#BreakingCodeSilence
On my September road trip I went to visit Grace, Luke’s sweetheart from therapeutic boarding school. There has always been a special place in my heart for her.
She spoke eloquently to our camera of her torturous years in the ‘troubled-teen’ industry and I see Sam, my travel companion and now camera woman’s jaw slacken. Tears fall.
Driving back from our meeting, we are silent as we process what we have heard.
Unrest stirred in us both. So much wrong had been done and likely, still is.
Sam retreats to a yoga class on planet Zoom and I take a deep nicotine fueled dive into researching this industry that I had entrusted Luke to.
I knew it was fucked but I am stunned to see that the web is alight with books, articles, lawsuits, evidence of racketeering. My pulse quickens as I scan for the programs we used, that my friends used. I track one writer, Maia Szalavitz and here I find her tweet on the Paris Hilton documentary.
Sam returns full of yoga induced zen to my manic attempt to make the multitude of remotes work on the TV. “We are watching the Paris Hilton Documentary” isn’t a proclamation one would expect from me, but as we do, the history and trauma embedded by the world Luke and Grace and so many others have endured in the ‘troubled-teen industry’ is exposed.
Catherine McNamara leads survivors in the movement Breaking Code Silence.
These alumni are speaking out about this highly lucrative and unregulated industry that preys on desperate parents, like me, and hurts their children, like Luke, leaving many with life long trauma issues.
They are calling for reform, for change, for regulation.
Oh Luke! The tears fall.
I re-read our correspondence from wilderness.
I run my mind back to that time.
The potential, of unbearable guilt that is ever looming, rises.
I did so much wrong
and yet
I did so much right.
As parents we were indeed desperate and afraid Luke would die at any moment.
We saw wilderness therapy as a ‘reset’, as a chance for his brain to heal from all the drug use and develop. Luke and all those I have spoken to, enthuse that wilderness was the best part of their treatment.
But did it really need to be so brutal?
At every turn the wilderness admissions office pressed us to use a transportation service and I grew irritated at their insistence, as I am sure they did with mine, that Luke was not going to be dragged out of bed and forcibly transported handcuffed by giant men to the Utah wilderness, because he was coming willingly.
And later, in therapeutic boarding school, where all calls and letters are monitored and cries for help result in punishment, parents are indoctrinated with the notion that our children are liars and manipulators, a behavior that resonates, but drives a deeper wedge into our already fragile relationships, Luke and I had a ‘safe word’.
And yes, they knew that.
“He’s here because he chooses to be and NO, I am not telling you our safe word”
And yes, I would have come.
And yes, I would have taken him out.
And yes, Luke knew that.
We were, as always, working our own system.
Now let’s be clear here. I am not some amazing being who knew that transportation would cause trauma forever or that he needed to feel in control of his being in that school. All I knew was that successful recovery can only be so, if the person is willing, and Luke was.
There is a place for this however. Not every child is willing, most are not.
BUT this transportation system is unregulated and often the parents are unable to explain what is happening from the desperation of their wits end as their children are taken away at their behest.
How are these parents to know the inappropriate treatment this will involve?
“Hey baby girl, you can call me sexy chocolate”, tasings, handcuffs, no explanations of what is happening or where they are going. There is a way to do this better, to do this right.
The same with the therapeutic boarding schools.
These children are there for help. It shouldn’t be necessary to have a safe word.
I call Grace in the morning with the news of the Breaking Code Silence movement. It gives her tangible strength and we return the next day to take her video testimony.
Finally, she is being heard. Her Mother drank the Kool-Aid and despite the fact that Mount Bachelor Academy was finally closed, during her stay, for child abuse, after a shockingly ignored previous investigation dismissed the whistleblowers as “just a bunch of fucked up kids”, she’s still chugging on that Kool-Aid.
Now, because of #BreakingCodeSilence, Grace’s truth, THE truth, will out.
She testifies to camera, the abuses, the brainwashing and the trauma she endured.
Rehabs that put her in padded cells and medicated by force.
Mount Bachelor”s Synanon based cult therapy system.
Where’s your fucking science, people?
Breaking Code Silence are calling for testimony from survivors, parents and workers.
I spread the word.
I testify as a parent.
Yes, we were their guardians and yes, this movement will cause many of us parents to coil in agonizing guilt, especially those of us whose children are now dead.
I could shout back that we didn’t know.
I could shout back that we meant well.
I could shout back that we were trying to save their lives...
But I will not, because the parents were fucked over too. We were duped into letting them hurt our babies.
My job now is to advance through my shame that I did not do better for Luke.
I won’t be alone.
It’s time to be brave and stand up for all who have suffered, for the future parents and children who will find themselves where Luke and I once were, ……and Break Code Silence.
