To start this out i want to say how unbelievably freeing and releasing it feels to have found so many people who have been through what i’ve been through and seen what i’ve seen. My time at scinsu started in august of 2020, i was 14 years old. I went to scinsu because i was extremely depressed with several mental disorders and i was the definition of a rebellious child. I was smoking, drinking, lying, manipulating, sneaking around, etc. I wasn’t like some rebellious kids i was extremely sneaky and knew just how to pull things off. Eventually my mom knew i needed help, and so did i. I wanted to continue the behavior i had but in the back of my mind i just wanted to get away from my parents. So my mom looked into residential treatment. Neither of us knew what this really entailed. She found a “boarding school” in Utah called second chances. It looked like fun to me for some reason! It looked like a fun way to make new friends and get to experience new things and get a bit of a clean start for a while but i didn’t know that it was basically supposed to knock all of the bad behaviors out of me. I’m not sure if my mom did either. The program was supposed an average of 9 months depending on what you need. So i started packing without further question or research… My dad wasn’t on board with this at all he thought my problems could be fixed all at home but by this point my mom was hopeless and reaching for anything. So my mom and my friend drove me out to Utah themselves.

When we got there i started realizing i was so far from home and i was leaving my entire life behind; my family, my dogs, my friends, my hobbies, my school, my everything. Once we got out there we headed to the program, it looked like a nice house on a normal street, besides the 10 foot high fences topped with barbed wire. We stepped inside and they were very nice but it all started sinking in that my mom was leaving, and i wasn’t going with her. We started following their instructions and once my moms portion was completed she was asked to leave. The administration staff asked me to remove all of my jewelry, i guess for self harm reasons. I had pierced my nose at home just a week before arrival so i was in a lot of pain. i removed all earrings but told them my nose hurt too bad to take out without numbing solution or a mirror to twist it out the right way. They refused me these things and said they would forcibly take it out if i did not. I refused and next thing i knew my wrists were bent farther than i’ve ever seen a wrist go and the unbelievably excruciating pain that came with this. It took the breath out of me and i screamed as loud as i possibly could and the Director of the program continued yelling at me to take it out or he would. I tried telling him i surrendered but he kept yelling and bending my wrists so all the would come out of me were screams of pain. After probably 15 minutes of this he had a day staff come take it out of my nose while i was still struggling in the directors grasp. I admit i should have taken it out myself, but i will never agree with the length they took it. After all of that they had me take an “intake shower” where i stripped my body in front of them and they drew a sketch of any scars or scratches or bruises or anything on my body, then they had me shower. When you arrive you are on something called “staff buddy” it just means you must be shoulder to shoulder with a staff at all times. So while doing hygiene of any sort the staff would stand in the doorway watching everything you did. You can only imagine how uncomfortable this made EVERY single one of us, having a stranger watch you wash yourself, use the toilet, etc.

After a few days/weeks i realized how much of a mistake i had made agreeing to go to this place. It was absolutely nothing like the description. All of those lovely things that looked appealing were saved for the very end of the program once you fit their “finished product” standards. So to move this story along quicker i’m just going to list a few things i noticed in the first few months that i found weird. We were constantly cleaning, some staff were barely out of high school some even the same age as the girls, the wonder rarely showed his face, we were completely mind controlled, and the lead staff and administrative staff were down right shady. We had to write 2 letters weekly and if they had any “negative content” it would be sent to your therapist and never sent to your parents. “negative content” included anything about being sad, anything about the horrible things they did to us there, and anything that could make them look bad. They’d take out the negative portions of our letters and send them as that, and the therapist would reprimand us for the “negative portions”. Therapy was actually just them telling us everything was our fault and explaining how it was. They were never on our sides in any situation, they would tell our parents we were using them, lying to them, and manipulating them. I remember one time i had family therapy and that was just a Skype call to my parents… i was trying to tell them some of the things that had happened the previous week and my therapist told them that wasn’t true and shut down the call so i couldn’t say anymore. That’s when i knew that the staff knew what they were doing was wrong.

Now that i have portrayed to you readers the shady, secretive behavior i encountered, i will explain one of many situations of physical abuse. One of my best friends in the program, let’s call her “sam”. Sam had very bad anxiety and couldn’t be around chaos or it would throw her into panic. So in this certain instance there was a fight of some sort in the commons (the main meeting area) so sam ran to her room and jumped in bed wrapped in her blanket. A day staff realized she had ran up there during the fight and they called for backup to “help them upstairs”. They ran upstairs and i remember hearing “get away from me, please, leave me alone” and then the sound of something hitting the floor or walk i couldn’t tell which. I ran upstairs because i was the ONLY person that could talk her down from fighting back or worsening her situation. When i ran up there she had been pinned to the flood with her arm twisted behind her back and wrists bent, one staff on either side of her. She cried in pain and every time she would say it hurt or say stop or anything along those lines they’d push harder and she’d scream. It was almost as if they enjoyed her screams of pain. They use “PCS” positive control systems. Which is bending the wrist in a way to cause immense pain you, that only worsens when you struggle. They help her down for what seemed like forever and when they pulled her back up they were still pushing on her wrists, she was crying so much at this point and the staff started exchanging some nasty words with her so she spit in one’s face. after everything that had happened in that situation, they pressed CHARGES on HER for spitting. after seeing this i realized i had to leave somehow. Now i will explain a situation of neglect.

Weeks went by and nothing had changed since Sam’s incident. we were outside for “gardening time” which consisted of spraying duck poop, cleaning cars, turning compost, etc. not gardening, doing gardening chores. Around our house and backyard was a 10-15 foot high fence i’m not sure the exact height, with barbed wire at the top. Me and another girl that had bonded over the fact that we had to find a way out saw an opportunity. There was a piece of stack wood we could climb on and reach the top of the gate and pull ourselves up and over. My friend, we will call her “amy” climbed it first. It all happened so fast, she climbed and jumped and they noticed when they heard the gate, so i had to move quick or i wasn’t going anywhere. I quickly climbed and grabbed the top of the fence and jumped over, i landed on my leg. I got up and we ran down the street we had never seen before because of our confinement. We found a storage unit unlocked and broke in. We hid behind a piece of plywood. After the adrenaline went down a few notches i notice my blood all over my arm and clothing. I had grabbed the top of the barbed wire fence with my palm and sliced it down the middle. Amy ripped part of her jacket off to stop the bleeding. We suddenly heard the jingle of keys and footsteps. I tried to control my breathing to a silence and while i don’t know what attracted the person i’m guessing it was our breathing, although it could have been the blood. The man was the director of the program, he grabbed Amy, dragged her out of the storage unit and forced her into the back of his pickup truck. The directors brother, which was a shift lead, grabbed me and did the same. We drove back to the program and they pulled us into the wait room where we waited with ZERO MEDICAL ATTENTION until the police arrived. We waited for the police and once they got there they told us they could incarcerate us, or we could agree to the programs terms. We agreed to peacefully go to sleep and accept the consequences we earned. Once the police left we were instructed to go straight to bed. I was still covered in blood, Amy’s clothes were torn, and neither of us had taken our nightly prescriptions. I asked for medical attention because i was bleeding off an on from the wound and they gave me a feminine product to stop the bleeding from the wound on my HAND, and told me to go to bed.

Lastly, i want to share the most traumatic memory i posses. Not to be dramatic, but this one will haunt me forever. One Friday night we were all hanging out in the game room watching a movie. During the movie we heard commotion from the commons, the staff told us to stay put. We heard screaming and movement. I still have no clue what was happening but i did see a girl start panicking. She eventually stopped moving. We as girls ages 13-17 had no idea what to do for this girl we thought may have just freaking died. The staff were dealing with the “disturbance” out in the commons, so we had nobody to rely on to help the situation. So a few of us tried to physically force her awake, she was breathing but she wasn’t conscious. Once the staff returned they gave her an ice pack, and a blanket and pillow and had a night staff sit by her all night. I’m sure there was a call to the nurse but nobody came in or went out that night. I know personally because, i didn’t sleep. During this time it was suspected that some of us developed covid so we were waiting on our test results. It must have been the next morning we got our results and 11 out of the 20 some of us girls had tested positive. They quarantined us in a room with a small bathroom. 11 girls in a room the size of a normal bedroom. One of the positives was the girl that went unconscious the night before. So they set up our sleeping arrangements and shut us in. Hanging with all the girls was cool but besides our food being brought to us there was no staff in sight. They left us with the unconscious girl and no working shower. We had water and food for 14 days. During those few days the girl had gained her consciousness back but was very mentally not there. She couldn’t speak, and couldn’t physically function without guidance. We had to take her to the bathroom, feed her, dress her, and clean her. You would think to bring this girl to the hospital right? 14 days passed and no nurse, no medical attention, and no assistance in taking care of her. Just me (a 14 year old) and a few other girls my age taking care of another living child. An unresponsive living child.

The point of this testimony is not to make you feel bad, for not knowing about any of this but to unfold the truth about these programs. They are shady, manipulative, and damn well good at it. You pay tens of thousands of dollars to get your child mentally and physically abused. Most girls who i’ve found on social media since have PTSD from the things we encountered. I tend to wonder how nothing has been done with so many allegations against them. I will never forget the things i went through and i see them in my mind every now and again and they terrify me. I’d rather die then ever go through that kind of trauma again. They damaged lots of our lives and are still getting away with it to this day, i hope for every poor girl that has experienced or will experience this, safe healing.

Name:
Morgan B

Program:
Second Chances in Southern Utah

Location:
Utah, Usa

Years Attended:
08/2020 – 02/2021