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My Testament At
Spring Creek Lodge (anonymous)
I was there from
1999 to mid 2001
I was picked up at
school by an escort service. I was put in hand cuffs and driven
straight to the airport. I was told I was going to a two week
campout in Montana, where I would get to go horseback riding,
skiing, camping, talk to girls and have a great time all awhile
working on my drug problems.
The first week I
was there, a student named Chris was playing around after shut down.
Laughing and talking, just being a teenager. The “Calvary” was
called in to take him to the hobbit. They yanked him off of the top
bunk and slammed him on the ground. Two staff held his legs and two
more held his arms, and one lay down on his back. He was struggling
and cussing. The shift leader proceeded to put his hand around his
neck and push down. He started to plead with them that he couldn’t
breath and to please let him up. When his cries became more
desperate it seemed like the harder they tried to hurt him. The
staff ignored his complaints about not being able to breath, and so
three of us including myself jumped off our bunks and started to
pull the staff members off of him.
They called for
even more back up and when they got there we were all restrained in
the same manner. We were taken up to the hobbit and we didn’t get
breakfast or lunch the next day.
A student by the
name of Gabe was viciously restrained in front of the trailer at
Spring Creek Lodge. Another student had flicked the back of his ear
while standing in a heel toe line, he stepped out of line to tell
the kid to quit, and was given a Cat 2 out of area. He started to
walk off, and a staff member got him in a rear bear hug. Gabe said a
few choice words and stomped on the foot of the staff member. The
staff then proceeded to lift him up and slam him down on the asphalt
face first. It cracked a few teeth and busted up his lips pretty
good.
A young boy of the
age of 12 was in the hobbit. He had quite a mouth on him, and he was
spitting everywhere. He would spit on staff, on myself and all over
the hobbit. The main hobbit staff came in there and told him if he
spit on any thing else he was going to mop it up with him. The boy
looked up at the ceiling and spit a large one. The staff grabbed him
by the crotch and the neck and climbed up on the top bunk and sure
enough mopped him up with it and then slammed him down on the tile
floor from the top bunk.
The young boy was
pretty shaken up by the whole thing.
One night after
shut down the cabin was awoken to a blood curling scream from the
next room over. Not caring if I got a shut down violation I went
next door to see what was going on. Jeff had apparently gotten a
piece of glass somewhere on the facility and proceeded to
slice his arm up from where your arm bends at the elbow, all the way
down to his wrist. Not just one or two cuts, but he went up and down
his arm repetitively. On the wall next to his bunk, in large letters
written in blood he wrote “FREE ME” then took his bloody hand print
and slapped it against the wall and drug it down. It was gruesome.
They made another student scrub the wall to get it clean.
There was a young
man there who had obvious mental problems. Our case representative
told us it was paranoid schizophrenia and I am sure some other
ailments. We were having a facility meeting where Cameron Pullan
just talked to us about this and that and Daniel kept on blurting
out extremely random things. He would interrupt Cameron to ask him
when he would be going home, and just really off the wall things.
Cameron asked me and another Jr. Staff to get him out of there and
take him up to the hobbit. He also told us if he gave us any
problems or tried to run away to “Kick the shit out of him”.
Well we knew he
wasn’t going to listen to us, and of course he didn’t. We took him
up to the hobbit and as we were walking in he suddenly bolted for
the woods. The other Jr. Staff and I tackled and restrained him. We
got him up in the hobbit and he made numerous attempts to get out
with little success. He claimed that he had to go to the bathroom,
and there were no bathrooms in the hobbit. The students would have
to go out side in a Porto potty that was rarely ever emptied; we the
students called it the “Blooper”.
There would be
times that it was so full that human waste would be leaking out of
the toilet seat and fecal matter was all over it. He went to the
bathroom and as soon as he came out he bolted for the woods again.
We tackled him pretty hard and on the concrete.
We didn’t know what
else to do; we weren’t trained for this kind of thing. To make this
long story short, the young man ended up getting pretty beat up from
all the times he tried to run.
One time a student
was in the hobbit and he asked to use the rest room. They took him
out to the “Blooper” and he refused to come out. So the staff
working the hobbit in turn dumped the Porto potty over on the door.
The young man was covered with a weeks worth of human waste and
tampons.
Cameron would have
us do some pretty wild stuff just for his amusement. He would call
facility meetings and have us all line up on the court with our
family’s in a heel toe line (this all being in the middle of winter)
and he would randomly tell people to go and jumping the frozen pond
right off the side of the court. They would have to break the ice
over the pond first. Sometimes he would take students, blindfolded
into Thompson Falls, and make them jump off a bridge in to the
river. If the students didn’t want to jump, they were pushed.
Towards the end of
ones program you must go through a process called trail of lights.
It starts off with a big meal and then goes into a strenuous
workout. Pushups, jumping jacks, sit-ups, running, and what ever
else they can think of. After a long day of jumping jacks, they
blindfolded us and started leading us through the woods. They would
walk us through creek beds and into trees. The staff was laughing
the whole time at our discomfort. They had us climb up a very steep
rockslide still blindfolded; several students fell down and rolled
all the way down to the bottom. At the end of the night every one
had cuts and gashes all over their body from running in to trees and
walking through thorn patches, and rolling down rocky hills. It was
one of the most pointless processes I have ever been through.
The seminars were
horrible. They would make you tell you’re deepest and darkest
secrets only to have them rubbed in your face the rest of the time
you were there. “My dad molested me when we were younger, my moms
boyfriend raped me and she knew about it and didn’t do anything”
stuff like this and they wouldn’t let it go. If you didn’t tell them
things about you, they would kick you out of the seminars and you
couldn’t go back until the next month. You need the seminars to
advance in the program to go home.
One seminar in
particular, called Accountability would have kids walking around and
using all of the knowledge of kids problems, try to tear them down.
This pushed a lot of kids to the edge. They would have Jr.
Staff standing against the walls as security, so if anyone went out
of control, they would restrain them.
Kids restraining
kids, kids handing out consequences to other kids. It’s all abuse.
If a Jr. Staff member didn’t like you, they could consequent you for
absolutely nothing. It is basically up to the Jr. Staff to decide
when you are ready to move up and go home.
Parents don’t
really know what is going on up there and if the students tell them
in letters, the letter won’t reach them and we were punished. The
place doesn’t work. I still smoke weed, and drink like a fish. I
still have anger issues. People are killing them selves because of
this place. Cory a student, who graduated the program and was in my
family, ended up killing himself when he got home. A young lady on
Oct. 4 of this year hung herself in the cabin; Jeff tried to kill
himself because he couldn’t stand being there. These people are not
helping any one out, other than the parents who want to get rid of
their kids.
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