of what to do. They always would get me every time. I could not outsmart them. I journaled until I got to the bottom of it. And yeah, it's because I was scared that I didn't

actually escape them in our life. So I was able to forgive myself for that. But then there's the mystery of all those people that I said got sent back. In my brain and when I'm asleep, I'm somehow able to be sent back if my dad finds out where I live. And so in my dreams, I'll be back at Ivy Ridge. There's no way to convince anybody that I'm an adult. I even said, I'm here because of a misunderstanding. They're like, oh, there's always two sides of the story. I bet you're playing the victim. I think not being believed was the hardest part.

What do you hope listeners will keep in mind when listening to stories like yours and the other survivors this season? And what can they do, in your opinion, to support survivors of these institutions? If you're listening, I just want you. you to learn a little bit about psychology of people who aren't made aware of the full truth and finally got their vindication to understand they were never supposed to feel unloved or misunderstood. I think a lot of people had it worse, and so I feel like I've been spared. The fact that I had what I felt like was a mission to be there for the other girls while I was there,

partly helped me not feel so down. I felt like even though I experienced this, there might have been a little reason and I might have helped somebody's day. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving an opportunity for me to share my story. Next time, on something was wrong. He was begging me not to send him.

I get the picture of those two men standing there and me letting them take him, I have to live with death for the rest of my life. Anything in my mind I could think of that was bad, that would happen, was probably a one on a scale to one to ten. And what actually happened was 10 plus. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production.

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