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Comment by throwaway_egbs | Hacker News Reader

I was sent to an “emotional growth boarding school” in the ‘90s. I wasn’t kidnapped but many of my schoolmates were. A few years later the department of education (can’t remember if it was state or federal) shut the school down after stories got out about the horrific things that were going on there. Kids forced to sit in corners for days at a time, ambulances not being called for kids who had very seriously self-harmed, strip searches (administered by other kids), physical restraints... I could go on. The place had a cult-like atmosphere that was centered on the headmaster and his weird homegrown therapeutic method.

I had nightmares for years afterwards and still haven’t fully come to grips with what happened there.

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It’s insane these are a thing. I didn’t know about them until the recent Paris Hilton documentary. She was sent to something similar and if I recall correctly was taken in the middle of the night, as though being kidnapped.

That's awful, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Thank goodness that horrible thing was put an end to.

Thanks. I understand why my parents did what they did. I was addicted to meth and probably would’ve wound up dead without a serious intervention. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

(Clean and sober now.)

Amazing work.

From an internet stranger that's been around others who have been down a similar path. I acknowledge how hard that must be and continues to be.

Keep up the good fight.

*fist bump*

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Thanks dang

Sounds like the kind of thing that sounds like it would "help" on the surface but maybe create more suffering down the line.. do you think there were any benefits to your life for having gone or was it a purely negative experience?

I’ve gone back and forth on that question a thousand times. I’m almost pathologically agreeable so it’s easy for me to minimize and slip into a place of, “oh, it’s ok, I was off my rocker and extreme measures were necessary.” But just because I needed help doesn’t mean I needed what that school was doing. So, while it introduced me to a way to stay clean, and kept me clean for long enough to clear my head, those aren’t, like, super unique things that one can only find in these horrible programs. For me it was a net negative, and I could’ve gotten the positives from any number of other places.

If you had a child like you were, what would you do? What do you think the best solution is for such a “troubled teen”?

Honestly, I don’t know. I have some general ideas from my own experience but I also know better than to be confident they’d stand up to reality. Especially since I’ve dodged the issue by deliberately not having children. I’m not sure there’s a one-size-fits-all solution; I think so much depends on the specific circumstances of the child’s family, peers, and personality, and specific events in the child’s life. I, for instance, really needed my dad to take responsibility for his terrifying behavior, to see the harm it caused me; I needed friends who didn’t bully me; I needed support for coping with scary transitions, like starting middle school; and I needed someone to teach me about life. The drugs were just a symptom. So I don’t know what an effective intervention looks like for that.

In retrospect do you believe there may be a better solution to the problems you faced then?

Locking up kids and controlling them surely can be bettered?

I see Evergreen College has ancestry

Do tell?

> strip searches (administered by other kids)

evergreen has been flipped by students partly a few years ago so seeing chaotic school with involvement of youngster reminded me of it

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