I went to Midwest Academy at 15. It was horrible, we couldn’t speak, look in mirrors or look out windows. If we got a “Write Up” known as a “Consequence” we were forced to listen to tapes of “Motivational speakers” and would have to write pages and pages of sentences. The next step in the punishment process was “Isolation” a room made out of plywood that was painted white with nothing but a mattress on the floor. Some girls stayed in isolation for months and months at a time. You could hear them screaming, it was really sad. I have very naturally curly hair, one of the staff continually wrote me up for my hair being unruly (which is crazy because we couldn’t look in mirrors) the continual write ups about my hair led to me sitting in “isolation” looking back as an adult I see how humiliating and crazy this was. I was fortunate, I never endured and sexual or corporal abuse, but the humiliation was constant.
