Anne's Story - You Are Not Alone & Where to Turn

Date Posted: Wed, May 31 2000

I'd be happy to talk with anyone about this situation or anything else. I've been through it all, and survived. Two and half years ago I was taken from my home at 4am, by two escorts, put into a car with safety locks, flown into Missouri and left at Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy.I was told that if I didn't want to go it was too bad, I WAS going no matter if I was in handcuffs or not. I was taken away from school, my life, everything that was important to me because my step-dad and I didn't get along. My mom had had enough. I stayed at Mountain Park for one month. During that time I was never alone. I had a girl named Shannon who followed me within an arms-length at all times. I couldn't talk to most of the girls because I was new and I "posed a threat" to the other residents. I couldn't call anyone, my mom was only allowed to write me and call me after two weeks of living there. It was the worst two weeks of my life. I had no idea what I was in for. After I talked to my mom for the first time I told her that I had seen a girl who was beaten up by being paddled, she had bruises all over her back. She treated it like a joke, that it couldn't happen with such "loving" people running the school. Little did she know that only a month before my arrival at this wonderful school, a boy was brutally murdered, his skull crushed with rocks and neck cut with a knife (given by one of the "wonderful" workers). I was told that I wasn't good enough, that I had ruined my parents life, and how I must feel bad how my poor parents still had to walk past my room every day and think about how evil I was. I cried every night, I couldn't eat or sleep. I kept a picture of my family on my desk until a worker decided that I looked at my family too much and that I was being a baby. She took the picture away and told me that the next time I cried over my family that I would be wearing a pacifier and sitting on a stool wherever I went. The only way I could communicate with any other girls was if I talked to them through the shower drain. There was only one girl who would talk to me, and we would cry through the drain, promising each other that if one of us got out first we would get the other one out too. Due to the fact that I never got out, the artificial light made my skin greenish. I lost a lot of weight and started to throw up blood because I was so stressed out. I started bleeding from other orafices of my body and when my mom called she told me to show someone else. I told (and showed) it to one of the workers and she told me that it was "all in my head" and I needed to "knock it off". I couldn't write anything but things from the Bible. I was told to forget about my family and friends. I thought I would be there until I was 18, or at least until I could run away. Then the CPS came in to investigate the school, since the murder of the young boy had caused some wonder (you think?!). Hours before the CPS had came, a doctor had come on-site to "check up" on some girls. Obviously the school knew they were coming. They immediately saw me and asked me what was wrong. I told them everything that had happened to me while I was there, how I was getting more and more sick and no one would help me. About four hours later I was removed from the home, placed into a foster home, and I was scared shitless of what would happen to me. I didn't know if I would go back, but I would rather have died right then than to gone back to a place where I would have died eventually. I called my mom and she was furious. Needless to say, she blamed me for everything. I felt unwanted, abused, really hurt, and unloved. I wanted to kill myself at that point. That night I called my aunt and she said that she had brought charges against my mom for having me kidnapped. She said that things would be better and I'd be safe soon. I wish it was the truth. A suit was brought against the school for eight counts of medical neglect. The last I know is that the files are sealed and the school is still open. This has seperated my whole family. My parents seperated, no one talks to each other anymore. I was always the good kid, I had a 3.5 throughout high school and wanted to be a doctor. I didn't do bad things. I feel like I didn't deserve this. And I feel that no one else deserves it. I still have nightmares about it, and for the first year of being back I slept with my door locked and shoes on. I am still paranoid that I might be taken away again. Currently I am a student at San Diego State University in California, pre-med. I am almost 19. It makes me sick to think that other kids have to endure what I went through.
Anne