Teen Behavior Modification Camps
Abuse Teens
Friday, March 10, 2006
They are not what they seem! I know I
survived two years in one! They are unregulated, poorly staffed and
a money making scam. They will abuse your child badly. Please read
my account and look up abuse at behavior modification facilities.
The abuse seems to be universal!
Troubled Teen Help! Hell in America! Child Torture USA!
DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD TO A TEEN BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION BOOT CAMP
WILDERNESS TREATMENT FACILITY!
They are not what they seem! I know I survived two years in one!
They are unregulated, poorly staffed and a money making scam. They
will abuse your child badly. Please read my account and look up
abuse at behavior modification facilities. The abuse seems to be
universal! Never send your child to a place that does not allow
contact and visitation right away!! You must be able to speak to
your child throughout and to see where they live!!
I have personally witnessed the repeated abuse of minors at the
Peninsula Village, a behavioral modification wilderness facility
outside of Knoxville Tennessee, and would be more than happy to
testify or present evidence to this fact. I am currently working
with the state of Tennessee child protection agency. Behavior
modification teen wilderness treatment camps are a controversial
excuse for therapy at best. These facilities, in case you are not
familiar, are not mental institutions, but basically prison camps
for teenagers whose parents for one reason or another have decided
to send them. You don't have to do much to get into a behavioral
modification facility and the slick marketing on websites makes sure
that most teenagers are included and welcome. Although many of the
children do need help they will not find it at one of these
privately run facilities that are sprinkled through out remote parts
of the country.
The teen behavior modification wilderness treatment industry is a
cash cow nothing more, most charge up to 30,000 to 40,000 dollars a
year to concerned parents or their insurance companies! The one I
was in charged 400 to 700 dollars a night, insurance paid. Some take
state kids and your tax dollars pay! Please do the math, PV cost my
insurance company $182,000 a year! I had very good insurance--so did
most of the kids, my parents paid nothing! Kid’s without good
insurance left quickly. The rest of the girls were wards of the
state. Peninsula Village makes a hell of a lot of money! While there
are, hopefully, good programs out there for troubled teens the ones
that pop up when you type in troubled teen defiant teen teen help
and so on are a scam to take your money and abuse your child. Many
of the ones even family therapists recommend follow these same
abusive prison camp guidelines.! I can understand how many are taken
in, especially by Peninsula Village.
From the website it looks fine, but please don’t be fooled! These
places are horrible and should be shut down immediately. It is
unbelievable how unregulated and abusive they are, how undereducated
most of the staff that deals with the children on a daily bases is
and how systematic and terrible the abuse! I would not believe it
except I lived it and I am still living it, unfortunately. Please
don’t send your child anywhere that fits the profile. The purpose of
this article is to raise awareness about the terrible growing
industry and to perhaps help get better laws put in to effect. I
pray that it will help the children still suffering under this
nightmare. Please read this. Everyone should know what is happening
in America today. My story is not uncommon or even the worst case
scenario, look up Mel Sembler and the Straight program as well as
troubled teen help and abuse at behavior modification facilities, it
is a very scary thing to do!
Please look up Mel Sembler's connection to this! And donations to
Republican party!
I was in Peninsula Village and it helped me about as much as two
years as a POW would have. It also cost my parents insurance company
over 150,000 dollars a year. What passes for treatment there is a
fascist farce and the girls i was in with were hardly hardened
criminals. One girl was in for being gay another for being molested
by a close relative and that was it, lots of anorexics, and suicide
attempts Many were in for more serious things but I know from
personal experience beating, brainwashing and taking away all the
civil rights of a teenager does not make them want to not self
destruct. This hell hole is sold as a way to help these girls. Also
how, if there is no legal recourse for them and they are completely
isolated, can any of this so called treatment be kept above any sort
of level. How do we know kids are not getting lost in it! As they
certainly are. What about the girls who accused a close relative of
molesting them and their families put them in the Village? What the
hell is that! Many of the girls were victims of a sexual predator or
a rape or of something that constituted rape due to the age
difference. Or they were just acting out or got lost in their
complete alienation from the kind of parents that would send them
off to be abused and not care that they were. Many of the state kids
did not have fit parents, in fact most of them didn't. You know, of
course, that when I say state kids I mean your tax dollars are
paying for their stay in Peninsula Village. It's hard to grow up by
yourself and out of the frying pan there are plenty of fires! There
were some nasty people in there for sure but most of them were staff
members. I am now twenty five and it took me seven ++ years to undo
some of the abuse I suffered in that stupid Nazi shit hole, and you
better believe when I finally finish my masters degree in Sociology
and political Science there is going to be holy hell to pay!
Anything I have done in my life has been in spite of that stupid
evil farce and I still have nightmares and a fun case of post
traumatic stress disorder, I shake uncontrollably about once a day!
I think all of these privately run facilities should be shut down
and their staff brought up on repeat child abuse charges! I am
currently working with the state of Tennessee child protection
agency to try and get this done. These children are simply troubled
teenagers and peninsula Village is a fascist Nazi prison camp that
has no healing therapy only abusive indoctrination! Any place that
won't let you talk to a lawyer, your parents or the police and does
what the Village does to you belongs no where but is more expected
in the third world! I know how that place colors people and it
angered me to hear the other girls spoken of in that way! They make
everything sound as degrading as possible, especially if you have
good insurance. . I remember how they repeatedly, every day all day,
maligned and shamed girls who were already so traumitized they could
barely see straight. How is this supposed to help some 14 or 16 year
old that has been through something horrible! It is just so much fun
to watch large stupid sadistis abuse a 85 pound anorexic or a rape
victim or tell the rape victim it was her fault. That it's all her
fault. This isn't therapy this is Abu Ghraib! These poor girls, they
treat convicted felons better in this country. It's such a catch
twenty-two, you try to self destruct because you were abused and
then they put you in a place that abuses you more to learn you how
to not self destruct. State sanctioned very expensive child abuse
runs on social stigma and prejudice. If you want to see some blaming
of the victim go on be a fly on the wall at Peninsula Village! I bet
half of the girls I was in with are dead by now, which is where
Peninsula Village really wants them, out of the way so they can't
cause a fuss or show up with insurance papers with extortionist
amounts on them and demand some of it back.
Please read this. Everyone should know what is happening in America
today. My story is not uncommon or even the worst case scenario,
look up Mel Sembler and the Straight program as well as troubled
teen help and abuse at behavior modification facilities, it is a
very scary thing to do!
I was in Peninsula Village two years from 96 to 98, both my parents
and I feel that we were extremely misled as to what my treatment
there would be like. I was in the lock down unit for six months on
arrival to the Village although I was cowed, completely subservient
and did everything that they told me to. I was physically restrained
on the first day in a hospital gown by at least 8 large adults for
nothing more than pulling away, it was an impulse reaction, when the
large orderly woman dug her nails purposefully into my arm. There
was absolutely no need to restrain me other than to prove a point,
we can hurt you if we want to. I was already in the isolation room
all she had to do was walk out and close the door, I wasn’t at all
violent or had even thought to be, pulling away was a knee jerk
reaction because she had hurt me. Mostly I was scared, crying and
sitting on the floor of the isolation room in a ball. This was after
the body search and being woken up at 5:30 in the morning by three
burly adults who escorted me to Tennessee, it was more like being
kidnapped. While being restrained the Peninsula Village staff
applied excessive pressure, I couldn't breathe and kept repeating
that I was choking, but they let no pressure off, I was bruised and
sore the next day, the restraint went on for hours. I saw one girl
with a nasty black eye which they said came from pressing her face
into the floor, like that made it better! I saw other cases with
bruised arms, wrists or legs. They restrain someone about twice a
week sometimes more. There is no doubt in my mind that they could
have restrained my totally non-resistant sobbing 95 pound borderline
anorexic teenage self between all 1400 pounds of the 8 of them
without hurting me. I was not fighting at all, even at first, I was
far too shocked. Each held a body part so it was not a case of too
many cooks in the kitchen, they meant to hurt us. They also keep
restraining you long after any fight is gone and even if none was
there in the first place. I remember girls being restrained for what
seemed like all night, although it was really only about five hours.
There was an isolation room in the lockdown unit, nice cold hard
linoleum with cement underneath but they would restrain you
anywhere, gravel, garden manure, whatever, and they used a straight
jacket called a burrito. I can remember seeing one tough little 15
teen year old state kid put in that thing for a day or more, they
were leading her around. Other girls were strapped to a cot wrapped
up in it, stuck full of thorzine and left to drool. I was once
restrained because I couldn't stop crying , I really couldn't I
would have stopped of course to avoided being restrained, I was
about as resistant as a wet noodle and they still held me down
choking for hours. They would restrain girls without reason, for
saying in group therapy, I don’t agree with that, or for sitting
down on work detail saying that they felt sick and needed to rest.
We were not allowed to look at or talk to the other girls and we had
to ask for permission to do anything, move even, of course go to the
bathroom and we had to tell them what it is we had to do. They stood
outside the door and timed us. Group therapy was more like a
denouncement session and began as soon as you were crying, that is
later on the first day, after they had restrained you for a few
hours and you were a broken puddle ready to confess to anything. I
don't believe that many of the staff that actually lives with the
girls on a daily basis is especially educated, perhaps some BA's and
associate degrees, I would guess a lot of community college
certifications. These are the one’s who actually deal with the
children and run group therapy and restrain them not the show ponies
on the internet.
The lights were left on all the time, we slept in cubicles and were
often woken by the staff patrolling , they were always standing over
us. We were punished constantly, abuse was constant every second for
those two years. We had level systems, I never got beyond the first
level although I was completely compliant. I don't think I was as
willing to rip into my fellow prisoners as much they would have
liked. Group therapy was a cult like denouncement experience, it was
pure hell, and I am not exaggerating. They would find out your
deepest darkest secrets and then browbeat you with them like you
were disgusting dirt, we could say nothing to defend ourselves or we
would face being PCId/ restrained. They liked sexual revelations and
would ask you everything about them, specific details and more
details, it was not appropriate, odd and used to induce shame. The
line of questioning was often very led. I heard them convince a
girl, at the prompting of her divorced well off mother, that her
father had molested her. The girl could remember no instances of
ever having been molested but through constant browbeating and
abuse, over the course of months, the staff at the Village had the
girl sobbing and believing that she had been sexually abused. You
would confess under extreme pressure to things you didn't do. Many
of the girls were there for something that had happened to them.
Somewhere, I think the website, says the Village is an expert at
helping abused girls. It was terrible to watch them torture some
poor kid who was there because she had been raped or molested. Many
of the girls had been raped or molested, myself included, and to be
held up to shame, ridicule and denouncement in relation to sex at a
place that was supposed to help you with your experience was a pure
nightmare. They encourage the girls to pick on each other, to rip
into each other during group therapy. Bullying is greatly
encouraged, in fact the level system is based strongly on it. There
was some desperation mentality in this, we all struggled so hard to
avoid being punished and they punished all of us together. I realize
now that the punishments were arbitrary, no matter how hard we tried
to avoid them they were still going to rain down on our heads. I
would pretend to give feedback, their word for harassment and abuse,
but how can you tear someone apart after listening to them scream
all night while staff held their face into the floor. There were
also frequent outbreaks of head lice while I was in STU infact the
headlice never really went away.
It seemed very odd that some of the girls were in a behavior
modification facility at all and it was hard to tell how all the
abuse was going to help any of them. One of the girls was in for
telling her parents that she was gay, the staff told her that she
was not. There were lots of anorexics, and some had never used drugs
or drank although staff insisted we were all alcoholic druggy sluts,
an idea hateful and prejudice filled, not at all conducive to
education and healing! Also am idea not relevent to a 13 year old
virgin who had eaten a bottle of asprin. There was another 13 year
old who had died her hair black and written in her diary I wish all
the kids who harass me at school would die and that was pretty much
it, I think her grades had dropped too. She saw spots sometimes and
had blankness in her vision so they told her she was schizophrenic
and medicated her to the gills. There was a lot of pretty odd
diagnosis, I thought. Worst of all some had done nothing other than
get molested by a close relative, to the horror of their families.
It did not seem reasonable that they were treated as if they were
being punished or were in jail for more serious offenses. I thought
too, that a lot of the girls who were in for more serious things
were acting out more serious problems in their lives, like having
unfit parents and being in foster care. Many of the girls had simply
fallen prey to some sexual predator. A very common story was "my
parents don't understand me," "I have no parents, they are too busy
drinking or using drugs" or "My “blank to protect privacy” has been
molesting me sense I was six and when I told my “blank” she threw me
out." The next step in this story was inevitably the guy I thought
was nice and 19 or younger later turned out to be 23 gave me alcohol
or something else, pressured me a lot and we had sex. He said we had
to have sex. He said he loved me. Or I used drugs/drank to make
myself feel better and then I couldn't remember anything. Or I had
sex because I felt bad and I thought I could trust the people I
considered friends. I thought he cared about me, I just needed a
hug. God the poor girls who acted out their problems through sex or
were just naive and ended up there. The sexual advances of men can
be a pretty overwhelming even for a grown woman much less a
depressed, my parents don't understand me or I don't have parents
you'll love and give me affection right, sort of kid. They made you
feel like a slut, a word I hate and not one conducive to healing or
education!
Even if you were raped or molested. This is the most warped excuse
for therapy I could possibly imagine. I bet half of the girls I just
described have committed suicide by now, the suicide rate is pretty
high coming out of these places. It ruins your life, it’s like
having sound bites from hell running through your head. Some of the
kids were just stupid teenagers who wanted to be cool and who had
had enough bad experiences with drugs, sex and rock and roll, how
they viewed sex and drugs, in their short experience with them that
if they hadn't been in a prison camp and weren't being abused they
would have been more than open to some logical, sane reasoning like
sex and drugs are really not so great despite what the media and
your friends say. These girls needed to be taught to think for
themselves not to blindly follow what the abusive people around them
tell them to do. That is what had landed many of them in Peninsula
Village in the first place, After relese the brainwashing only
carries you for about a year, usually I think, although some of the
girls started associating with the staff, I guess it’s that old
abused turns into the abuser adage.
Other wise the constant abuse did nothing but make you want to do
everything it told you not to, because it was so obviously wrong and
fascist. It gave you justification in your actions and, there for,
was far more of a trap than any positive help! I know all this about
the other girls because we rarely to never had individual therapy it
was mostly just the weird denouncement session crap.
After the lock down unit with its cramped quarters and barred mesh
covered windows for months, we had the cabins and work detail. Work
detail was exercise digging up stumps, cross sawing logs, mauling
logs, building endless things under the constant abuse of the staff
in the hot sun. I believe I was also suffering from sleep
deprivation because we were often woken up at two in the morning to
go out to the log shed to be shown how much wood still needed to be
chopped or for some other arbitrary reason. We also always woke up
before dawn and went to bed late because of punishments and
finishing the endless chores. I used to fall asleep standing up,
literally on a daily basis. We marched around in lines, or holding
on to a rope, and there was still no talking or looking at the other
girls, it was very lonely. We had to haul around the Gott, a water
jug that weighed so much your arms would feel like they were going
to fall off and you'd want to vomit but if you dropped it you knew
you were in worse trouble, we carried around many heavy things.
The cabins have no running water or bathrooms only porta johns. They
exercise you past the breaking point and then over a little, and
then much more. It was torture, I can't emphasize that enough
torture, we did this all day most days, unless we were in school or
on shutdown. We had no free time, we weren't allowed to read or
anything, everything was tightly scheduled and we would always miss
our schedule and be punished although we tried in pure desperation
to make them happy so they would stop. Even our showers were timed
usually ten minutes, five as a punishment with only cold water.
Hygiene wasn’t that great and there was no makeup or jewelry or of
course shaving your legs, only ugly work cloths. I mention this
because it is very dehumanizing for a young girl. School was nice
when you got to go, but it wasn't very organized and there was a lot
of other stuff going on, we also only went half the school week, so
we could do more important things like dig stumps out of the ground,
I guess. Most left with a GED, I think they really focused on GED
training, which makes it hard to get into colleges, especially if
when they ask for high school credits you list a behavior
modification facility.
Often if something came up, like we went on shutdown or were sent to
STU, the lockdown unit, we would miss school all together. Once they
had us sit in a circle with our backs to each other and stare at the
wall for five months only to turn around for group therapy and to be
escorted to the bathroom. We had no school for those five months and
five months is a long time to sit in a circle starring at a wall
only to turn around for a denouncement session.
From all the restraining you are probably thinking that the girls
were always acting up. I can not stress how completely not true this
is. For the most part they were more like zombies than wild
teenagers. I’ve done some research on prison camps and abuse and I
don't believe there is a teenager girl out there that isn’t going to
turn into a limp half dead dish rag in the face of no escape,
constant abuse; mental, physical, emotional and sexual, although not
physically so, denouncement sessions, sleep deprivation, sadistic
people four times her size watching her constantly and being
drugged. The only opposition I saw was closer to nervous breakdowns
than defiance. The girls rarely crossed the staff at the Village
except in really sad to watch ways, like protesting the denouncement
sessions, no my rape wasn’t my fault, or saying I can’t work anymore
I feel sick or I can’t stop sobbing I’m trying but I cant stop, I’m
just going to sit here and not move.
I saw bruises and suffered them myself I also heard a lot of you are
hurting me I can’t breaths. I never saw anything that posed as a
danger to staff or the other girls but I sure saw them restrain
people a lot. I also thought it odd that if the girls were so
dangerous they would have them marching around with hammers, saws,
mauls, axes and other weapons. The Village is very expensive costing
about 400 to 700 dollars a night this ends up being well over a
hundred thousand dollars a year to your insurance company! They
charge more when they are "forced" to restrain you or put you in STU,
as this requires more work or something. Everyone in there had
really good insurance or was a ward of the state.
I forgot to add they, of course, won't let you talk to your parents
except after I think it was six months for me, even then just by
phone with a family therapist on conference call so if you break out
of the party line and say “please get me out it’s a nightmare” large
orderlies can appear and march you back for more abusive
indoctrination. They laugh at you when you say you want a lawyer.
Your Parents have of course been told you are a lying manipulator
and not to believe you and that you just want to come home so you
can go out with boys and smoke pot. Kids wet the bed because they
are too scared to ask to go to the bathroom at night, either that or
all the abuse is manifesting in weird ways. I wouldn't believe it
except I lived it and I swear on my life everything I said is 150%
true.
I have lasting scars from this experience, I have nightmares almost
every night, not always about the village just in general, that the
world is a horrible place and all the scary fascist monsters are
going to eat me and everything I care about and I'm going to be
completely at there mercy. Besides the nightmares I shake
uncontrollably, these fits happen any time I am nervous, about once
a day, I am not exaggerating, it’s very embarrassing and not helpful
at work or in school. My family doctor, says that I have a good case
of post traumatic stress disorder. I have finally gotten over my
overwhelming social anxiety enough that I don't care who sees me
shake if it means I get a college degree and have a life of my own.
The Village taught me nothing other than how to be cowed and
subservient and to think it was ok when someone abuses me. I
recently got out of a four year relationship with an alcoholic
fiancé with a college degree and a good job who would get up in my
face and scream about once a week, I honestly think it was Stockholm
Syndrome and the feeling of helplessness the Village programs into
you. I still am completely incapable of making eye contact with
other human beings. I also have painful a painful ulcer my doctor
again says, due to stress. I can’t emphasize enough how bad
Peninsula Village is. I was amazed that we had no rights while in
there. I asked to speak to a lawyer or someone from the outside, I
heard girls ask to have the police called repeatedly, and they
laughed at us.
I am not a happy camper! I still feel like a worthless person who
deserves abuse even though I know this isn't true. It's just an all
too daily mantra there, how everything is your fault, your rape,
your parent’s problems, your anorexia, your life in foster care. I
never got to talk to another girl the entire time I was there, other
than with asked permission and staff listening, even then it was
just about mandatory things, like, put the piece of wood down here.
I can understand how many have been taken in by Peninsula Village
and all these other facilities and there sure are a lot of them.
From the outside they look just fine. My parents are good
intelligent people, who trusted and had no idea that such things
even existed in America. They believed as I did that it was a safe
and caring program that would help their daughter like most school
and health programs are. No-one sees it from the inside except the
daily staff and the girls really and us they do so much to discredit
and keep down that we do not believe anyone will.
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