6 months after my 12th birthday I was sent to Lake House Academy in Flat Rock, NC. Immediately after I got there a girl jumped from the highest balcony of the house in the middle of the night and broke both of her legs, and I knew that this wasn’t a place I was going to be taken good care of. Throughout my stay there I was subject to seclusion, forced isolation, having no choice but to wet and mess myself because staff would not let me use the bathroom, and having to watch other students, as young as nine years old, restrained and even hit. One memory that stands out specifically is on the night of New Year’s Eve, a girl was being restrained in the community bathroom, and was shrieking bloody murder. A staff member told us to sing louder than the girl screaming so we could drown it out. At the end of my stay there, I had grown increasingly suicidal and attempted to kill myself just so I could get out of that place. My time at Lake House Academy was incredibly traumatic and I have just now begun to deal with it. The thing that I’ve held onto the most is the lack of justice and the fact that I don’t know how many more girls after me experienced these same things, so with releasing this testimony I hope that justice is found.
