I attended Turning Winds 2008-09 as a teenager. I was there for 14 months. The older I get, the more I am coming to terms with how traumatic my experience was there. I will keep this as short & to the point as possible – no need for me to revisit this time of my life in any greater detail. My parents, who didn’t know any better, unknowingly paid over $100,000 for me to be in an actual hell. We weren’t allowed to express or allude to any “negative” experiences when writing letters to family (that were read and approved/denied before sending) or during our once-a-month 5-minute (timed by staff and done over speakerphone in order to monitor communication) phone calls – if we did, staff would hang up the phone mid-conversation & put our letters into the trash instead of mailing them. We weren’t allowed to talk to any of the other students there of the same gender without a staff member sitting in to listen to our conversation, & once again anything said or alluded to that fit their “negative” category resulted in punishment. One of the punishments I remember clearly was having to sit in a chair facing a wall, something they referred to as SOLO, for 24 hours minimum (usually ended up being 72 hours). Besides using the restroom, during that SOLO time we were not allowed to talk, communicate, sleep, or even look anywhere other than the wall. Any ‘negative’ feelings I tried to express about the program were shrugged off by staff as being dramatic, attention-seeking, etc. Had I been able to communicate what was actually going on to my family, they would have gotten me out of there. We weren’t allowed to speak to any of the male students, which is understandable, but we also weren’t allowed to look at them, look over on their side of the room, or make any eye contact whatsoever. The reason I am telling you this is because once I left Turning Winds, I was completely unable to communicate with men for many, many years. I still feel extreme anxiety when dealing with members of the opposite sex for any reason because of this. I am angry over it. People think that there is something wrong with me because I am unable to maintain proper eye contact, unable to approach male grocery clerks/male authority figures by myself, afraid to ask for even the simplest of things in my life without extreme unreasonable fear of being punished or invalidated. I now suffer from avoidance-restrictive food eating disorder, which I attribute directly to Turning Winds staff forcing me to eat certain foods that I didn’t want to &/or couldn’t eat. I am unable to communicate what I want to communicate effectively in the real world because of the bizarre, cult-like rules that were instilled into me as a student there. I am writing this review today, 13 years post-stay, emphasizing that it has been over 13 years since my involuntary stay there, & I am still undergoing therapy to heal from this place. I am 27 years old, & suffer from nightmares up to this day, waking up in terror that my post-TWAI life has been all a dream & I am still stuck there. I was just a little girl. No child should have to go through what I did. The dehumanization and moral degradation I experienced is not okay. I have to assume that all positive reviews by previous students are resulting from Stockholm Syndrome. I am a victim. This is sad. Although the facility has undergone change over the years, it’s still run by the same family- one thing I have learned that I can relate to this experience is that no matter how many times a snake sheds its skin, it will always be a snake. Although we are in 2021, ‘therapeutic’ boarding schools, unfortunately, are still highly unregulated. These schools are free to do what they want. Don’t be fooled. Thank you, TWAI, for sucking my parents dry of their retirement funds for the ‘therapeutic’ experience that I am still recovering from. To the Baisden family- it took me awhile, but I’ve found my voice. I will use any platform made available to me to share my experience in hope to spare someone from the irreparable damage done to me.
