In this article, we will go through the testimony of a woman who witnessed Ben’s growing attention on the sexual abuse victim. She was a former student at Midwest Academy around the time that the sexual abuse was supposed to have occurred. She discusses her own time at Midwest Academy during her time on the stand. We will highlight some interesting parts of her testimony here and the link to the full testimony will be below that.
According to the witness, there was no privacy from your peers in Midwest Academy. If you had to get counseling or get an invasive medical procedure done, one of your peers will always be in the room regardless of whether you wished for privacy or not.
Q. You said somebody buddied with you. When you met with your counselors did you have to have someone with you?
A. Yes. And we had to have another person, like a second or a buddy, to really just like witness what was going on and make sure, like, there was nothing inappropriate. But for me, I think, it was just kind of invasive because it was hard to talk about what I wanted to speak with the counselor about in front of peers that, you know, I went to the school with. You know, rumors spread, gossip, etcetera.
Q. Even if you went to see a doctor or talk with the nurse, you always had someone else with you; is that right?
A. Yes. Actually, when I first went to the academy, I had an invasive exam where–I want to say is was a pap smear where I got swabbed, and I had two students in the room when it happened, and they just pulled a curtain. And it was just incredibly, like, invasive and I didn’t feel like I could communicate with the nurse or the doctor how I wanted to.
Q. Is it fair to say there just wasn’t a lot of privacy at the academy?
A. No. I mean, you didn’t have the privacy of going to the restroom by yourself. You would be in a silent restroom where communication wasn’t allowed. And you had to ask, like, for like feminine products through sign language and it was just–you didn’t have privacy.
OSS was often referred to as “the box” by the witness and other students. Even talking about it made her emotional as she remembered how helpless and forgotten about she felt.
Q. Did you go to OSS?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you go there quite a bit?
A. Can you rephrase that?
Q. Were you in OSS very much?
A. I went to OSS when I first went to the school, and I was in there and I think I refused–like, one entire day I just sat in the box, and I didn’t want to participate in the program. And that was when I first got there. That was like my first month, within my first couple of weeks. And that’s when I stopped refusing and I got out of OSS and did everything I could to move up in the program.
Q. Are you saying that the– You called it the box. Is that what some of the kids called it?
A. Yes. And the reason we called it the box was because it was the shape and the structure, but on top of that it was the fact that they’d close the door. It really felt like you were enclosed in something and that you had no way to get out.
Q. Would you say that being in the box helped you then?
A. I’m sorry. I’m just getting emotional. For me it was so traumatic, just the feeling of being completely hopeless and not having anyone to talk to. And then feeling like what was happening there I had no control over. I felt completely hopeless. I felt ignored. I felt like I was thrown in a corner somewhere, locked in a room, and completely forgotten about from my family, the government, everyone. I felt so hopeless.
Q. You said after being in the OSS room, you started to comply; right?
A. Yeah. I was in there and I just wanted to get out. I wanted to do whatever they wanted of me. When I walked out of OSS, I was completely ready to do anything that the program had asked of me. I didn’t want to go back in there.
Ben Trane was viewed as a godlike person at the school according to the witness. Even though he owned the school and set policies, he could easily break them as well for select students.
Q. Was that a big deal for him to pay attention to you?
A. Yes. It was a huge deal.
Q. That was a big deal to most of the kids, wasn’t it?
A. Yes.
Q. Why?
A. Because Mr. Ben really was kind of just viewed like extremely godlike, for lack of a better word, in the sense that when I was stripped of everything that I had from my clothing and told that I had to wear my hair a certain way; I wasn’t allowed to communicate; I had to ask permission to stand and use the restroom. It was the fact that when Mr. Ben came around, he could take you off campus; he could go take you to fast food restaurants and give you food that you couldn’t have, condiments. It was ridiculous. He also was known for going and giving points. And for someone like me being a Level 1 or a Level 2, points were a huge deal. That’s how I got, you know, salt. That’s how I got permission to talk to other students.
The witness stated that it was general knowledge that Ben Trane was the owner and director of the school.
Q. What was your understanding of what Mr. Ben’s job was at the school?
A. My understanding was that when I first got there, he was the director of the program and also the owner.
Ben Trane played favorites with girls and the witness describes seeing him give her a lot of attention. Ben Trane often communicated with the sexual abuse victim despite the fact that he was not yet her family representative. Side note: He did later become the sexual abuse victim’s family representative after he determined that he was the best one to help her with her issues.
Q. Was there complaints that Mr. Ben
had favorites?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you one of his favorites?
A. Definitely not.
Q. You know [sexual abuse victim]; is that correct?
A. Yes. She was a student while I was there.
Q. Did you ever observe the Defendant, Ben Trane, with [sexual abuse victim]?
A. Yes.
Q. When would you observe them together?
A. I would observe them together whether it be trips to go to the apartments to clean for extra points, or I know that I had buddied them in a conversation before. When I was in behavioral intervention, [sexual abuse victim] and I had spent a lot of time together and I know that Mr. Ben was like a key player in communicating with her and, you know, working with her family.
Q. He was her family rep?
A. My understanding was that her family rep was Miss Callie, and then I believe it may have changed to Layani or Mr. Ben.
She witnessed out-of-the-ordinary behavior with Ben and the sexual abuse victim such as Ben spending time with her alone. The witness was not immediately alarmed by this since Ben Trane was the owner and outside the normal rules. He could change the rules at any point if he wished.
Q. Did you ever see [sexual abuse victim] and the Defendant speaking alone or being somewhere where it was just the two of them?
A. Yes.
Q. When was that?
A. Once when I was [sexual abuse victim]’s buddy, I had to go to the restroom, and there wasn’t anyone on the girls’ wing to my understanding. I didn’t see any other students around. And so in order for me to go to the restroom, I obviously would have needed [sexual abuse victim] to go with me, but Mr. Ben said it was okay to go by myself and [sexual abuse victim] stayed with him.
Q. That was very out of the ordinary, wasn’t it?
A. Yes. But at the same time–it was out of the ordinary but Mr. Ben was the owner, and I just listened to what he said because he made the rules.
Q. Could Mr. Ben pretty much do what he wanted at the school?
A. To my understanding, yes, whether it be he cancelled school for the day and told us to go watch movies in the seminar room. There was–you know, he took us outside of the structure at times.
The witness noticed that Ben’s attention and contact with the sexual abuse victim increased over time. In fact, he would pull her out of class to speak to him and do things for her like reward her with extra points or give her presents. He took her out more than the other girls and there was as feeling of jealous among the other students.
Q. Did you notice that the contact between Mr. Ben and [sexual abuse victim] increased over time?
A. Yes, my understanding is that.
Q. Well, you say “my understanding.” Did you see that?
A. I experienced it. Yes.
Q. Okay. Tell us about that?
A. Well, I guess [sexual abuse victim] and I were closer. And I guess I hate to talk about her, like, personal issues but she was dealing with a lot with her parents, or here guardians, which were her aunt and uncle.
Q. Would you see him pull her out of class or do things to speak with her?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you also see any other type of extra attention where [sexual abuse victim] would get extra points from Mr. Ben or anything, like get presents or anything like that?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you see?
A. I saw extra points mostly, and whether it be, like, Mr. Ben pulling her out to go do other things that the rest of the family wasn’t doing.
Q. Did that make a lot of the other girls jealous?
A. Yes. It made us all, like, extremely jealous. It was just more the feeling of freedom, the freedom of going outside the building, the feeling of, you know, just having two seconds where you’re not going to get a consequence hammered on you. That feeling is unspeakable so, yeah, we were extremely jealous.
The sexual abuse victim behavior changed rather drastically. In the sexual abuse victim’s testimony, she testified that she leveled up quickly but after the sexual abuse, she got so depressed and wanted it to stop that staff worried she might be suicidal. This behavior change is notated here by this witness. The sexual abuse victim did not open up to anyone about the abuse that was going on until a member of the night staff finally got her to open up. The testimony of the former night staff will be posted in a separate post.
Q. Did you ever see [sexual abuse victim]’s behavior change over time from when you were there?
A. I saw [sexual abuse victim] go into behavioral intervention. I would say that was a different choice for her. She gave up on her program and practically went into refusal. So I would say that was a big shift, but I really think that was a reflection of what she had been feeling the entire time.
Q. Did [sexual abuse victim] ever tell you that anything was going on between her and the Defendant?
A. No.
Q. Between her and Mr. Ben?
A. No.
The witness was asked by Ben Trane to fill out a sexual survey. Ben’s excuse for it was that he was “gathering statistics of the student body for parent seminars.” According to testimony from various people, the survey had questions like “Have you had sex? What did you like during sex? Do you masturbate? What do you think about when you masturbate?” We aren’t quite sure how he would use those statistics to enrich the parent seminars. Most parents wouldn’t want to know what children enjoy during sex or what they think about when masturbating. The witness did say that she felt that the questions felt invasive but due to the entire environment at Midwest Academy, it didn’t raise a red flag. One thing to note: The sex surveys were only given to the girls, not the boys. If he wanted to use this information for parent seminars, why wouldn’t he have tried to had the surveys out to the boys as well?
Q. Did you ever have to take a sexual survey?
A. Yes.
Q. Who gave you that survey?
A. It was Mr. Ben.
Q. Did he say what it was for?
A. He said it was a questionnaire and that he was going to gather statistics, like, of the student body for the parent seminars.
Q. And you indicated that you did the sex survey. And I believe you said it made sense that he was using that information for educating parents?
A. At the time I was used to being asked incredibly invasive questions.
Q. Because you had that at other places too, I’m assuming?
A. No. Just that was how I had been conditioned at Midwest Academy. I was used to going through seminars, having to stand in front of groups of people talking about the most personal experiences of my life. So when he asked for an anonymous survey to be filled out with extremely sexual personal questions, it didn’t raise a red flag.
Q. And it was anonymous?
A. He said not to put your names on it. So whether or not he could recognize my penmanship or remember the order, I don’t know. But I didn’t put my name on it.
Q. So he gave you the survey. Did you find that concerning at all that you had to fill out some of these things?
A. To be honest, at the time I found the questions to be invasive, but to me it made sense.
Q. And you said that the Defendant handed those out?
A. Yes.
The witness participated in the “body image class” that Ben would run. When it was her turn to go into the room with the mirror and undress, she got the strange feeling that someone was watching her or there might have been a camera. She was instructed to take off her clothes in front of a mirror and then tell Ben and the other girls what type of body she had. Ben was the only adult who would be conducting this “body image class.” No other adults assisted him with it according to the witness
Q. Did you go to a body image class or room?
A. Yes.
Q. What was that?
A. It was–Mr. Ben came to the classroom, and he said that we were going to do a body sculpting (sic) class. He took groups of us out of the classroom upstairs to where the uniform room was, and there was a mirror. He let us go one by one to take our clothes off and look in the mirror to identify what body shape we had. And when we got done, outside on the table there was different papers saying, for example, the pear body shape. It would list a celebrity like Beyonce or someone well known and described the body shape.
Q. And so did you do that? Did you go in the room?
A. Yes, I did. And it was extremely cluttered. I felt instantly overwhelmed and was just–it was extremely uncomfortable. I started looking for a camera because it was so cluttered. I just felt like someone was watching me or something was there. It didn’t seem normal. I could just feel every hair on my body raising.
Q. Did you undress for the mirror?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Was that a big deal to get to look in a mirror?
A. Yes. Because we were never allowed to look in mirrors. You could only look into a mirror as an upper level, and it would take about eight months to get to that point.
Q. How long had it been since you’d been able to look at yourself?
A. The only time I’d look at myself is sometimes I’d go to doctor’s appointments, and I’d go in the restroom and, like, just stare at myself in the mirror, because that’s the only time I could.
Q. When this was going on, was there anybody else with you besides Mr. Ben?
A. There was another–there was a full group of girls, so there must have been six others.
Q. I asked that badly. Was there another adult with you besides Mr. Ben?
A. No.
Q. He was putting on this class?
A. Yes. And it was Sunday. It was during, like, movies. We were all watching movies in the classroom, computer room.
Ben Trane would take some girls shopping at Victoria’s Secret. The witness testified to seeing this happen. She actually remembers being upset about not going. According to her testimony, she was not sent with all the things she would need for Midwest Academy and often had to take donations from other girls.
Q. Did you ever go to Victoria’s Secret with Mr. Ben?
A. No, I did not.
Q. Did you ever see other girls come back on trips with lingerie from Victoria’s Secret after being with Mr. Ben?
A. Yes.
Q. You indicated that you had seen some students with some Victoria’s Secret merchandise?
A. Yes.
Q. Who were those students?
A. So what it was, was that I was an upper level. I stayed back with–
Q. I just need the names.
A. Okay. So the students I witnessed that got the items were Jxxxxx and Axxxx, and the other names I can’t remember.
Q. And how did you know it was items from Victoria’s Secret?
A. Because I was an upper level. I was upset that I wasn’t brought because they came back and showed me everything they got.
Q. And did they have items from other stores as well?
A. That I don’t know.
Q. To the best of your knowledge, had they gone on a shopping trip at the mall?
A. That I don’t know.
Q. You only remember the Victoria’s Secret items?
A. Yes, and that they had gone out that day and were gone most of it. Also, that they weren’t wearing their uniforms, which I believe to leave the school, that was like the rule.
At one point of her stay at Midwest Academy, the witness felt so alone and distraught that she planned suicide for months. She even leveled up so she could procure a belt to hang herself. She felt ignored and like she had no one to talk to for months. She finally divulged her plans after talking to a family representative that was not her own and feeling heard but lost her level in the program for disclosing. Essentially restarting her status at Midwest Academy.
Q. When you say you dropped, what happened?
A. I was an upper level. I had a suicide plan. I was extremely suicidal. It’s hard to explain that feeling. But for months I wrote goodbye letters to my family. I just wanted to end my life. So I voted up to upper levels because I knew when I got to Level 4, I could have a belt. And my plan was to go in the bathroom and hang myself. And one night after months of feeling ignored and not having anyone to talk to, a family rep that wasn’t mine came and spoke with me. And I felt so overwhelmed with emotion that I told her what I was going through, what I felt, and that night I went into behavioral intervention to be put on suicide watch
and I practically–I lost my level
