Something Was Wrong - S24 Ep6 An Accountability Letter

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

*Content warning: distressing topics, bullying, addiction, Institutional child abuse, ‘troubled teen industry’ (TTI), disability abuse, body image abuse, sexual trauma, medical neglect, therapeutic trauma.  *Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips:  somethingwaswrong.com/resources    *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  Adirondack Leadership Expeditions, Troubled Teens Directory https://www.troubledteenprograms.org/listing/adirondack-leadership-expeditions  Adirondack Leadership Expeditions, Unsilenced https://www.unsilenced.org/program-archive/us-programs/new-york/adirondack-leadership-expeditions/ Bain Capital Private Equity Acquires CRC Health, Merger https://mergr.com/transaction/bain-capital-private-equity-acquires-crc-health  Mitt Romney and Bain Capital:Greed, Debt and Hypocrisy, UE Union https://www.ueunion.org/political-action/2012/mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-greed-debt-and-hypocrisy-  Outdoor program for troubled teens closing, Adirondack Daily Enterprise https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2013/07/outdoor-program-for-troubled-teens-closing   The Real Scandal of Romney and Bain, The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-scandal-of-romney-and-bain 

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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. Today, Lindy joins us to share her experiences as a survivor of Adirondack Leadership Expeditions and a Pennsylvania boarding school where she spent time in the mid-2000s. Adirondack Leadership Expeditions, also often referred to as Ale, opened in June 2003 in Saranac Lake, New York,

marketed as a character development wilderness program for teens aged 13 to 17. The program was run by Aspen Education Group, an organization with a variety of wilderness outdoor programs, residential schools and programs, special education day schools, and young adult and weight loss programs, and was acquired by CRC Health in 2006. Notably, CRC Health was previously purchased by Bain Capital in late 2005 for

$720 million. Bain Capital is a private equity firm co-founded by 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Aspen Education Group continued to operate Adirondack Leadership Expeditions until its closure in July 2013, when CRC shut several wilderness programs down, citing financial concerns. We appreciate the time, energy, and trust Lindy has given us to share her story. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is, something was wrong. Hi, my name is Lindy. I'm 33, happily living in Pennsylvania with my beautiful twin daughters. I hope I can help relate to others who may have gone through this and help them along their healing process as well as helping heal myself by talking about it and not holding it in anymore. I have an older sister.

I had two grandparents on my mother's side who we saw pretty often as children. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother growing up. My mom traveled a lot for work. Dad worked weird hours. We are from Massachusetts in a rural area. Everybody was in everybody's business. Think about, you know, desperate housewise where all the neighbors know everything. Yep, that's my neighborhood. That's my town. I was stuck in the suburbs. But it was a yuppie suburbs. Growing up, I wasn't the easiest child. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in third grade. generations change with the way they're taught things.

My mother was taught that the only way to control me during an outburst was to hit me with a wooden spoon because my pediatrician pulled her, it was perfectly all right. I was sat on a lot. I had my hands pulled behind my back. I would be dropped off on the side of the road on highways and told to walk home. But I fought back. I took the wooden spoon out of my mother's hand and hit it. back when she hit me, I started refusing to get out of the car when they would try to be me

on the side of the road. And that started to scare them because I started to become bigger than them. When I tell my friends these things, they all have the same type of stories. So I guess it's just the age we grew up. I would categorize it as abuse. My parents may not. My parents didn't know how to help me. Prior to being diagnosed, my parents got a lot of phone calls in school that I was acting out. I was a loner. I didn't have a lot of friends. And then getting diagnosed, I got segregated to different types of classrooms, different medications. People noticed that you start acting differently. So that caused a lot of frustration on my end. I didn't want to be different. I wanted to be like every other child. Having ADHD, you get punished for.

at least it feels that way, especially like in school systems and doctor's offices. They started me on medications and therapy, and it did not seem to work. As a child, you don't want to take medication. You just want to be free to be who you are. I never noticed a difference, but everybody, my family, my teachers, all the medication calmed you down when you're not on it. You're all over the place. You're not paying attention.

pretty much what a child with ADHD does, but I still felt like me on the medication. My high school didn't really have enough support or so they claim to help me with my schoolwork or the type of assistance I may have needed. I was bullied a lot by a certain group of kids. Being made fun of for my weight, my height, the haircut I had, the fact that I am clumsy. I am still clumsy to this day. I went to school with broken bones constantly. You feel empty. You feel like every single thing that somebody is saying to you

is the only thing that matters. And that's why people are so self-conscious. I remember that somebody made fun of the fact that I had a little bit larger ears than somebody else. Yes, children, they tease. But it shouldn't ever get to the point of where pictures are being made. of you with gigantic ears. Ed continued to get to the point of where they started harassing me on my space.

They started calling my house. My mom would pick up the phone and say, no, she doesn't live here. This is the so-and-so residence using her maiden name so that hopefully people would stop calling. I stopped going to school. And in my town, we don't have a truancy officer. We just had the police. So the police would get called a lot to my house by my parents to try and get me to go to school. My parents knew that all this was happening and they just couldn't understand why I couldn't suck it up and deal with it. I got told I was always overdramatic when I had any type of concern about something or an issue.

It seemed like I was more of a hassle for them to have to deal with me. If my parents could have done one thing, I would have just asked for them to take into consideration. how they would have felt if it was them in my shoes. To just have that support, it probably would have meant so much more to me. Honestly, I had no one. My best friend growing up, she lived two houses down for me. She moved when I was away at summer camp one year, and I didn't even get to say goodbye to her.

I didn't have friends. I actually, for a time, became addicted to an online video, game, Second Life, all that I really had was this game in my family. It was a very, very lonely childhood. It was nice to get away from my regular life, getting to go on an online world where I could be whatever I wanted. I went back into Second Life as a child. I played that game in the child community. I was role-playing a six-year-old kid going to preschool. I went to an adoption agency. I got adopted by a family in an online virtual game because my family didn't give me that love. I wouldn't go to school. I sat home and played on the computer all day with people who also were outcast in their

lives. I consider the mother that I met in that game, the godmother to my children. She was there after my kids were born. She has been such a support through everything, and I am very thankful for her. I never thought I would find the friendships I did on there, but those that I held on to for all these years, I am so thankful. There are two people who I am still in continual talks with. This is going on like 15-ish years. My family wanted to get me away from that because I would stay up all night, talk

these people all around the world who are going to listen to me and give me the support I need versus you guys telling me to grow up. I'm being overdramatic. Sometimes we have to find community where we can get it and that looks different for everybody. Do you think that your parents' concern about you spending too much time on the game was warranted or do you think it was just them misunderstanding you? I think it was a lot of them misunderstanding you. I think it was a lot of them misunderstanding me. I don't think my parents really knew how invested in the game I was. I think they knew I was playing something, but I never told them what it was because I don't think they would have understood. I know that they know now because I've had multiple conversations with my whole

family about it. But I think back then I wasn't doing their plan. I was sidetracking myself, Me saying I would no longer go to school was the nail in my coffin to go to one of these quote-unquote enrichment programs. They ended up speaking to an educational consultant. This educational consultant brought my parents and me down to her house one day and we talked, and it was decided she knew some programs and some schools that could help me. I was told Adirondack Leadership Expeditions was a camp that was run during the wintertime for children who needed to get away. My mom told me that I would be going snowshoeing, doing these beautiful hikes and arts and crafts. They would help me with my anger and aggression.

I was very excited at first. my mother actually took me to go get my hair done. While I was getting my hair done, the stylus asked me what the special occasion was because it was just a random middle day of the week. I'm going off about this camp that I'm going to and how excited I am. When the time came to leave, the night prior, I had bagpacked of clothes,

I had some books, I was told I was going to be able to read. So I had activities to do to keep myself occupied. I had been to sleep boy camp. multiple times. So I just thought that's what it was. Never once would I think that I would be waking up in the middle of the night in a negative 30 degree sleeping bag in the dead of winter on a mountain in upstate New York. The next morning when we went to leave, I freaked out. I was refusing to leave my room and the police were called by my parents again. And I'm not sure if my

parents told them where I was going, but the police were also like, no, you need to go. If it had to get to the point that the police were called, it was probably because I was fighting back. So it took a lot of maneuvering, but my family and I packed up the car and we drove from Massachusetts to upstate New York. It was a very, very weird ride. I think it was about four, maybe five hours. My sister was in college, so she had come down from school to drive with my parents up there. So my sister was doing her college work. And my parents, they're in the front seat. And we had a DVD player. So I watched movies on the way up there. I remember we were almost there and we stopped at a rest stop. I asked my sister if she would buy me a bag of Doritos. And she

snapped at me and told me no. I was so broken. I was, I just, want a bag of Doritos. But I guess at that point my sister was over my antics. I know she's going to listen to this. So I love you and I 100% forgive you for not buying me the Doritos because you've bought me so many Doritos now. It's sad because I know she didn't know what was happening, but we've learned and we've grown from it. Saranac Lake New York is a beautiful town. It looked like a Hallmark movie, especially with it being January. You see the mountains, snow-covered. We pulled up to a White House on the main street there, and it had a sign for the program outside of it, Adirondack Leadership Expeditions. I got unloaded from the car by my family, and we just walked to the

front door. There was a man and woman there who showed us inside. They talked to my parents a bit with me there, and I can't 100% say what they were talking about. In my recollection, I remember saying goodbye to them, but my sister actually reminded me that I did not say goodbye to my parents, that I refused to even look at them. The program directors that were there, they took the belongings I had brought, so all my clothes and the books that I had packed and gave them back to my parents. that's when it kind of set in like, oh, this isn't a camp. They left and these two strangers brought me into a room and they had me stripped down in front of them,

butt naked at 16. It was traumatic to say the least. When you hear about children being strip searched, you think it's because they're doing time for something. You don't ever think about going away to a camp for support and that's what's going to happen to you and especially in front of somebody of the opposite sex. It's something that is engraved into your mind. I do still have issues with my body. I'm very self-conscious about how I look with the abuse with my family, the bullying and now

having this complete and utter random stranger seeing me completely naked. It really messed with my psyche for a long time. They brought me to a doctor's. I needed to get a physical exam done, and they actually had to give me a tetanus shot during that. Didn't really put two and two together why I would need a tetanus shot to go to a camp. It still didn't fully register 100% in my mind what was happening. When I was at the doctors, they had given me new clothes to wear. After that, they loaded me back up into a car, and we drove for a few minutes. I'm sitting in a car, and they're explaining.

to me that I'm now part of this program because I was an unruly child. My parents didn't know what else to do with me. This was their last attempt to help me. I am a child with ADHD. There's nothing wrong with me. So hearing that is a complete and utter shock. I remember them pulling the car over on the side of the road and them handing me this camping backpack. It had a sleeping bag on the bottom of it rolled up. It had yoga mats on the side for padding for when you were going to bed. There was a tarp on the other side and then there was like a bear sack for food on the top. These people pointed to a field and in the field there was a group of girls and they said, this is your family. You're going to be stuck with them until you graduate the program.

I sat down and refused to move on the side of the road. I was sitting there for maybe about 45 minutes when the male counselor from the group came over and grabbed me. He told the other two people, you know, like I got it from here. And I remember just struggling and screaming. No cars coming by, nothing. You're in the middle of nowhere. I finally got to this group. Nobody's talking to me. Because apparently you're not allowed to be talked to until you graduate the first step in the program. They were doing some type of activity together, and I had to sit there quietly not being included. And finally, it was time, I guess, to go back to the campsite that they had set up. This property in Saranac Lake was a huge plot of land that I want to say had about six or seven campsites on it.

Four of those campsites had log cabins, and two of them were strictly flats of land that you were meant to build your shelter on. Our square tarps were our tents. You had to be able to make your tarp tight. You had to learn knots to keep the snow off and then the rain. Walking back to those campsites was grilling, especially when it's snowing. The snow is deep. You got snow shoes. Using snow shoes for the first time is pretty tricky. Halfway walking back to the campsite, I refused to move again. They called somebody out this time to come sit with. me. When they showed up, they explained to me even more in depth what was happening. And I got it into my head finally. I wasn't able to leave. Did that stop me from trying? No. But I finally understood.

So I walked back to the campsite with them. And this was one of the ones with the log cabins. The girls were making dinner inside. There was, I believe, eight oak bunks. There were like those really thin mattresses. And then there were two rooms on the front. that were the counselor's rooms to stay in. And then there was an outhouse. So I come into this room and everybody's making their dinner. I sit off to the side. And finally, I guess permission was given to talk to me by one of the girls.

She was sweet. She was in the program. I want to say the longest at that point. She came up to me, introduced herself. That first night, it was nice to be able to have somebody to talk to finally. after being an outcast. At one point, I remember I was so over it that I climbed onto one of the bunks with the sleeping bag. And she came over to me and she told me that I was going to get yelled at by the counselors for being there.

And I told her I really did not care. And the counselors came over and they kept telling me to move and I kept refusing. They grabbed the bottom of the sleeping bag and pulled me off the bunk to the floor and told me if I really wanted to lie to, down a can lay on the floor then. And that's how I spent my first few hours in that program. I was flabbergasted by everything. I still just couldn't believe that my parents would do that to me. In my group, when I first got there, I would say there was about eight of us. That number went up and down all the time. One girl, she was there because she had a drug addiction and she was partying and things like that. There was another girl who she would run away from home a lot. Being with people

who weren't like you was definitely a challenge. These programs are just more so for filling the pockets with money than caring about the mind of the person who they're destroying. My parents, I started writing them letters every single day, telling them how sorry I was for being such a bad child and being a disappointment. It was just heartbreaking because I thought they would be delivered every single day. Only come to find out they get delivered once a week. There were a few times I may have referenced in my letters how horrible it was there. But everything was read by the counselors and my therapist because they marketed this as a therapeutic enrichment program. So you had to go to therapy every week. Your therapist read over your letters. Your therapist

then got to say if your letter was good enough to be given to your parents. I wasn't allowed to speak on the phone. Everything was done through letters or words of mouth from my therapist. My therapist was my means of communication to the outside world with them. I would like to believe that if something had truly happened to me there, where I may have had to go to the hospital, they would let me speak to my parents, but unfortunately, I can't say. One of the tasks in these books that we had to do was write an accountability letter. You had to take accountability for all the things that you have done wrong. I wrote two of them.

The first one I wrote, I was like, I'm sorry to my sister for breaking her porcelain doll when I was a child. I'm sorry for locking the bathroom door to our babysitter's bedroom when I poured sea monkeys on her clothes. Because that's what I thought I did wrong. But what they wanted me to take accountability for was how I acted out of hand. So I had to write the second letter of being like, I am so sorry for not listening to your rules. I take accountability for the cops coming to the house all the time to have me. We brought to school.

I take accountability for dad losing his job because he had to pick me up all the time from school because I didn't want to be there. I was pretty much taking responsibility for every wrong thing that happened as a child that was major in my family. And was that at the urging of this therapist? Yes. Apparently, when my parents talked to her, they just honed in on my actions. I thought my therapist was a joke. I don't believe she helped me at all. I actually felt more demeaned by her than I ever had by anybody else. everything I would say would get turned on me. So if I told her, I really missed my parents, and I had this memory of a certain time,

she would tell my parents, she pretty much said she didn't care about you guys, and the worst time of her life was this time. What's the point of that? You're ruining even more so their memory of their child while they're not around. If you're marketing something as a therapeutic program, you would hope that everybody who worked there

was licensed in some way or another. I only found out a few years ago that the therapist who I had was not licensed in the state of New York to be a therapist. There were three boy groups and one female group. So we were aware we weren't the only ones there. When more than one group would be staying on property, the counselors would have radios so that they would know when another group was coming by so that they could move their group to another area so that they didn't talk to. to each other. There were male counselors and staff members that would come into the group, but you never saw like the younger male. You would just hear them in the woods every once in a while. They would give you a number and you have to continually repeat that number so that they knew that

you were still within earshot so that you weren't running. Kids would try to run all the time from these programs and I am one of them to try and keep you in check. If I was given five, I would have to be like five, five, five. We did rotate the numbers. If there was only three kids in the group, you're one, two, three. And then when the first one leaves, you become number one. It was pretty regular basis that people tried to run. Besides that first attempt at trying to get away, I ran away once.

I was tackled to the ground by another male counselor on the side of a road with multiple cars driving by and nobody stopped. but I don't really think there was a punishment. I think you would just end up with a really angry staff member. There was another girl who would run away, and she always came back, but it got to a point of where she started stripping her clothes off and refusing to put her clothes on, and they had to take her to the hospital,

and we didn't see her again. I know that more people tried to run. Rules-wise, I was told I had to eat at certain times, we had to eat as groups. You had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For food, our bear bags had some type of fruit, corn nuts, pepperoni, little box of cheese, tortillas, peanut butter, and hot cocoa mix. If you were lucky, you would either get freeze-dried bananas or you would get prunes. It depended on the weeks. Things would get changed out, but that was pretty much the standard bag. It all dependent on how you rationed your food. You were in control of your bear bag. If you ate all

your cheese in the beginning of the week, you don't have more cheese for the rest of the week. So that means you're not getting that protein. You weren't allowed to trade your food, but that didn't stop us. I'm not a really big peanut butter eater. So I would do a lot of my trading of peanut butter for either the apple or orange. While everybody had their own individual bear bag, there was the dinner bag, which had extra stuff so like the rice and beans and the lentils and things like that that would get replenished once a week as well you would have your mess cup which are like the little metal ones that you take camping and your little plastic spoon and then you would have a pot for the whole group a regular cooking pot on the stove or fire that would be cooking the food and when the food was done you would

dish it out from that pot into your little cup and that was your dinner so you became very imaginative with what you could make with like lentils and bacon. We had oats every morning as well for breakfast. Also, in the middle of the week, we would have our therapy appointments and our therapist would bring us extra treats. And that would usually consist of bananas, the chicken of the sea tuna packs, Hershey's chocolate bars, and graham crackers. For lunch, we would make ourselves some tuna, put it in our tortillas. And then we would save the banana and the chocolate and the gram crackers. crackers and we would make like this dessert every single week. And if I made it now, I'd probably throw up. You would hold all of your cocoa powder for the weeks and you would just mix the bananas

together with the hot cocoa and the peanut butter and the regular chocolate and melt that all on top of the graham crackers. If you were on campus, the stove, which was one of the cast iron stoves that you have to chop your wood, put it in there, light it and everything. You'd cook on that. Or if you're at a campsite, you would build the fire. For the amount your parents are probably paying for this program versus how much money they were spending on you guys is probably a wild difference. Yeah, I mean, when I left the program and we went shopping for food for the first time, I asked my parents to buy the things that I ate while in that program, probably because

it became a source of comfort. So if they sit there and ever say that they didn't know that that's what I was eating, that's a lie. they thought it was crazy that I wanted to buy a jar of peanut butter because I finally decided to start eating peanut butter when I was there. We had showers once a week. Laundrie was done once a week. From what I remember, you were given three pairs of underwear. One pair of socks, two sweatshirts, one that was a crewneck one and one that was a hoodie. You had your long johns, your fleece pants, your raincoat, a windbreaker, a beanie, and water pants, and mickeys, which were military boots.

When you went to bed at night, you would use your clothing as a pillow because you weren't given a pillow. You had to also give up your boots at night so that you wouldn't run away. If you were in one of the houses or the cabins, they would take all the boots and store them in one of the rooms up front. and then one staff member would stay up all night to monitor. And if you need to get up and go outside to use the bathroom, you would have to ask for the P-boots, which would be somebody's boots, didn't matter whose, to walk outside to go to the bathroom.

When we were off-site or at one of the campsites, they kept them all next to the fire, and somebody would stay up all night at the fire to make sure that nobody ran or anything like that in the middle of the night. And if you didn't want to ask for the P-boots because you were too far away from the counselor, you would just stand in the snow and pee, barefoot. As a female, when it's your time of the month,

we weren't allowed to use tampons, so you had to use pads. You had to carry it around with you once you did use it because you couldn't dispose of it anywhere because you were in the middle of the woods. There are levels in this program. They're all animals. The highest was hawk, then it went down to wolf, then bear.

The first one may have been fish. They gave you these books that had tasks in them. them. And in order to graduate to the next level, you had to complete these tasks. Some of them were like, find a stick and make a bow drill, ask your counselor for a piece of string to make your bow drill and you had to make a fire. That was one of the tasks. Another one was to make a digging stick for you when you had to go to the bathroom. How long were you in this first phase? I believe I was only in it for a few days. I wanted to get out of it as quickly as possible because I wanted to be able to communicate with the whole group. I want to say the second phase is where you did most of your tasks.

The third phase, you got to be more independent, but pretty much every phase was the same. Just the tasks were more grueling. A solo is at the end of every single level, except for the first one. So whenever you want to graduate to a next level, you do a quote, unquote solo, which means you go off on a journey with yourself and another counselor and you become more independent. You make your own campfire at night and you have to be able to cook your own food by yourself. You got to be able to pitch your own tent. You can't have any communication with the group. You are a ghost. So you're pretty much back at square one again, except now you have all these things that you can use to survive. I remember during my first solo, I,

I hated being alone. I hate the dark. I still hate the dark. But I remember this one night, I could not, for the life of me, start a fire by myself. And I had been trying for a long time. And it finally got to the point of where I was like, I'm not going to be able to be warm. I'm not going to be able to eat dinner because I can't make the stupid fire. So I had to go over to one of the counselors, even though they weren't supposed to be talking to me.

And I was like, listen, I can't be alone. I am scared. I need support. can I please sit with the group? Thankfully, they gave me the approval to still sit with the group. And they told everybody, pretend like I'm not there. So whenever they would address the group, they would say, wherever Lindy is on her expedition,

hope that she's doing well, and she's learning a lot about herself. My second one, I didn't get to because I luckily graduated the program before that. That second solo, they took you on a random hike somewhere. and you had to be able to GPS coordinate yourself to get back to the camp. When you weren't on site, you were out doing expeditions. And these expeditions could be anywhere.

I remember going to Big Haystack, and then there was the cat scales itself. When you go down these expeditions, you would get dropped off at a random drop-off point on the side of the road. And you would either have a day trip where you're just, hiking for the day through the woods and coming back to the bus and going back to property, or there were days where you would hike out there being told, no, you guys are sleeping out here tonight, pitch camp. At that point, you're in the middle of the woods and you need to go to the bathroom, so you dig a hole. You needed your digging stick to dig your holes. The expeditions could last from a few hours to a few days. They could really have been anywhere. I don't know.

if they had to get any type of permits or anything for where we camped. It did seem like a lot of places that we stayed were like regular camping areas. When we would go out in public, we weren't supposed to talk to anyone who wasn't part of our program. I was just shocked that none of these strangers thought anything different of it. One of the times, it was some type of museum or nature park. It was a while away from a camp. And there were families to see a bunch of kids hiking around and matching outfits in the dead of winter. You would think that somebody would be like, that doesn't seem right.

Especially if there's somebody who's trying to run away and they're being restrained, you would think somebody would step in and say something, but nobody ever did. For somebody who didn't run or have a lot of upper body strength, having to now carry a camping backpack on your back while climbing through snow with snow shoes on that you've never worn before and military boots, it's a lot. It's overstimulating. Your body is thrown off. I'm not athletic at all. So the hikes were very hard on my body. I was very overweight.

So having to continually walk for hours at a time up a mountain in the snow was very challenging. There was one day where we were dropped off at a park and we were crossing the lake to go to the other side. And my leg fell through the ice and I couldn't get it out. I was trying to pull my leg out and it had created like a vacuum suction between the ice and the water in my leg. I was crying in pain and no one was helping me. The staff just watched it happen. And finally, when I got free, I had to continue to walk in my wet boot. How would you describe the staff overall?

There were one or two who I would like to think may have actually cared, but a lot of them were there because they had an internship and they needed to get that type of experience for a real job. You could tell the difference between the ones that actually wanted to help you versus the ones who were there for paycheck. You don't realize that when you're in this program as a child that these people, not all of them maybe, are trained at all. But here they are watching groups of kids who are unfortunately going to fight and try and get away

because we don't understand. We don't know what's going on. So we're deer in headlights. We're going to run. And then being tackled to the ground by somebody who's maybe only five years older than you. The hardest part, honestly, was feeling like I was abandoned by my family, feeling like they weren't there for me at all or that they cared enough about me. I really got it into my head that I was this horrible child. And knowing that I wasn't going home anytime soon, crushed you.

because there is no time frame for these programs. The day I learned I was leaving the program was actually one of the days we had therapy. I think they plan it that way because they want your therapist to be like that hero to tell you the good news. We had come back from Expedition and we were in the shower house.

I had just finished showering and I was talking to my therapist. I was actually excited because I finished all my tasks so I'm going to request to go on my solo and she was like, wow, that's amazing. I'm sure your parents will be so happy for you when you see them tomorrow. It kind of went over my head, and I didn't grasp what she said. She had to repeat it again. And when she finally did, I was jumping for joy, screaming.

I'm so excited to see my parents. I'm so thankful. I'm leaving. And then you get to sit there and you get to play in your quote-unquote graduation from the program. you make a schedule of your favorite activities that you did while you were there. I remember I had requested that one of the counselors who I got along with to come to my graduation, but unfortunately she wasn't able to attend. I wanted an emergency dance party, which is what we would do every once in a while.

If you had a fun counselor and they had a headlamp before you would go to bed, you could request it and they would like flash their headlamp. And then everybody would just dance. I requested to show my parents how I was able to make a fire with my bow drill. And then I did like a thankful circle. So everybody went around and said what they're thankful for. I'm thankful for getting to go home with my parents. And I'm thankful for having met you guys in a group, that type of thing.

It was about four months to not seeing my parents. I was ecstatic. I was still resentful that I was stuck there. but I was so happy to see them again. The ride home was definitely awkward. I just went through this traumatic time in my life and they don't know anything about it, but you can't talk to them about it

because you don't want to make it more uncomfortable than it already is. Trying to confront is the most uncomfortable thing on the planet because it's gaslighting beyond belief. It's all, you made that up or you're not remember it correctly. So to potentially face that on your ride home isn't something I wanted to do. I sat and silenced that ride. In one of my last letters to them, I had asked that they bring me a bag of corn nuts from the store.

So they bought me this giant bag of corn nuts to eat on the way home. And we went to chilies. And because I had been on this weird diet for so long, my body, rejected regular food. So everything that my parents bought me that night just came right back. It took me a bit to come to terms with being back with them. They put me in here. They could happily do it again. Am I going to mess up to the point of where I have to walk on eggshells now because what I do really matters. They're really watching me. I unfortunately did not go home after I graduated from my program. I ended up living with my sister in her college apartment for a few

months because my parents didn't feel comfortable bringing me back home. They thought I would get addicted to second life again and they weren't willing to risk that. My parents would come and visit me every once in a while. I may have gone home for like a week or two prior to then getting moved to my boarding school. I can't really tell you about what it was like when I lived with my sister. I don't remember it 100%. She lived with one of her roommates, but I just remember being in her bedroom all the time and maybe going out once in a while when my parents came. I was told that the only reason why I originally went to the program was because I needed to go to a boarding school and they wouldn't take me without this prior program. And the reason why I needed to go to boarding school was because

my high school no longer could help support me with the type of support that I needed. There were kids in my high school who were in my classes who got more support than I did. Some of them were autistic. there was one boy who was in a car accident, so he had brain trauma. Those kids were getting more support than somebody who had ADHD. Everything that my parents did was on the word of this education consultant. And the only thing they could do was send me to a boarding school to get me that education I needed. Initially, when I lived with my sister, I was told that I was going to be going to a school up by her. That school was for apparently kids with special needs,

but it turned out that they catered more to those who had, like, drug issues and concerns. It was, like, a more strict boarding school, not a support system. I would like to think my parents actually started caring about me because then they did find me a, quote-unquote, therapeutic boarding school to go to for the rest of my high school life. The one I ended up going to was six hours away from my parents' house. I remember going to the school and doing some testing in the principal's office and then doing a tour of the campus.

These kids, they're all nice. They're all saying, it's nice to meet you. You're going to love it here. You're going to have so many friends. And it makes it feel like it's an environment you want to be in. But then you go to the boarding side of it because that's where I would be living there, unfortunately. There's no way I can commute from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania every. day for school. There was this girl who during the shower time was screaming her head off about

not wanting to go in the shower. And I remember texting my mother, crying and telling her, please, I do not want to go here. There was this girl screaming about not wanting a shower, and I cannot deal with that. It fell on deaf ears, and I got sent to the school. The school had these cottages and there were four on the school campus. It would be two girls' cottages and two boys' cottages. The cottages had about 10 rooms and you would have a roommate if there was enough people. Otherwise, you could have been lucky and been by yourself. There were three bathrooms, each with a shower.

There was a kitchen and a living room. And then they would have like their staff offices. You would have chores. You would lose privileges if you didn't do chores properly. If you refused to take out the trash, you couldn't go to the soccer game that you said you wanted to do as your nightly activity. Because you are so watched over by the staff members there, I definitely felt like it was more of a prison. You can't have your phone past 8 p.m. You can only have it for like an hour a day. I was trying to talk to friends who I knew from Second Life. because they were my support systems. So to fit it into like an hour time frame was horrible. You would also have to do forest activities every single day. You never could just have a day to yourself to like read a book. It was difficult to be able to make my own choices but still have to live by their rules.

I wanted to be able to talk on the phone whenever I wanted to. I wanted to be able to make plans to go hang out with my boyfriend at the time. time, but I couldn't because I was in trouble for not doing the tours that day. They also had levels to their program. The first one being the regular cottage. The second one was the other cottage, but you were more independent. You were able to walk on campus by yourself. You didn't have to be watched by a staff member. You were able to have your phone for a bit longer. The final level for boarding school was called independent. You still lived. with your group of girls, but you lived off campus.

The school, they had two apartments that they rented, and then they owned two houses. There was two girl groups, two boy groups. And depending on the year, you may either live in the houses or you may live in the apartments, and then you would swap the following year. I was at the high school for two and a half years, so I did the first part of my school,

I was in the cottage until the summer, and then I graduated to the second program because of my age. I ended up living off campus in one of the houses with three other girls. And for that, you get driven to school every day by a school van. The staff still live with you, but they switch their shifts out. So you're still watched, but like you're able to go to the mall if you want to. You're able to go grocery shopping. You can have your phone all the time. you are able to be independent. You can get a job if you wanted to. I worked at Coldstone. You got to do

things like that in the final stage. My high school had multiple therapists on duty there. These ones all were certified. There were about four or five therapists. Every kid in school had one of them. Depending on your needs, you may have scheduled therapy with your therapist during your school day. Or you could just have an assigned therapist, but never talk to them. It wasn't uncommon to have the same therapist as your roommate, because if you ever had an issue with your roommate and you go to talk to your therapist, your therapist then would go talk to the other roommate about the issue to try and resolve it, but then all as that did was cause a bigger issue, because then the therapist would break the confidentiality agreement. I still didn't believe in therapy because of everything that I had

gone through with the wilderness program. And then the fact that the therapist was shared between multiple other students in the school, I didn't feel comfortable really talking to them. So I did shy away from the therapy aspect of it. I would refuse to go to my sessions. I would only go if there was something that was really bothering me, but I definitely didn't feel supported at all. I couldn't be like my authentic self because of that. There were group therapy. sessions every once and a while. When things would get out of hand, like one of the roommates would get a little unhinged, we would try to communicate with them in a group like setting. There was a girl who she was overwhelmed a lot. And there was a day where she was hucking rocks at

our apartment window. The three of us plus the staff member all came together and we were like, we got to call somebody to come out here and help us with her because she wasn't calming down and she was going to break a window. So they had like the head counselor and the therapist come out. We had to sit there and talk about it. I didn't feel comfortable talking to this person who is now hucking rocks at a window, but we were forced to do it in order to move on so that not everybody would lose their privileges. My parents would come down and visit me a lot because I have family in the area. I didn't really want to talk to them on the phone. I was still angry that I was once again not home. I had a really bad spite after everything had happened to the point of where

I cost my parents thousands of dollars because I bought everything under the sum with their credit card to try and like get back at them, which I'm not proud about. It was challenging trying to regrow what little relationship we had in the first place. And what about your relationship with your sister during this time? We still weren't talking. She was graduating college. And I believe at this point, it was when she was going off to live in Israel for a few years. I luckily graduated when I was 18. There are some children or young adults who stayed there until they were 21. I graduated. and I earned the American Legion Award for Community Service from my school.

I went home during that time with my parents after I graduated. I got into school in Philadelphia because I wanted to be close to my boyfriend at the time. After everything I had dealt with with roommates at high school, I told my parents I could not deal with a roommate in college. And so my parents helped me out. They got me a studio apartment for me to stay in. and I stayed home until school started for college. I retracted.

I went back into my own little bubble because it was definitely a big change having all that freedom again. I still had a school schedule, but I was able to go out and do things if I wanted to. But how would I go out and do things if I didn't know people or if I didn't have transportation to get there?

So I segregated myself, even though I didn't have to, because I didn't know how to really be around people. I definitely was very rebellious. I was still figuring out my own life. I wasn't in therapy after graduating high school, so I had no outlet other than my boyfriend at the time. I secluded myself to only hang out with him. My parents did not like my boyfriend at the time. I would steal their credit card again and buy things whenever I wanted to. So whenever my parents would come visit me, I would either write down their credit card number

or go out somewhere and buy things. I still resented everything that I had been through because of them. Were you ever able to effectively communicate to them what was difficult about these programs for you? I have been able to more and more with my mother. she seems more open to it and more understanding to a point. I believe that she still thinks that I am embellishing or being overdramatic about certain situations. But I believe to an extent she is listening.

Today, the relationship with my mom is definitely better. We do have our fights here and there, but like what mother and daughter don't? Can't say that I forgive her 100%. There are still days where I will randomly message her and just flat out say, I hate you for putting me through that because it will just be one of those days where it's really affecting me randomly. And there are days where she'll sit there and she will apologize as well for putting me in those programs. But there's also days where she'll tell me to shut up and grow up. My relationship with my father is a totally different story. I don't think he will ever understand where I'm coming from.

or what I went through. And that's very unfortunate. I think it's the way he was raised. He also wasn't raised in the best environment. His father unfortunately abused him as well. So it was the way that he was brought up. We never healed our relationship. My parents are still married, but the relationship with my father is non-existent. I do not talk to him or call. him. My children do not see him. He is pretty much just a ghost in the wind. My mother is so independent and on her own that not having my father there doesn't impact anything. She still is able to travel and visit everybody. In a way, it's kind of like my father has passed on. We don't mention him when she's around. She doesn't mention him either. I actually just went up to see my parents with my boyfriend.

friend. My grandmother passed away a few years ago and I hadn't been up to like look through her stuff. We agreed to do it. So I drove up there with him and we stayed in my parents' house. Being at their house was unsettling, knowing what I went through there and just being under the same roof as my father again after four years. my father is not healthy now. He is slowly regating strength and movement in his body. He has to use a walker to get around. He can't really turn his head.

I sat there and it's horrible to say, but this is your karma for everything that I went through. I don't want to sound so malicious because it's not that, but it just felt like you got what you deserved finally. The fact that now he needed to rely on somebody else for something and not being able to have the will to do everything by himself, it was like, you're in my shoes. You have to ask for permission to go do something.

Thankfully, I got to sit back and say, I don't have to listen to you. I'm not involved at all. I did multiple times tell him, this is my bubble. I need you to respect my space when he would come towards me because unfortunately I do sometimes still get nervous, even with him not being able to really be mobile. I ended up finding my wilderness stuff. I had stored it behind the couch in my parents' basement. Everything was there.

my walking stick, my digging stick, my bow drill traps. There were still tender in the tender kits from the bow drill. They're still flint. Do you feel like being placed in a program like the kind you were impacts people's opinion on your capabilities as a parent at times? Yes. I was second guest a lot and judged for who I was as a child. Everything was based off of who I was pre-moving out, going to college, all of that. I was a totally different person, but they did not want to see it. I think a lot of it can have to do with the stigma that survivors have and how that can also be reflected in how people may make assumptions about the kinds of parents that they are. because of what they went through, and it's a very unfair parallel.

My sister and I, we are better apart. At the same time, we also want to be together now. When she went out to live in Israel, I worried for her every single day. And I think that really made me treasure her more as a little sister. You just think she just doesn't like me because she's my big sister. and I'm going to irritate her because that's my job. But when something could possibly happen where you no longer have them, you start to relish it more,

especially when you have talked to them about what you've gone through and they validate you. For a while, she allowed me to live with her and her husband and her kids while I was finding my feet. Even now, we'll text each other randomly and just say that we miss each other. and that we love each other. And that's not something that we're used to doing. So it's nice that it's finally happening.

What about the other kids that you were in these programs with? Were you able to stay in touch with them? I had a notebook that people did write their information down on. Now that being said, I was only able to stay in contact with two of them up to a point. I had added both of them onto my space once I had graduated. the program. We talked on there for a bit. And then when Facebook became a thing, we talked on there. And then, unfortunately, you know, you stopped talking to people and people disappear. They deactivate their Facebooks, make new ones, that type of situation. So as of right now,

I don't have any contact with them. But I would love to talk to them and hear how they ended up. What would you tell the people who run and own these wilderness behavioral modification camps? What would you want them to know about what you experienced there? You guys altered who I was for the worst. You sit there and think that you're helping these families, but you're taking money out of their pockets, and you're changing their children into these different people. What you're doing is scarring them.

and making them more dependent on their families. Would you ever put your own child through this? That's what I think about. I wouldn't do that to my kid. Why would people think that's okay to do it to somebody else's kid? It's very sad and disgusting that you guys thought it was okay to treat children like this. We're just disposable. No matter where you went, you were traumatized in one way or another.

there's no way you weren't you were ripped from your home and shoved with a bunch of random people and told that you had to follow these rules otherwise you're not eating you're not bathing you're not sleeping under a tarp there's no way that anybody could come out perfectly fine from that no child ever deserves to be put through what we were all put through and i can honestly never picture myself ever thinking about doing that with mine. They are little balls of sunshine that even on the worst days, I hug and kiss on the head and smile because they're a gift in themselves. Why would you do that to a gift? I just wish the parents would listen and not throw your children away or discard them. They need you. I want people who are in the program.

to know that they're not alone. And if they're having trouble fighting those feelings, there are others out there like you. There are resources out there and you shouldn't be ashamed to use them. Even if you feel like they're not going to help, they are. After multiple years of putting off therapy after my high school therapist, I finally found a therapist who helped me more than anything through one of the toughest points of my life. And I couldn't have been more thankful for her to come along at that time. So don't be ashamed of that. And don't feel like you failed because you have to ask for help. Very well said. I can't thank you enough for being willing to speak with me about your experiences and how it impacted you. Next time on something was wrong.

There's a heavy Mormon influence at that school. I was considering converting. When you take away everything that makes you hopeful, you absolutely can start believing in things you didn't believe in before. They're encouraging these girls to yell and scream at me. I remember digging my fingernails into my skin. After that incident, I told them I needed to go to the, psych ward. They took me. But nothing was the same after that. I felt like I was constantly

walking on eggshells and ostracized. 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 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.